Have you ever thought to yourself in the middle of a conversation, “Wow, I really don’t know what I’m talking about”? Or known as soon as you looked at that data report your boss assigned to you that you’re the wrong person for the job and need to bring in someone else’s expertise? Or, whenever your coworker comes to you panicking, rather than freak out too, are you able to calmly guide them in the right direction, confident in what you can and can’t help them with?
Chances are if you do these things on the regular, you have great self-awareness. If these moments are few and far between, don’t fret—self-awareness is a skill that can easily be built and improved upon over time. And while it has a myriad of benefits, it’s particularly useful for cultivating a successful career, no matter your field or role.
What is self-awareness and why is it important?
Self-awareness is the conscious knowledge and beliefs that we have about ourselves, according to Stephen Fleming, the author of Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness and a professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London whose focus is on studying and measuring metacognition, or the awareness and understanding of our thought processes.
Kristina Leonardi, a Muse career coach specializing in career development, work/life wellness, and personal growth, defined it another way: “Self-awareness is being fully present with yourself.” This means, she added, that you’re in touch with your emotions, mental patterns, and how you respond to certain things, as well as your innate talent, skills, abilities, interests, and passions.
Being highly self-aware can be beneficial for several reasons:
Self-awareness makes you a better person to be around.
Fleming noted that self-awareness gives you a strong sense of your abilities and lack thereof, making it easier for you to coordinate and collaborate with others and be a team player. Alternatively, he said, “It's frustrating to collaborate with someone who always thinks they have the answer [or] always is confident that they know what they're doing.”
Leonardi added that self-awareness helps you to see people clearer, which allows you to have more compassion for where they might be coming from.
Self-awareness allows you to make smarter decisions.
Self-awareness makes you more cognizant of your knowledge gaps and willing to seek out new information so that you make the best decision possible for yourself.
“We've done some work with brain imaging showing that when you are confident in a decision, you shut down the processing of new information about that decision,” Fleming said. “Now that's fine as long as your metacognition is good because the problem comes when your metacognition is poor—because then you might be confident in an incorrect decision … so essentially you have this metacognitive failure where you're confident but wrong, and that's dangerous.”
“Being connected with yourself is the best form of information that you can have about the choices that you want to make,” Leonardi said, adding that being self-aware can help you choose a career that makes you happy and, once you’re in that career, contribute in a way that helps you succeed.
Self-awareness helps you regulate your emotions.
Leonardi emphasized how contagious other people’s emotions can be and how easily they can influence how we think and feel.
“When you're self-aware, you can then discern what's your stuff and what's other people's stuff” and better control your emotions and reactions to certain situations, she said.
Types of self-awareness
Becoming more self-aware requires understanding the different ways it manifests. Fleming broke it down into three categories:
- The capacity to attach confidence or uncertainty to different aspects of ourselves correctly. In other words, feeling good about your ability to complete a task or doubting your ability to answer a question.
- The ability to take a third-person perspective on yourself. This means you’re able to see other people’s perspectives (tied to the psychology term of “theory of mind”) as well as decipher how they differ from your own.
- The ability to sense your own body. Also referred to as interoception, this “sixth sense,” as Fleming calls it, narrows in on your physical being—being able to notice how your heart is beating or your gut is functioning, for example.
8 ways to improve your self-awareness
Now that you know why self-awareness is a valuable skill and how it works, here’s how to make it not just a buzzword but an everyday habit and strength in your life and on the job.
1. Study up on what it is
Fleming advised that the best starting place for improving your self-awareness is getting familiar with the concept—read books and articles (like this one!) about it, or engage in conversation with experts on the topic, such as a therapist, coach, or researcher.
He likened it to going to the gym for the first time: You could start by using the equipment at random, but you’ll be more successful if you have someone explain to you what muscles they target. “Just learning something about the biology and psychology of metacognition—knowing that it depends on certain areas of the brain that are impacted by stress, knowing how mental health impacts metacognition—they're all useful things,” he said.
2. Know when self-awareness can fail
“The best way to have good metacognition is to avoid the situations where we know it fails,” Fleming said. He said two factors play a large part in this: stress and time pressure.
“Metacognitive processes take a while to kick in,” Fleming said. “We need to give ourselves time, especially if we've got a high-stakes decision, to reflect on that, to sit with it, to turn it over in our mind.” In other words, when faced with a difficult situation, it’s crucial to give yourself time to respond—and to be in the right environment when you do.
3. Meditate or practice mindfulness
Both Fleming and Leonardi said meditating regularly can help with building self-awareness. And the research backs this up: One 2010 study of second- and third-grade children found that 30 minutes of mindful awareness practices twice a week for eight weeks improved the students’ metacognition, among other things like behavioral regulation and executive functioning skills.
There are many ways to practice mindfulness without it taking up your whole day—here’s our guide to getting started with meditation.
4. Bake reflection into your day
Similar to practicing mindfulness, Leonardi suggested taking 10 or 15 minutes a day in the morning and evening to check in with yourself—sans phone or other distractions—whether it’s while you’re sitting and drinking a cup of coffee or laying in bed.
Use it as an opportunity to just “see what's going on with you—what you're feeling and what happened,” before you jump into your tasks for the day, Leonardi said, or as a chance to clear your head before you go to sleep. “It's about you being in connection with yourself and setting the foundation for the day in the sense that you are in control of your energy,” she added.
5. Journal
Journaling can be a great way to practice mindfulness or reflection, and allows you to get your thoughts out of your head so you can refer back to them later or better process tough situations.
6. Do affirmations
Setting aside time for positive affirmations—telling yourself, “I am enough” or reading an inspirational quote—is another way to tune inward and set the tone for how you think and feel, Leonardi said.
“You're nourishing yourself before you're giving away your energy to the world,” she said.
7. Engage in and seek out 360 feedback
Fleming and Leonardi agree that the people around you can be useful tools in developing your self-awareness. Seeking out feedback and advice from not just people more experienced than you, such as a parent or boss, but those around you, such as a coworker, direct report, or friend, can give you a well-balanced perspective.
“That kind of feedback affects not only how we perform or how we approach a task or how we plan our careers and so on—it affects how we think about ourselves,” Fleming said. “It recalibrates our confidence.”
8. Monitor what you’re taking in
It’s easy to let outside influences like social media get in the way of what we think of ourselves and what we believe to be true, Leonardi said. While avoiding them entirely is likely impossible, she advised becoming more aware of what and how much you’re taking in and how it impacts you. Ask yourself, “Is this helping or hurting me?”
The most important tool for becoming more self-aware is an innate desire to get better at it, Leonardi emphasized. So be ready to commit to getting to know your inner thoughts and feelings, being wrong about certain aspects of yourself, and taking in and applying feedback.