Self-Awareness: What It Is And How To Cultivate It

Better self-awareness can lead to stronger relationships, creativity, and professional advancement. Learn more about self-awareness and how to cultivate it!

You snap at someone before you even hear yourself doing it.

Then, five minutes later, the quiet question lands: wait, why did I just do that?

That little pause, that flicker of who was that?, is self-awareness tapping you on the shoulder.

And it touches almost every corner of your life. Your relationships. Your work. The way you talk to yourself at 2 a.m. Here’s the part most people miss, though: even if some folks seem born with more of it, you can build it. Anyone can.

Before we get into how, let’s get clear on what self-awareness actually is, and what the research says about it.

What is Self-Awareness?

What is self-awareness, really? It’s your ability to look at your own words, actions, and thoughts and ask whether they actually match the person you want to be. You can think. Self-awareness is the step on top of that: thinking about your thinking.

When you’re highly self-aware, you can name your own strengths and weaknesses honestly. And that’s what lets you check yourself against the ideals you hold for who you want to be.

Picture the opposite for a second.

Someone with low self-awareness has a sudden angry outburst and has no idea where it came from. Or feels weirdly emotional around a certain person. Or gets triggered by something small and can’t say why.

Self-awareness is the ability to stop and notice your feelings, and notice how those feelings are steering your actions. Sometimes it’s catching the gap, the moment your behavior drifts away from your ideals. It’s what the scientists¹ call “self-evaluation,” or “comparing against our standards of correctness.”

So what happens when you self-evaluate? According to the research², it lands in one of two places:

1. You succeed and line up with your ideals
2. You fall short of them

And if you fall short, the ball’s in your court. You can change the behavior, the thought, or the word to close the gap, or you can make peace with not quite being who you hoped to be.

Here’s what usually decides it: how hard you think the change will be. If it feels easy, you do it. If it feels like a mountain, you tend to quietly avoid thinking about that part of your life at all.

Sound familiar?

And there’s a sneaky pattern underneath that. The easier you believe change will be, the more you’ll credit (or blame) yourself for how it turns out. The harder it feels, the more you’ll pin the result on outside forces, bad timing, other people, circumstances.

The truth sits in the middle. Whether you can actually close the distance between an ideal and your real behavior comes down to both what’s inside you and what’s happening around you.

Types of Self-Awareness

Self-awareness actually comes in two flavors: private and public.

Private self-awareness is noticing what’s going on inside your own head. Say you get social anxiety. You walk into a networking event and feel that wave of overwhelm rise up. Nobody around you can see it.

But you can. That’s the private kind at work, the part of you that goes, “yep, there’s that overwhelmed feeling again, the one I always get in a crowded room.” Naming it is half the battle.

Public self-awareness is understanding how other people see you. It starts showing up around age five, the moment a kid figures out that everyone else has their own thoughts and feelings, separate from theirs.

When you’ve got strong public self-awareness, people tend to find you likable. There’s a catch, though. Lean too hard on it and you start bending to everyone else’s expectations instead of just being yourself.

And you do this more than you think. Every single day.

Walk into almost any school classroom: students know to raise a hand and wait to be called on before they blurt out an answer. That’s public self-awareness in miniature. The whole room shares the same unspoken rule, the teacher decides whose turn it is to talk, and everyone reads the room and plays along.

The Benefits of Self-Awareness

So why bother building this skill at all? Because it pays off twice over, in how you feel about yourself and in how you connect with everyone else.

Here’s a taste of what greater self-awareness can do for you:

• More self-awareness links³ to more confidence and more creativity.
• The research shows⁴ that highly self-aware people tend to perform better at work.
• Better self-awareness tends⁵ to lift your confidence on the job and smooth out how you communicate with colleagues.
• And it sharpens⁶ the way you make decisions.

Confidence, creativity, better work, better relationships, smarter calls.

Pretty good list, right? If you’re already wondering how to actually get more of this stuff, you’re asking the right question. Let’s get into it.

