159: Increasing Confidence by Increasing Self-Awareness with Dr. Tasha Eurich

Pete Mockaitis
Tasha, thanks so much for joining us here on the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast.

Tasha Eurich
Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I got a real kick out of your TEDx Talk “Learning to be Awesome at Anything You Do.” I think that you have excellent taste in titling things.

Tasha Eurich
As do you. I’m happy to be here with a like-minded individual.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, certainly. And so I understand you have a background in theater. Can you tell us what’s the story there and if there’s any sort of interesting intersections between that and what you’re up to now?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, much to my parents’ chagrin, I was a theater major in college and really just loved acting. I did it pretty much my whole life. I did some little bit of professional work in Denver but realized that I wanted to have health insurance and a steady job and maybe own a house so I ended up not going into theater but going into psychology. And I never imagined that my path would take me back to sort of the theater-related world. But as a keynote speaker I use so many of the techniques and the tips that I learned from that world. So things kind of just come together sometimes in really interesting ways.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s excellent. Well, I must ask, is there something in particular from theater that you go back to again and again in your speaking experiences?

Tasha Eurich
I think the biggest thing is the use of voice. There was this very intensive acting class that I had to take and I was at Middlebury College is where I studied theater, and it just taught us how to use our voice and project and use light and shade. I find myself constantly going back to that so I’m appreciative of all that really technical guidance to, hopefully, be awesome as a speaker and to continue trying to be better.

Pete Mockaitis
Excellent. Well, so now, could you tell us, what’s the big idea in your book Insight?

Tasha Eurich
The big idea is self-awareness is one of the most important and one of the most misunderstood critical skills of success both in the workplace and in life in general. And the reason I wanted to write this book was, first of all, there are so many myths around what it takes to become more self-aware and then, even more importantly, I think, most people are not as self-aware as they think they are.

So my mission in life right now is to help bring these concepts and tools to people so they can really take charge of their lives and have a clear appreciation of sort of who they see when they look in the mirror and reach the success that they want to achieve at work and in life.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. Well, I’m so intrigued then. Let’s talk a little bit about some of the data here. You say that just about everybody thinks that they are self-aware but, in fact, only perhaps a 10% or 15% of folks really are. How are we measuring these things in the first place in terms of the perception and the reality?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah. Well, that’s exactly right. So the perception is just asking people. In psychology we call it self-report. So, I say, “On a scale of one to ten how self-aware are you?” Or I would say, “Do you think you’re self-aware? Strongly agree? Strongly disagree?” You know, all that sort of normal testing and measurement stuff.

But measuring self-awareness in actuality ended up being a lot harder than we thought. And the premise to this is I’ve been an organizational psychologist for about 15 years but I’ve spent the last three years of my career deeply diving into this topic. And so it actually took us more than a year to come up with an assessment to measure self-awareness.

And you go back to that statistic that you gave, I found that 95% of people think they’re self-aware, and so what we couldn’t do was send out a call and say, “Hey, are you self-aware? Why don’t you participate in our study?” because obviously we are not always the best judges of that. So the assessment is you contribute your thoughts and then someone else who knows you well contributes their thoughts.

And actually a version of that is, if your listeners are intrigued to know their level of self-awareness, I can tell you at the end about a place where they can find a shorter version of that assessment to take themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, certainly. And so then I guess how does it work? Like, one gets this stamp of actually really self-aware based upon third-parties?

Tasha Eurich
Right. That’s the tricky part. One of the things I want to make sure I don’t imply and that almost sort of suggest is that we either are self-aware or we aren’t. And we have to pick cutoff scores as researchers and that’s how we came up with those statistics but the most important thing for anybody who might feel stuck in their career or stuck in a relationship or just feeling like they’re not really achieving what they want to, it’s a matter of daily incremental improvements in seeing ourselves clearly. And so I think as soon as we start to put ourselves in boxes, “I’m either self-aware or I’m not self-aware,” I think we start to miss the bigger picture.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. And so then could you give us just a quick kind of gauge or acid test for, “This is what we saw or how we know that someone is on the higher end of the continuum or spectrum for self-awareness versus the lower end”?

Tasha Eurich
So in our research we found in studying highly self-aware people that they had seven types of insight about themselves. I’ll just sort of name them briefly. One is they knew what they valued, what was important to them. Two was they understood what they were passionate about, what they love to do and what really got them out of bed in the morning. Three was their aspirations, so that was what do they want to not just achieve in their life but experience, why were they kind of there on the planet.

