5 Achievable Self-Awareness Habits That Will Make You More Successful

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I’d like to offer some advice on how to achieve self-awareness through cultivating a few, good habits.

These are science-based — not hunch-based, and certainly not based on my own personal views of my self.

Hunches are great in mirky territory: where we lack enough data sufficient to say what works. Science is better, however, when we have lots of data on things people tried and on different possibilities: when we want find a pattern.

The patterns on self-awareness are pretty clear.

For example, knowing yourself is a scientifically proven driver of professional and personal success. Self-aware people are more resilient, more mentally tough, more reliable and even more likable.

Self-aware leaders and professionals are more successful in their endeavors, largely because they know when to rely upon others and when to lend support. As a result, the self-aware person’s entire life’s journey is more pleasant and peaceful.

The science is also clear on people that aren’t self-aware.

For example, more than 90% of us believe we’re above average in some skill or undertaking. And such an irrational belief increases with our education and experience. In other words, 9 out of 10 doctors you’ve visited believed they were brilliant but less than 4 out of 10 really were.

The point to be taken is that self-awareness doesn’t seem to matter, until it does.

It matters when our gaps harm other people, when we go too far in life in the wrong direction and when we become too resistant to change in our thinking. In that connection, behavioral science offers us at least 5 habits we can all cultivate to gain greater self-awareness and become more successful (at living and at working) in the process. These include:

1. Don’t Trust Yourself. The starting point of getting to know ourselves is to assume we know nothing. That’s not meant to be a Zen statement, though it does go against our Western culture of seeking firm ground in what we “know”. We are often raised to make assumptions and speculate, but a long list of memory biases tells evidences that we later take these speculations as data. We become geniuses and experts in our own minds. That’s all the more the case when thinking about ourselves. Even if we have a pretty good idea of who we are, there are probably some rough edges that need to be worked out here and there. If we trust our own thinking we’ll quickly overlook those deficits, rationalize them, and even begin to think they don’t exist. To rescue us from this problem, we need to sow “healthy doubt”: which is really a way of saying we accept we could be wrong about everything — and very often are — including ourselves.
2. Compare trusted opinions. The next habit to cultivate involves filling that healthy doubt gap with information from other people and experiences. Indeed, recent research suggests we need to know how others view us just to know ourselves accurately. Striking similarities in the assessments of others give us important data on how we’re operating. Are we bulls in China shops or wallflowers that seldom get noticed? Again, we usually don’t have an accurate picture. In fact, we often self-diagnose, which is a bit like taking painkillers without a doctor’s guidance: not recommended. Thus, we should cultivate the habit of getting honest feedback from others. For example, in a loose moment when everyone’s enjoying themselves, ask candidly: “Listen, I really need your advice and I won’t be offended: am I doing [or thinking or whatever] this all wrong?” If this is impossible (i.e., we have no trusted friends around) we need a Plan B. Our Plan B should be to imagine what others we respect might think of us and act accordingly. Our brain has mirror neurons that work, even if we don’t ask them to, so this can actually be quite effective.
3. Audit your bad choices. When we make bad choices or mistakes, our brains make us forget them later to make ourselves feel better. That’s very kind of them, but not helpful if what we want is improvement. What we want is an audit — even if it looks ugly — of what we did, how bad it was and how wrong. Again, that kicks against modern culture (and pop psychology) which teaches people to bury those past challenges and issues. But inexperienced counselors often confuse trauma people experienced with problems they caused. Some of us experienced trauma, and we need help to get through that — which often means setting it aside from memory. But all of us have made mistakes and bad, stupid choices. Those, we should not bury. They’re like wounds. If we cover them up, they will get infected and perhaps even cause gangrene. In any case, one habit that can neutralize this destructive tendency is to focus less on labeling ourselves. For example, we should not generically assess whether we are “good” or “bad” drivers. Rather, we should count the red-lights we run. Once we know we’ve done that too many times, just say: “I’m going to stop doing this and start doing things a better way.”
4. Pray. Many of us proudly tout a lack of religious beliefs or claim some generic spirituality. It’s one thing if that’s not your experience. It’s another if your experience was, for some reason, negative. Yet, it’s another if you reject it without investigating benefits. The scientific fact is, overwhelming research evidence suggests that people who pray, in earnest religious beliefs, actually have greater well-being. They recover at higher rates from illnesses, recover more quickly from illnesses and are even more immune to certain types of illnesses — especially psychological ones. In the end that suggests ignoring the benefits of prayer and meditation is like ignoring a possible advantage. How exactly do you do this if you don’t believe in anything? Start with what you know. Remember Santa Claus? Remember the feeling you had in making a list of whether you were naughty or nice — and your entire Christmas gift yield seeming to depend upon it? Do that, only earnestly asking for peace and self-awareness.
5. Get over yourself. It would seem that after cultivating habits 1 through 4, you’d already have a pretty humbled view of yourself, but not always. It takes pointing. In behavioral science, the concept of ‘intellectual humility’ embodies not only accepting your fallibility (Habit 1) but getting over your ego from when you did things correctly. Indeed, your life can depend upon it. In a study of ‘wingsuit flying’ is an extreme sport that more often than not results in violent death — researchers found ego made all the difference. Interviews with wingsuit pilots consistently showed an outright fear of ego creeping in prior to flight. Pilots indicated that the most important rule is to never overestimate one’s abilities. Instead, they suggest focusing on the surrounding environment — how it can change, how it can harm you, how you can shape it, etc. It should be pretty clear that wingsuit pilots who violated this rule were not around to talk about it.

If you’ve ever undertaken a massive renovation project, then all of this will feel intuitive. Self-awareness is about stripping yourself down to the core. It’s about reimagining what you’d like to see. It’s about investing in the right materials and even the right designers, often aided by second, third and fourth opinions. Most importantly, however, self-awareness is about making sure that the end-result — the “you” you become — is the place you want to live. That’s it main marker of success!

*This article is a substantially revised version of an earlier article by the author in Forbes.