Welcome, Living Money members. Its Jeremy here to introduce this month’s topic which is about self-awareness, self-reflection and the power of insight.

So, here’s a question? How well do you know yourself? For that matter, how well do I know myself. And does it matter?

The last question is easies to answer. Yes, it does matter. The actions we take, the decisions we make on a daily basis are substantially influenced by where we hang out on the spectrum between being totally self-deluded and totally self-aware.

To be totally self-aware means there is congruency between how we see ourselves and who we really are. And that means we will probably be more successful in our day to day living, loving, work and play.

And because it means we know about ourselves we can play to our values, our strengths and our weaknesses. In turn, this means we are more likely to live lives of integrity, to maximise our potential, to do no harm and actually be a force for good in the world. It means we know when to say ’No’ because its beyond our capabilities. We know when to say ‘Yes’ and make a positive difference in the world. And we know when we need to seek advice or participate in further personal development to achieve a goal we consider ourselves unable to reach.

That’s quite a tough call if you think about it. The self-examination (or self-reflection) needed to gain insights about ourselves can be pretty tough, especially if we are in a state of shame about something.

Self-delusion is a bit easier – until it all goes wrong, that is. And self-delusion is made easier by the self-focus of our western societies. Its easy to see why the perfect beings pictured in our glossies and on our screens can lead us to think we are all similarly perfect.

And here self-delusion can work in the opposite way. The gods and goddesses of the media and entertainments worlds are often an airbrushed caricature that we see as real people who we cannot live up to, so we delude ourselves into thinking we are not up to scratch, unable to achieve. If we were self-aware, however, we would see ourselves as more than able to step up to the plate, albeit in a different way.

So how do we achieve greater self-awareness? Dan Gallagher in his TED talk states that ‘life is full of teachable moments’ and to learn about ourselves we ask ourselves or ask others to tell us about ourselves, particularly in those ‘teachable moments’.

Or, as Tasha Eurich describes in her book Insight, we cultivate internal self-awareness in which we gain an understanding of our values, habits, aspirations and impact on others; and we cultivate external self-awareness or knowing how others see us. Both are important and interestingly, as Eurich’s research has shown, there is no pattern of correlation between the two.

Asking ourselves is commonly called self-reflection. Its a technique commonly used by coaches as a tool for their clients and for their own development. However, self-reflection often centres around ‘Why’ or ‘How’ and this can be destructive and self-serving.

You will begin to realise as you become more involved in the community that I advocate self-reflection much of the time. You will begin to notice that I don’t use ‘Why’ or ‘How’. Instead I ask ‘What?’questions. Specifically I ask ‘What?’ – lets find out what actually happened, ’So what?’ – what were the consequences for myself and for others and what have I learned, and ‘What next?’ – what can I do to rectify a situation or do it better next time.

Asking others is possibly more insightful. We are not good at self-assessment and others may be able to tell us honestly more about ourselves than we can. Later on this page I’ve included a small exercise, simply called ‘Five Questions’ to help you start on this route.

Lets go back to Gallagher’s teachable moments for a moment because the concept gives us another path to self-awareness. Take a teachable moment and turn it into a story. Describe the situation, then describe what you did. Finally, describe the impact on you and others. Now, you are the link between what you did, and what the outcome was, so follow up by asking yourself what it was about you that resulted in this particular cause and effect. Our ‘What’, ’So what’, ‘What next’ self reflection will also help here.

Its worth recording these vignettes in some form or other for two reasons. First, they are stories, and stories are powerful tools for change. In the words of Brené Brown, ‘Owning our stories and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do’ (and, by the way, we’ll come on to stories and their power in much more detail later on). Second, vignettes are very useful ways of memorising and describing your skills, especially those transferable skills that might be called upon in work or personal situations. Just remember only to share your stories with those who have earned the right to here them.

Here are a couple of example from my own experience: in the mid ‘70s I was a serving officer in the British Army stationed in Germany and commanding a mechanised platoon. Our training had been somewhat perfunctory and I didn’t really know what I was doing when, shortly after my arrival, we were involved in a the major autumn exercise.

At one point I am ordered to attack a hill. Orders come over the radio of our armoured personal carrier in a prescribed format and in code. My personal organisation is not at its best, I have no structured means of taking down and de-coding the orders. I led my platoon to attack the wrong place and then got hopelessly lost. The result is major disruption of the company and battle group, delays until we rejoined the company and a major dressing down heard by all over the battle group radio net. Embarrassing!

The ’So What?’ (in self-awareness terms) was that my cavalier attitude and poor personal organisation were big weaknesses. The ‘What next?’ was to talk to other more experienced officers about how they managed and to get myself some decent note-taking kit.

Many years later (in 2016 to be exact) I find myself organising a complex trip to South Africa in which Nina, a friend from the US was to join us and we were to visit family in two separate parts of South Africa, Grahamstown and Knysna and have a short break somewhere in between to recharge our batteries.

I do my research. I build spreadsheets and itineraries. I liaise with Nina in the US. I test and book 14 separate journeys by air. I hire cars. I arrange car parking in Manchester. I book the pets into kennels. I make sure I have maps. I research our mid journey respite stop and book a wonderful Airbnb in St Francis Bay. And the entire trip goes without a single hitch, including meeting Nina in Johannesburg Airport exactly as planned. Brilliant!

Apart from the minutae of the two stories, they tell something else as well: through self-awareness it is possible to grow and develop, to become a different and hopefully better person than we were. Life is smoother, more fun, less stressful than it was because my own self-awareness has led to changes in me.

I would encourage you to read Tasha Eurich’s Insight book. It both adds to and reinforces everything I now believe about leading a fulfilled life.

There is more material below, including a selection of videos on the subject and the ‘Five Question’s exercise I mentioned.

Finally, as an exercise in building self-awareness, take a story in your own life, big or small and write it or tell it in the what happened, what you did and the outcome format.

Then use the ‘Why?’ questions to help you reflect on your story to improve your own self-awareness.

That’s it for this month. Please don’t forget to add your comments and thoughts in the comments section below.

Take care and go well.