The fourth was they understood something called fit which is knowing the environment that’s going to help you be happy and engaged and thrive. The next was something called patterns which is basically your personality. Are you introverted or are you extroverted? Do you tend to be very organized? Very disorganized?

Then was what we call reactions which is essentially your strengths and weaknesses, which is a big one, I think we can all agree. And then the last insight was the impact we have on other people. And so the way we measured self-awareness once we have those seven, I call them the pillars of insight, was we ask people, “How clear are you on these things?” And then we ask someone who knew them well, “How clear do you think they are?”

And if they sort of pass both tests – and there were a couple of other things – but in general that was how we deem someone, “Yes, you’re on the higher end of the spectrum if you had that type of clarity about those things and if someone who knew you well, tended to agree.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, I’m intrigued. I’m thinking about a friend of mine who once told me that he was jealous of me because I seem so passionate about some areas of work and career and what I’m trying to do, and that he didn’t know if he would ever find something that he would feel as passionate about. And so the way that sounded sad to me at the time. But I’m kind of wondering, on that particular dimension, do some people just sort of have less total passion? Or is it they’re just not yet aware of it?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, I think probably for most people who are maybe not satisfied with what they’re doing. I choose to believe that it’s because they haven’t found what really gets them going. I do think there might be people who just don’t sort of have that same level of excitement about everything. I tend to consider myself on the high end of I just get so excited sometimes it’s alarming to people. And not everybody has to have that level of excitement, although it’s great if you do.

But I think for most people it’s a process of exploring. Again, those sort of daily insights, “Hmm, today I spent time doing a client presentation and I found that that really jazzed me and it gave me more energy than I had before I started.” So that might be a clue, “Maybe there’s a clue that I like to be in front of clients and building those relationships.” That’s the kind of insight that, in sum total, if you’re really paying attention, you actually can start to piece together what your passions are.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I imagine your research you discovered some of the tremendous benefits and power associated with having a high level of self-awareness. Can you lay it down on us? And the more data-driven the better.

Tasha Eurich
Oh, gosh. How long do you have? There are so many benefits it’s really remarkable. And I kind of went into this process agnostic. I believed that it was important but I wanted to let the science tell me whether I was right. And, indeed, what I found on this is, my work as well as about 800 or so other clinical studies that my team and I had analyzed over the years, we found that people who know themselves and how other people see them are happier, they’re more confident, they’re better communicators, they have stronger and deeper relationships at work and at home, they tend to be more successful in their careers which might pique some people’s interests, they’re better leaders, they even raise more mature children, for the parents who are listening.

And this is the most interesting one to me, and I think it really proves the point of why it’s so important, companies with high levels, high numbers of percentages of self-aware employees are actually more profitable. So there’s that individual level impact of just a happier, better, more confident life, and there’s the impact of prosperity sort of metaphorically and literally. So it’s one of those things that I think people instinctively know is important but they might not have, as I did, the full appreciation of just how important it really is.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. Okay. So, then, can you lay it out for us, where are folks falling short and what could be done?

Tasha Eurich
Let me just mention two examples of where some people might have room for improvement. So the first is just a lack of a commitment to seek the truth, and the truth is squarely and it’s not simply what other people think of us or simply what we think of us. But it’s the decision, and I call it deciding to be braver but wiser.

So many people live their lives sort of blissfully ignorant. We decide that it’s easier to see ourselves with rose-colored glasses and to assume that if nobody is giving us feedback that we’re just fine. The unfortunate part about that is not only do we not learn the things that might be holding us back, we sometimes don’t learn the gifts that we have. I know a lot of people who, in the process of becoming more self-aware, have learned things that they’re incredibly good at that they never even knew. So that’s the first piece.

I think the second part of what makes it so hard for people is that not only are we scared to seek feedback, which is a really critical and important part of being self-aware, but we also live in a world where people don’t tell us the truth. There are so many studies that are just remarkable at the lengths other people, even the people close to us, are willing to go through to avoid telling us how they see us.