3 Ways to Improve Self-Awareness

Here’s a number that should stop you in your tracks. Emerging research⁷ suggests only 10-15% of people are genuinely self-aware, even though most of us are pretty sure we’re in that group.

Wild, right? Almost everyone thinks they see themselves clearly. Almost nobody does.

But here’s the good news. Like most things in life, self-awareness grows when you give it time and a little intention. Here are three tools to start building yours.

#1 Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is just being here, in this moment, instead of drifting off into daydreams or that swirl of wandering thoughts. Think of it as checking in with yourself. And it works: one study showed that practicing mindfulness boosted the self-awareness of a group of students in as little as eight weeks.

The reason it helps? You’re literally training yourself to watch your own feelings and reactions as they happen.

One ground rule while you do it: don’t judge what you find. Notice the things tugging at you and ask, “Do I actually have control over this?” If the answer’s no, try to set it down. Easier said than done, I know, but that’s exactly why it’s worth practicing.

Action Step: Carve out 5-10 minutes today. If you can, pick the same window every day, your mind and body build the habit faster when it’s predictable.

Right when you wake up, on your lunch break, or in the evening as you wind down before bed all tend to work well.

Here are a few ways to spend those few minutes:

• Deep breathing: Sit somewhere comfy, close your eyes, and breathe deep. Once you settle into the rhythm, let your mind go quiet. Then, with that calm, walk through different parts of your day. What’s worrying you? What do you want from today? How can you nudge it in that direction? Set your intentions, then head into your day.
• Mindful stretching: This one’s close to yoga. As you stretch, stay with your breath and how your body actually feels. The second you catch your thoughts wandering off, gently walk them back to right now.
• Try this video (or find another you like) to walk you through a mindful stretch: Mindful Movement 10 Minute Seated Yoga Stretch
• Body scan: Sit down and just pay attention to how your body feels, head to toe. Observe, don’t judge. That’s the whole skill, really, observing without judgment. Practice it on your own body now and you’ll find it easier to observe your feelings and your tough moments later, without piling on the criticism.

Try a few until one clicks, until you find the one that quiets your mind and helps you really look at what you’re thinking and how you’re moving through life.

#2 Deep Journaling

Journaling slows you down and pulls what’s swirling around in your head out where you can actually look at it. There’s something about seeing your own words on paper that makes it easier to weigh your thoughts honestly, like you’re reading someone else’s life for a second.

It also surfaces the stuff you might want to work on. Watch for the patterns that emerge: what lights you up, what really matters to you, who you’re trying to become.

And once you’ve written your dreams and goals down, you can chop them into doable steps. When you know what you actually care about, you can start rearranging your days to point toward it.

There’s a deeper level, though. Most people use a journal to log the day, what happened, who they saw, what they ate. That’s a fine start. But real self-awareness comes from deep journaling: not just the what of your day, but the why behind it.

Let me show you the difference.

Regular journal entry: “Today, I delivered my presentation to the team. Went ok. Got some good feedback. Need to spend more time on it for next time. Went to lunch with Gary to discuss.”

Deep journal entry: “Today, I delivered my presentation to the team. I was excited about this for weeks but was nervous right before I started. I worried that people would not like my ideas, which made me doubt myself! It went ok. I wish I had been looser–I felt very stiff and rigid. I wish I had practiced the delivery, not just the slides. But I got some good feedback. I think I get too much in my head and need to trust my ideas. Went to lunch with Gary to discuss. I wanted to know if he agreed with me – he did. Next time: Trust myself!”

See the gap? Same day, same lunch with Gary. One entry logs it. The other actually learns from it.

Action Step: Grab a notebook and a pen, and find a calm spot to write. A nook in your house, your favorite coffee shop, your bed right before sleep, wherever you can breathe.

Just start writing and see what spills out, or borrow one of these prompts to get the pen moving:

• What is something I love about my life right now?
• How can I do more of what I enjoy in my day-to-day life?
• Who do I feel most like myself when I’m around them?
• What are ten sentences to describe what my dream future would look like?
• When do I notice myself being the happiest?
• What aspect of myself do I feel the proudest of?
• What are three things I’d like to see myself get better at in the next three months?
• Who do I wish I spent more time with?
• What advice would you give yourself a year ago, and what advice do you think your future self would provide you?

