Why Most People Lack Self-Awareness
'Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate' --Carl Jung
Do you think you are self-aware?
Until about five years ago, I was utterly convinced that this label applied to me.
But really, I was clueless. I mistook being self-critical for self-awareness. This mistake led me to believe that the way I saw myself and the world was completely accurate. This happens when we haven’t brought what’s stored in our unconscious mind into awareness. Until then, we see life through a distorted lens and believe it’s objective reality.
Researchers confirmed in the Harvard Business Review that the majority of us are deluded about ourselves and how others experience us: “Even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: We estimate that only 10–15 percent of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.”1
The authors found that there are two types of self-awareness: internal and external self-awareness:
Internal self-awareness represents how clearly we see our own values, passions, aspirations, [how we] fit with our environment, reactions (including thoughts, feelings, behaviors, strengths, and weaknesses), and impact on others.
External self-awareness means understanding how other people view us in terms of those same factors listed above.
The study found that people with internal self-awareness are “happier and more satisfied with their relationships” and “experience less anxiety, stress, and depression.” Those with external self-awareness “are better at expressing empathy and embracing other people’s perspectives” which usually leads to better relationships, and thus more happiness.
More people would have self-awareness if they made contact with the programs running their lives that live out of sight. These programs reside in the unconscious mind, which is not a physical place but a psychological phenomenon (and used to sometimes be called the “subconscious”). From Harvard Medical School2:
Today, most psychoanalysts and psychodynamically-oriented therapists use the term [the unconscious] as shorthand to refer to a complex, but familiar, psychological phenomenon. That is, a good deal and perhaps most of mental life happens without our knowing much about it. Neuroscientists are clued into these processes too. So, they appreciate that any understanding of the neurobiology of mental life must go beyond conscious thoughts and feelings.
This is why the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung famously noted that “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”
Identical issues seem to haunt us: nearly carbon-copy situations repeatedly show up in our lives; we keep experiencing the same upsetting and even toxic relationship dynamics even when we’ve sworn off people with certain qualities; we can’t seem to make any meaningful shifts in our careers, and it all feels inevitable, like no matter how hard we try, nothing will ever really change.
When I paused the previous iteration of this publication last year, I wrote that I wanted to shift away from writing about politics to writing about living a "soul-aligned life." What I meant by this is living a life aligned with our truest selves rather than all the programs running on auto-pilot in our unconscious.
It's amazing to discover how much of what we believe we have chosen for ourselves actually was decided for us by parents or societal influences in a way that has flown mostly under the radar for us. Even when we think we understand what happened, I can promise you that it's usually only the tip of the iceberg.
Underneath our conditioning and trauma2, we find what some people call the True Self or authentic self. Others believe this part of us is our 'soul' or ‘essence.' But you don’t have to believe any of this to connect with this part of yourself that exists outside the demands and dictates of ego.3
You might be wondering, how does one do this?
The easiest way to tell what is hidden in your unconscious is to try to notice when you are projecting. Jung said that projections change the world into the replica of one's own unknown face. So, projection is the process by which a person is convinced their own traits, emotions, and behaviors exist in another person.
When we project, we accuse people of doing what we are doing (or want to do). A cheating husband accuses his wife of cheating, or a person who has trouble telling the truth sees "liars" everywhere.
It's bad enough that projection convinces us that people are doing things that they aren't. It also keeps us in the dark about important aspects of ourselves, likely frustrating or even alienating people in our lives in the process.
At its worst, projection becomes dangerous. It’s what fuels the scapegoat mechanism which causes people to locate the “problem” outside of themselves and place it on an innocent person or group of people who then must be annihilated.
If you think you are above projection, I have bad news: pretty much everyone does it. (Remember the study in Harvard Business Review found that only 10-15 percent of us are actually self aware). The more self-awareness you have, the less you project, and the more likely it is that you you can recognize it as it happens.
But unless you are an enlightened being, you are very likely projecting disowned qualities of yourself (sometimes called 'the Shadow') onto other people. These can be good and bad qualities that we either envy or despise in another.
I'm going to write a more in-depth post about judgment and envy as guides, but I wanted to mention them for people who want to start poking around into their less-known parts. Dream analysis is another obvious portal into the unconscious, which also requires its own post.
This week, consider writing down every time you feel judgmental or envious toward another person and then spend some time with the questions, "Where is this quality or trait in me? What might my unconscious be trying to tell me about myself?"
It’s important that you do not shame yourself for projecting. Just be happy you are seeing it and gleaning whatever information from it that you need. If you find yourself "hating" or "loving" a particular celebrity, add this to your list. Or if you are suddenly making emotionally charged accusations against or about other people, pay attention.
There's gold in there.
Related
https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it
Trauma is not event-specific; it is person-specific. What is traumatic to one person may not be traumatic to another person. Some trauma is spectacular; some is not. But an event does not have to be spectacularly bad to induce trauma. Losing a parent as a child is a spectacular trauma. But never being asked to dance in middle school or being dumped by your best friend in third grade is also a trauma. Just because one is less spectacular than the other doesn’t make the impact less formative.
“The ego is that part of the self that wants to be significant, central, and important by itself, apart from anybody else. It wants to be both separate and superior,” explains Richard Rohr. “It is defended and self-protective by its very nature.”
I used to get extremely frustrated at other people's lack of self-awareness because I do believe I am quite self-aware. It wasn't until I came across Dr. Howard Gardner's (also of Harvard) Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Intra-personal vs inter-personal. I scored very high on intra- and not as high on inter-. This theory helped me understand so much. I wondered if something was wrong with me because I have like zero interest in animals but others around me LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them. Of the nine intelligences, I scored the lowest in Naturalist. Once I realized each of us has baseline strengths in certain intelligences, I was less frustrated. I say baseline because we can cultivate each one if we so desire. In my case, I want to get better at inter-personal. not so much with naturalist though.
RE: projection...a guilty person's language. It's one of several unconscious defense mechanisms. I didn't immediately understand how this was unconscious when I first learned about defense mechanism in graduate school. But I get it now. With projection specifically, it's very self-centered and it can also be conscious. It's hard to imagine the people actually behave differently from us. But the trained ear can pick up that people are really telling on themselves. It speaks to the universal need for the truth. I personally believe that the truth can't be contained. It must be expressed even if it has to bypass our conscious minds.
This is an important topic. It takes a great deal of work to delve into our mind and emotions. I've been doing it for 50 years using the best meditation, breathing, and consciousness raising techniques I could find, yet still come across a new awareness occasionally to help me on my path. It takes courage to face the abundance of programming and hidden illusion built up in our minds. And when you've done that after a few decades then you can start looking at all the ways we absorb consciousness from the people around us. So, you know what happens, if it's hard not many people are going to think it's cool to stick with. Alas, for me, it's too hard to come out in the open to talk about practices to awaken consciousness without picking up on the energies of others in the process. It's no wonder the enlightened masters don't do much social media. LOL. Good luck to all and thanks again for your article.