And the interesting thing, I think, is it’s not just the negative stuff. There’s a lot of research that shows that we’re more likely to tell… if I have a friend, Jane, I am more likely to tell other mutual acquaintances of mine and Jane’s what I love about her than I am to tell her directly. And so I think those two things together, this internal struggle between blissful ignorance and the objective truth, as well as this world where if we don’t seek it out, it’s not going to come to us. It’s sort of no wonder that most people have work to do.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly, yes. And so then what is that work look like? So if you make that decision, “All right. I’m going to be… I want to be braver and wiser and I’m going to go forth and I’m going to try to do some reflection and get some feedback,” what are some of the particular practices or pro tips for making it happen?

Tasha Eurich
Sure. And I’ll purpose this by saying this is such a rich topic and I talk about literally dozens and dozens of tools in the book, but I’ll give you one that hopefully is actionable. So even though the way other people see us is not necessarily the be-all end-all truth, it’s really important to get that perception and to check it against theirs. So a tool that I talk about is called the dinner of truth, and it’s sort of intentionally ominous.

Pete Mockaitis
It really does sound.

Tasha Eurich
Essentially intriguing. And what it is it was actually developed by a communications professor named Josh Misner that he uses, he’s used with thousands and thousands of his students. And here’s what it entails: you find someone in your life, either at work or at home, who is important to you, who you want to improve your relationship with, and you invite them to dinner and you get them a heads up that that dinner you want some feedback from them and specifically what you want to know is what is the thing you do that they find the most annoying. And then your job is to inquisitively and curiously try to examine that perception.

I tell people it’s always a safe bet to ask questions in those types of conversations. Let’s say I go out, I mentioned a fake friend Jane. So let’s say Jane and I go out for the dinner of truth, and she tells me that maybe my lack of punctuality is the thing that most annoys her. So instead of defending myself, instead of trying to justify, “Well, I’ve got so much going on,” it’s better if I ask questions. If I say, “Can you give me an example of a time where that’s been an issue?” or, “Have you seen it get worse over time?” or, “Are there certain situations where I’ve been more punctual that we can sort of talk about?”

But the point there is, again, it’s not to make ourselves feel bad, by no means that’s not the case. It’s really to strengthen our relationship with that person and know a little bit more about how we can show up in a more productive way. And I’ll tell you I’ve personally done this exercise three times and it’s never as scary or as negative as I fear it would be.

One time I learned something that kind of rocked my world but it was a positive conversation and I actually felt afterwards a lot more empowered. So it’s sort of it’s very fun to name something the dinner of truth and make it sound scary, but my hope is that it can be a very kind of low-hanging fruit for people if they want to start essentially questioning the assumptions that they have about themselves. It doesn’t mean that they’re right and others are wrong or vice versa, but I think it’s a great place to start.

Pete Mockaitis
And so within that dinner of truth it sounds like this is one-on-one.

Tasha Eurich
Correct. Yeah, definitely.

Pete Mockaitis
Not a roast of truth.

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, not tag your closest friends all together with alcohol.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so that prompt, I’d imagine it’s pretty flexible. I can use any number of prompts. The superlative is cool, the most. There you use most annoying. Is that what you’d recommend starting with or are there a number of prompts to work with?

Tasha Eurich
Yeah, that’s a great question. I recently had a friend ask me, “Why are you friends with me?” which is another dimension of it. And, again, we had this conversation that I have never shared those things with her. You think that if you love someone and you appreciate them and you value them that you would take the time to share that but sometimes it just doesn’t come up.

So I think there are a lot of questions you can ask. The other thing I’ll say is it’s very common if your friend or your family member really cares about you for them to ask you the same question. So I always recommend that people be prepared to answer that if they’re going to ask it.

Pete Mockaitis
I suppose it’s like, “Oh, geez, I have no idea.”

Tasha Eurich
“Let me think about that. I’m just thinking about me.” Yeah, you’re right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s interesting because I think it does sound like fun because, well, I’m thinking, you mentioned personality. I do do Myers-Briggs workshops and coaching, and so people are indeed fascinated with themselves and so I just think this sounds like fun, and as I imagine most people do if they’re not too terrified. So in your experience what’s the range of reactions in terms of folks loving this idea versus saying, “No way, I’m out of here”?

Tasha Eurich
I’ll give you Professor Misner’s data because he’s literally done this with thousands and thousands of students. He says the reaction is always the same. He gives them the assignment and their eyes grow wide and they sort of start looking around in quiet desperation, and then he gives them some of the tools that I just shared about, “Here’s how to have a good conversation that will be as un-scary as possible.”