Play with the style, too. Poetry one day, bullet points the next, pure stream-of-consciousness when you can’t tell what you feel. Find what helps you slow down and actually catch your own thoughts. Then hold those thoughts up against how you’re living and ask: do these line up?

Want more prompts to keep you going? Check out our guide to starting a gratitude journal.

#3 Talk to trusted individuals

Not a journal person? No problem. Try talking it out instead, with a mentor, a close friend, or your partner.

The people who know you well can spot the gaps you can’t, the space between who you say you want to be and how you actually show up. And in a good conversation with someone who’s in your corner, you’ll often surprise yourself with what you really want your life to look like.

Action Step: Ask someone you trust how they’d describe you. Then ask if there’s anything they think you could work on.

They’ll hold up a mirror, reflecting back the version of you they see. Sometimes it’ll match who you want to be. Sometimes it won’t, and yeah, that part can sting. But that sting is the whole point: it’s the very thing that lets you grow into the person you’re aiming for.

Bonus Action Step: Ask a close friend, family member, or partner to be your “accountability partner.”

What’s an accountability partner? Someone you promise to be honest with about how you’re really doing in one specific area of life.

Say you want healthy social media boundaries. You might ask a friend to hold you to no more than 15 minutes a day on Instagram or Facebook, and to check in with you now and then to make sure you’re sticking to it.

So the next time you’re bored and reaching for your phone, already past your 15 minutes, you know you’ll have to fess up to your friend. Funny how that changes things.

That little bit of accountability, all on its own, can rein in your scroll time.

And it works for anything you’re trying to improve. Hit the gym three times a week. Eat more vegetables. Be more patient with your colleagues. Same trick, any goal.

Self-Awareness Standards: Holding Yourself to Healthy Expectations

Here’s a curveball most people don’t expect: self-awareness can actually backfire.

Every so often, it’s worth checking whether the standards you hold yourself to are even healthy. Research indicates that the darker side of looking inward, the depression or anxiety it can stir up, eases off when people set realistic standards they genuinely believe they can hit.

Most of us land in one of two camps when it comes to the bar we set for ourselves:

1. The ones who expect way too much
2. The ones who expect too little

And which camp you’re in can flip depending on the slice of life. You might demand near-perfection at work while letting your own self-care slide to the bottom of the list.

Recognize yourself in either?

If you live in the high-expectations camp, this story might hit close to home.

Marissa hits “send” on an email to her boss, and a half-second later her stomach drops. She’d done something horrible. She’d fired it off to the entire company instead of just her boss.

“How embarrassing!” she thinks. “That email contains project details that aren’t yet at a stage for everyone to know, and now others will read that email. I’m so embarrassed… How do I fix this?”

She loses the whole day to it. Can barely touch her other work. When her boss finally swings by her desk, she gets her chance to apologize in person.

He’s honest, says no, it wasn’t ideal that everyone got it, but these things happen. Then he tells her about the time he fired off an email to the wrong person, and reassures her it’s not the end of the world.

She exhales. Everything’s fine. Her boss gets it, and she can finally get back to her day.

So what’s the problem here? Marissa’s standard is WAY too high. Nobody sails through an entire career without a single misstep.

For her, the healthy move is to look hard at that standard and dial it down to something realistic and sustainable. Aiming for excellence is great. Demanding flawlessness is just quietly wrecking her well-being.

Here’s the tricky part about sky-high expectations: you often don’t even know you’re holding them until something trips the wire. That’s your cue to slow down and use self-evaluation to ask why you reacted the way you did.

Now flip it. Some of us have the opposite problem, and need to raise the bar instead.

Meet Janette.

Janette and her partner, Paul, got into it the other day. It started over something tiny, what to make for dinner, and somehow, minutes later, they were fighting about Paul’s career.

Things got heated fast. Before she knew it, Janette was yelling profanities at him.

