self-awareness theory

Welcome to The Introverted Path!

Happy Thursday! I am back home in Kansas City this week after a full week of work travel — it definitely feels great to be home. But I’m not here for long. Saturday I am off to Portugal 🇵🇹. Super excited for some time off and to explore a new country. If anyone has been and has recommendations, let me know! We will be visiting Porto, Lisbon, and Madeira.

This week I wanted to write a bit more about self-awareness. As I researched it for last week’s newsletter I found way more interesting things than anticipated, so this week is Round 2️⃣.

In today’s email:

• Self-awareness theory

• Links to other content I enjoyed this week

Let’s dive in 🤙 

What is self-awareness theory?

Pretty trippy…go ahead and take a moment to digest that.

Alright — let’s unpack that a bit.

As people go through their day we essentially do one of two things:

1. Not give any extra thought to our inner selves, but just feel and act as we go

2. Give some thought to how we are feeling and acting, and whether or not that is how we should be feeling or acting

Basically, are our feelings and actions in line with our standards?

Last week I wrote about how self-awareness involves evaluating yourself and whether you are acting in line with your standards. And the important first step of understanding what your standards are.

This is important when understanding whether our actions are in line with our goals; or if we need to make adjustments.

So when we compare ourselves with our standards there are only two possible outcomes:

1. We pass — meaning we are acting in line with our standards

2. We fail — meaning we are not acting in line with our standards

And then from there we make the decision whether or not we are going to make changes. This decision largely depends on how difficult we expect those changes to be and how much value we would see from the change.

For example: Let’s say you do some reflecting and decide you aren’t as healthy as you want to be.

You start thinking through what would be required to make that change: buying healthier groceries, cooking meals at home, joining a gym, researching workout plans, drinking more water, etc.

That’s a lot of effort. Potentially huge upside, but the changes needed to get there are extensive. And that is why most people struggle to make a big lifestyle change such as wanting to be healthier.

We go through this exercise all the time, you just may not realize it. Many times we make decisions on super small changes.

And the final thing we can also do is adjust our standards. This may sound like a negative thing, basically changing the rules for ourselves to fit how we act.

But there are a lot of people who are overly critical on themselves. Changing their standards can be a positive thing.

My thoughts 💭 

I really love that definition of self-awareness theory. Really got the wheels turnin’.

It’s interesting to think through all the micro-decisions we make on a daily basis that is part of self-awareness.

We assess the value we would get, how much effort it would take, and then make a decision.

Low effort, high value = we will probably do it.

High effort, low value = we probably won’t do it

Self-awareness is one of the five components of emotional intelligence, which is a good candidate for a newsletter in the future.

Links that I enjoyed this week 💥 

• Twitter thread that got me motivated (link)

• Why worrying is a complete waste of your time (link)

• Procrastination is an emotional problem (link)

That’s it for today - hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter!

Best,

BG