And, inevitably, they remain kind of scared but because it’s a required assignment they go do it and they come back. And to a person, I think he said, he’s never heard someone say that it wasn’t a positive valuable experience. So, in a lot of ways, it’s like a lot of scary things that we do that are good for us. Anytime we take a risk at work or we get a promotion that we don’t feel totally ready for we have the choice to make, “Do I want to jump in or do I want to let fear hold me back?”

And I think the truly courageous people appreciate their fear. There’s an FDR quote about this, it’s, “Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the feeling that something is more important than the fear.” And I think in that case this is that insight and that self-awareness.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you. And so, now, can you share a little bit, are there some additional tools that can make a world of impact here?

Tasha Eurich
Sure. So we talked about the external self-awareness which is understanding how other people see us. Let’s look at a tool for internal self-awareness which is that inward understanding of who we are and what we value and all of that good stuff.

So people incline towards self-improvement often spend a lot of time introspecting. And a really common way that people do that is they might go to therapy, they might journal, they might even just ask themselves questions like, “Why am I like this?” or, “Why did I do that?” And something that I was shocked to learn that was very well established in research is that a lot of times that type of thinking where we try to dig deeply into our inner subconscious and find these essential principles or truths about ourselves, a lot of that work not only are we usually wrong about the answers we think we discover but the process itself can do more harm than good.

So, for example, when we do that, when we ask ourselves, say I have a fight with my husband, and I say, “Gosh, why is this happening? Why can’t we have a better relationship? Why have I gone so wrong?” That gets me in an unproductive spiral where – and this has been shown – you feel depression, you feel anxiety, you feel hopelessness.

And so one really easy way to change that conversation is to go from why questions to what questions. So in that same example, instead of all those why downward spiral kind of directions I might take, what I might say instead is, “What do I want out of this relationship?” or, “What do I need to do in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen?” or, “What am I going to do the next time the same issue presents itself?”

And the essential difference there is looking backward versus looking forward. And, as counterintuitive as it sounds, the more we look forward and look at goals and actions and sort of don’t worry about finding those essential inner truths, the better we understand ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, if we are looking for some answers associated with those seven areas you laid out there in terms of aspirations and fit and reactions, you’re saying the why questions may not do it so much as the what questions. And so, I guess, if we were kind of trying to dig into a little bit in terms of the areas of passion, for instance, you wouldn’t say, “Why do I love this?” or, “Why do I hate this?” But what will be some better questions?

Tasha Eurich
So better questions. Let’s say somebody feels stuck in their job, and they say, “I’m in marketing and I don’t like my role.” Instead of asking, “Why don’t I like it?” and getting in that downward spiral of just sort of negativity, what I might say is, “In the last week, what activities have I liked and what activities have not made me feel as excited?”

Or, “What types of jobs in the past have I enjoyed more than what I’m doing now, or less than what I’m doing now?” And, again, it’s identifying that concrete example versus trying to delve deeper when delving deeper doesn’t always serve us.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. All right. And so then I’m wondering is it possible that, as we’re digging into some of this stuff, can one become too self-aware or cross the line and turn into self-conscious territory. How should we watch out for that?

Tasha Eurich
I am so glad you asked that question. So there is a difference between lovingly knowing the truth about ourselves and becoming so self-conscious that we, again, it puts us in an unproductive place. And, oddly, what I found was the people who were the most self-aware that we studied in our investigation said things like, “Hey, listen, do I like knowing that I’m not perfect? Of course not. Do I know what I’m not perfect at? I do.”

Again, all those seven pillars, “Do I know the things that I’m passionate about or my weaknesses or my behavioral patterns? Yes.” And so the direction they go with that is instead of judging themselves, it just simply is. And what I would encourage people to do the more they learn about themselves, to avoid getting into that self-consciousness, is to look at it as a decision point.

The feedback from Jane that I’m late, I have a choice to make. I don’t have to say, “I’m a bad person because I’m late. And why am I always so late?” I’m going to say, “Listen, first of all, does this feedback seem important to me right now? Do I feel like I might need to get some more data to see whether it’s really a generalized issue for me? Or do I have the energy to work on it?”