As Janette later reflected on what happened, she thought, “It doesn’t matter—at least I didn’t say anything worse. If he’s hurt by what I said, maybe that’s his fault. He shouldn’t get offended so easily.”

Here, Janette and Paul’s relationship would probably benefit from her raising the bar rather than lowering it.

So she might set a higher expectation for herself: “It is my goal not to yell at Paul when I get frustrated. Rather, I want to honestly express how I’m feeling while still respecting him as a person.”

Does that mean Janette never yells at Paul again? Probably not.

But the next time the heat rises and she catches her own voice climbing, she might remember that goal, take a breath, and answer instead of erupt.

Action Step: Ask yourself, “What do I expect of myself [professionally, personally, athletically…]?”

What was the first thing that came to mind?

Now consider how you would respond to a friend who told you they had that expectation of themselves.

For example, you may have said, “I expect myself to get an A on every assignment I hand in.”

Ask yourself, “If my friend told me that was their standard, would I be supportive of it?”

Probably not.

You would probably encourage them by saying, “I think it’s great you want to do well academically, but sometimes life happens, and your mental and emotional well-being is more important than your grades. Besides, you can get some B’s or even C’s on assignments and still get an A in the course.”

Once you’ve adjusted your standard, look back over the last three to five days at your actions and words in that area of life. Do they line up with the standard you just named?

What’s the verdict? Are you being unreasonably hard on yourself? Or are you quietly slipping below the bar you say you hold?

Signs Someone is Self-Aware

So how do you spot a self-aware person in the wild?

Usually, they’ve got stronger emotional intelligence. In psychologist Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ, emotional intelligence breaks down into five pieces.

The very first piece? Self-awareness, knowing your own strengths and weaknesses. The other four, per Goleman, are self-regulation, social skills, empathy, and motivation.

Want to go deeper on this? Read 10 Emotional Intelligence Traits to Master for Self-Growth.

When you’ve built strong self-awareness, you can say what you feel, why you feel it, and how you want to handle things differently next time. That’s not easy. But it’s the kind of thing that real introspection and honest effort can earn you.

Examples of Self-Awareness in Real-Life Situations

A self-aware person can step back, look at what they’re doing, and ask whether it’s getting them closer to their goals and ideals. Which means this skill shows up everywhere, in your job, your home, your marriage, your friendships.

But “everywhere” can feel abstract. So let’s make it concrete. Here are three people in three very different corners of life, each catching themselves and growing because of it.

Louis, the project manager

Louis has run his team for about 5 years now. He likes the work and genuinely wants to help his people grow.

But the numbers tell an ugly story. His team is one of the least innovative in the whole department, and lately he’s been bleeding star players to competitors.

He’s discouraged. Frustrated, honestly. He can’t figure out why everyone seems tense around him, why they clam up instead of pitching bold ideas.

So he tries something a little unusual. He asks another project manager if he can sit in and just watch one of their team meetings. Unconventional, he admits, but he wants to see what they’re doing differently.

And there in that meeting, he watches his colleague handle what Louis would absolutely have called a failure.

In the same spot, Louis knows he’d have let his frustration show. His colleague? Stays calm and starts pulling the situation apart, piece by piece.

The colleague asks the team to figure out what actually went wrong. Was it the idea, or the execution? They spend a few minutes on it together and map out a path forward.

Louis notices how engaged this team is. They own the process. They’re not afraid to throw out a wild idea.

And slowly, it lands on him: the difference might be him. He jumps to frustration the second things wobble, instead of treating it as a chance to learn together.

Ouch.

So at the start of his next team meeting, he tells them he wants to change the culture. He knows it starts with him, but he’ll need their help. He tells them how much their contributions mean, and he apologizes for not building a space where creativity could breathe.

Alicia, the marketing intern

Alicia is thrilled about her new marketing internship. She’s also wound tight as a spring. What if she doesn’t make a good impression? What if they hate her work? What if everyone just plain hates her? (Yep, she’s spiraling.)