I tell stories of people, in my book actually, who made the decision once they had that knowledge that they were going to accept that. And if nothing else, they were going to be open about their weaknesses with other people. So I think the process of discovering who we are not only does it have sometimes some really great surprises, and I personally found that and many others have as well, we learn things that give us power and power to control our decisions and choose our destiny instead of just being sort of a victim, passively waiting for things to happen.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about the power, one thing I’m thinking about right now as I recall working with someone who he just seemed anxious a lot and it made me anxious. And it was like, “Does he think our work is bad? Is he worried about something that the client is just going to flip out or whatnot?” And I was a little bit on edge until one day I heard him say, “Well, I have a bit of anxious personality. I get that from my mother.” I thought, I was so relieved. “Okay, nothing is about to fall apart. We’re not screwing up. That’s just how you are. Okay. Thank you for sharing that.”

Tasha Eurich
And that was so little but it made such a big difference.

Pete Mockaitis
It really did.

Tasha Eurich
And I think that’s a great example of having that insight in sometimes saying, “Look, I am who I am. I might not be able to change this or I might not want to change this right now,” but being open about it with others, like you said, it’s a relief sometimes.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it absolutely was. And so then, I’m wondering, when it comes to others, what’s our role or responsibility in terms of aiding others who have a profound lack of self-awareness? I mean, on the one hand, you mentioned if we don’t get feedback and that’s understandable, that’s risky. You kind of put yourself in a potentially comprising situation like, “Who do you think you are? I don’t want to hear this from you. This is unwarranted, unwelcome, not asked for.”

So I think I understand why people don’t proactively share helpful feedback because when people, for example, pitch me to be in my podcast, when they say, “Why?” I’m not going to say, “Well, because you have fake Twitter followers and I don’t trust anything that you say.” I’m not going to do that just because that might be helpful for them, and maybe I’m selfish, but I don’t want to unleash their wrath. I’ll just say, “Oh, it’s not quite a good fit,” and sort of move on.

And so I guess I’d go back and forth to that. I know how important feedback and candor is and I really do want everyone to learn and grow, but I’m also watching my own interests. So how do we navigate that whole mess?

Tasha Eurich
My answer might surprise you, and this is what I learned from our highly self-aware people. The biggest lesson there is that other people’s self-awareness journey is not ours to own.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright.

Tasha Eurich
And does that mean that you can’t smartly and strategically and practically confront someone? No, of course not. But what I tell people is, “Before you do that you need to consider some other things first.” So the first thing is to look at them with compassion, and to say, “We’re in different places in our self-awareness journeys. And that’s yours and this is mine.”

The second is to realize that you can do a lot to manage your own reactions, and there’s so much there and we probably don’t have time to go into that. But just say, “Instead of trying to fix this person, what can I do to make it easier to deal with them?” especially if it’s someone that you have to deal with frequently like a boss or a co-worker.

And then the third thing is, again, if you decide to confront them you’ve got to make sure that you’re the right person to confront them, and also that you are doing it in the right way, and there’s so much to that, there’s so much depth and detail but I think those are kind of the three things I’d encourage someone to think about.

Pete Mockaitis
Sure thing. And if someone does ask for our input, what would you say are some of the key principles to offering that well?

Tasha Eurich
Oh, man, I wish there was a universal answer that I could give to that question. Here’s what I’d offer. Usually it’s better for someone to ask us than to offer to give feedback to them. Now, what that means is, sometimes we have to be patient and it’s also dependent on them knowing that there’s a problem. Sometimes people who aren’t self-aware, most of the time in my opinion, they mean well. They’re trying to do the best they can, they just don’t know that what they’re doing is part of the problem.

And so I think if we’re strategic about it, sometimes there is that opportunity. I tell that story in the book of a board chair for a non-profit who has a new board member who comes in and is just alienating everyone, and she’s sort of watching it and thinking, “What should I do? Should I say something? Should I not say something?” And she decides not to because she doesn’t want to alienate him even more.

But, lo and behold, a month or two later, he approaches her and says, “You know, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why these people don’t like me but could I talk to you about it?” And so then she was in the position to say, “Well, I’d be happy to share with you my observations. Would that be okay? Would that be helpful?”

And so anytime we’re in that situation where we can give something to someone that they’ve requested is a completely different conversation. And I think that goes back to the idea that other people’s self-awareness journeys are not ours to own.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, excellent. Thank you. Well, tell me, Tasha, is there anything else you want to make sure that we cover prior to hearing about some of your favorite things?

Tasha Eurich
Gosh, I feel like we’ve covered so much ground. Yeah, a lot of the big major topics I think we’ve covered, so, yeah, I’m good.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright, then. Well, now, could you start us off by sharing a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tasha Eurich
Oh, gosh. Well, probably my favorite quote of all time is Goethe, a German poet. He says, “Whatever you do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” And that was actually the quote, I came across that when I first left the Fortune 500 world about five or six years ago to start my own company. And, without being overly dramatic, it was one of those moments of, “Yes, that is what I have to do.” And I also think there’s a parallel to self-awareness. You’ve got to be bold. You’ve got to be brave. You’ve got be courageous. But in doing that, that’s where the magic is.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you. And how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research you find yourself thinking about or citing often?

Tasha Eurich
I’m laughing because I love research probably more than anyone on the planet so it’s impossible to pick. But I think a lot of the research, one area we didn’t cover too much today was just how much social media is impacting our levels of narcissism. And there’s a direct and causal link, right? So I’ll just briefly tell you the study.

So it was two groups of students, the researchers randomly assigned them into two groups. One group they had spend 20 minutes plotting their way to school on Google Maps, so online but not on social media. The other group, and this was in the MySpace time, so in the dark ages of social media, they had them spend 20 minutes on their MySpace page, on their own profile.

So they immediately measured both groups’ levels of narcissism. And, lo and behold, the Map people, the non-social media people, did not show increases in narcissism, and the MySpace group showed significant and immediate increases in their level of narcissism. And I share that because I think we sometimes lose sight of just how much this whole whirlwind is affecting us.

And one of the ways we can do that is to think about, “How much time am I spending thinking about myself and posting about myself online and in real life? And how much am I really focusing on others?” And the most self-aware people spent the most time, ironically, focused on other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I think that is an intriguing study particularly because I see so much on social media, and I wonder, “Do you really think any of us care about that?”

Tasha Eurich
It’s self-awareness, number one.

Pete Mockaitis
And like food, food is what comes to mind the most. I mean, if it’s sort of necessary to tweet or share on Facebook your plate, I mean, I need to be blown away by what’s on that plate to think that was worth sharing.

Tasha Eurich
And if someone thinks other people actually will care about that is where it gets really scary and just how many people seem to feel that way.

Pete Mockaitis
Right. Okay. And now how about a favorite book?

Tasha Eurich
Oh, man. Well, I think it’s a tie for me. Favorite book would be either The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald, or The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite tool, something you use frequently to be awesome at your job?

Tasha Eurich
The what-not-why tool for me, personally, that I shared a little bit ago, I’ve started using that more even just in the last week or two, and it’s blown me away how differently I’m looking at challenges I’m facing. So, for me, I think that’s just a very powerful one that is feeling relevant to me right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Alright. And how about a favorite habit or personal practice that helps you flourish?

Tasha Eurich
It would be spending time with my five-pound rescue poodle named Fred who always relaxes me and makes me smile.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And would you say there’s a particular nugget or articulation of some of your message or wisdom that really seems to get people nodding their heads, taking notes and connecting with what you’re saying?

Tasha Eurich
You know, there’s so much richness to this topic it’s hard to pick one thing, but what I’ve seen people really respond to is this idea of self-awareness as personal empowerment and not having it be an exercise in self-loathing but the opposite which is lifting ourselves up and giving ourselves more control over our destiny, and it really is a positive message. And I wouldn’t want anyone to end this podcast thinking that it was anything else.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them to?

Tasha Eurich
I would actually, to give them some value, I would point them to a free quiz that I have available as part of the book where they can get their level of self-awareness, the one that I mentioned earlier, is at www.insight-quiz.com and there’s also a link to find out more about the book there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And, Tasha, is there a final challenge or call to action you’d issue forth to folks looking to be more awesome at their jobs?

Tasha Eurich
That one is simple. If you want to be awesome at your job you have to be self-aware. And are you going to make the choice to be braver but wiser or blissfully ignorant?

Pete Mockaitis
Perfect.

Tasha Eurich
Not to make it dramatic or anything but I feel pretty strongly about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I don’t want to be blissfully ignorant nor do I want to be blissfully ignorant of your calendar which is full of interviews today. So, Tasha, thanks so much for making this time. This has been a real treat. And I hope that your book Insight is a smashing success and you’re making a big impact here.

Tasha Eurich
Thanks so much, Pete. Happy to be here.