She’s quietly hoping this turns into a full-time offer. It’s the dream job, which only cranks the nerves up higher.

So on her lunch break, she heads out to her car, sits, and works on settling her mind. Five minutes of deep breathing. Then she pulls out her journal and writes out exactly how she’s feeling.

Once it’s all on paper, she can finally see it: she’s been holding herself to impossible standards. So she rewrites them into something she can actually live up to.

• Show up and do the best job she can that day
• Learn something new every week
• Build genuine, meaningful relationships with her teammates

Looking at that list, she breathes easier. These are real, reachable goals, and they’ll help her figure out whether she even wants to stay past the internship.

Lunch ends, and she walks back to her desk calmer, and honestly a little excited again.

That clear head pays off, too. She does sharper work and gets more creative tackling the roadblocks her team’s been stuck on.

Theo, the father, and husband

Theo and his wife, Mandy, have two active young boys. When Theo’s got the energy for them, they’re a blast. He lights up over the family camping trips and the look on their faces unwrapping birthday gifts.

When they first found out they were pregnant, the two of them reshaped their whole lifestyle so Mandy could leave her job and stay home with the boys.

These days, Theo heads to work every morning and drags home each evening tired, and on a rough day, a little grumpy. Too often he snaps at his sons and forgets to even ask Mandy how she’s doing.

He hates that he’s like this. So instead of hiding behind the usual lines, “I’m tired,” “it’s been a rough week,” he decides to actually look underneath.

And when he does, the truth surprises him. He’s jealous. The boys are growing up so fast, and he’s terrified he’s missing it while he’s stuck at the office.

After sitting with that for a while, he works up the nerve to ask his boss about working remotely. He explains it plainly: he’s got young kids, and he wants to be in their lives as much as he can.

His boss gets it, and they land on a compromise. Theo works from home three days a week, and if those days stay as productive as his in-office ones over the next couple of months, they’ll talk about adding more.

Theo’s overjoyed. He eats lunch with his family on work-from-home days, his kids pop into his office to see what he’s up to, and for the first time he sees up close just how much Mandy pours into keeping this family running. He grows more thoughtful toward her because of it.

Final Thoughts: Becoming More Self-Aware

In a podcast interview, best-selling author Brené Brown said something that stops you cold: a lack of self-awareness is one of the root causes of hate and unhappiness in the world.

Big claim, right? Here’s how she gets there. As kids, every one of us hits pain that leaves us feeling vulnerable and helpless. And the natural way we dodge those awful feelings is by leaning on coping mechanisms.

Leave those defense mechanisms unchecked, and they harden into behaviors that wind up hurting other people and ourselves: broken relationships, self-centeredness, narcissism, sometimes even violence.

Those coping mechanisms may have been survival tools when you were small. They just don’t serve you anymore as an adult. Self-awareness is the work of looking inward, seeing all of that clearly, and starting to heal and break the old patterns.

You can hear their whole conversation here:

Brené Brown — Striving versus Self-Acceptance, Saving Marriages, and More | The Tim Ferriss Show

Most people are short on self-awareness. But the payoff is so big that doing the work is more than worth it, and you absolutely can do it.

Here’s where to start:

• Practice Mindfulness: Noticing how your thoughts, actions, and words measure up against who you want to be is step one. At the start, just observe yourself, no judgment. It’s hard, but seeing yourself honestly now is what makes the growth possible later.
• Journal: Use a prompt, or write out the traits you want to grow into. Be honest about where you actually are right now. It might sting in the moment, but a few months down the road, looking back and seeing how far you’ve come? Pure gold.
• Talk to Trusted Individuals: Friends, partners, family, the people who know you are some of your best mirrors while you’re growing. They’ll help you spot your blind spots and keep you honest about the changes you’ve committed to.

And remember: progress isn’t a straight line. New habits take time. As Brené Brown points out, a lot of the gaps between how you act and how you want to act trace all the way back to childhood, so don’t expect to flip a switch overnight.

For more on making the changes you’re after, read our article 7 Tips to Develop Rock-Solid Discipline.