Most of us probably think we know ourselves pretty well. We know what we’re good at, what we’re not good at, what makes us happy, what annoys us, what motivates us and what makes us nervous. We think we know how we work, how we lead and how we compete.
Or at least we think we do.
That’s what makes self-awareness interesting to me. There’s an obvious problem with trying to evaluate yourself: the person doing the evaluating is also the person being evaluated. You don’t get to step outside yourself and watch objectively. You bring your experiences, emotions, intentions, memories, biases and beliefs about yourself into the evaluation, and then somehow you’re supposed to determine which parts are actually true.
So how well do you actually know yourself?
Knowing Yourself Is More Than Knowing Your Strengths and Weaknesses
When I first started thinking about self-awareness, my definition was pretty straightforward. It’s knowing your strengths and weaknesses physically, emotionally and mentally. It’s knowing your boundaries. It’s understanding yourself in relation to your environment and the people around you.
After looking more closely at the research, I still like that definition. But I think it’s missing something: accuracy.
A recent expert consensus on self-knowledge defines it around the accuracy of our perceptions of ourselves, including both characteristics that are relatively stable and states that can change from moment to moment.¹ That’s an important distinction because having a belief about yourself isn’t necessarily the same thing as knowing yourself.
I can believe I’m a good communicator. I can believe I’m mentally tough, a hard worker or a great teammate. But at some point there has to be another question: How do I know?
That’s where self-awareness gets uncomfortable, because eventually what I believe about myself has to come into contact with some kind of evidence. My behavior matters. My outcomes matter. Other people’s experiences of me matter. The situation in which all of those things occurred matters too.
Maybe knowing yourself isn’t about developing a description of who you are and then defending it. Maybe it’s about becoming increasingly accurate about what you see.
Strengths and Weaknesses Both Tell Us Something
When I was thinking through whether knowing your strengths or knowing your weaknesses is more important, I couldn’t really separate the two. I don’t think we can, at least not in any useful way.
Knowing your strengths matters because it helps you understand where you can lean in. If you’re really good at something, you should know that and use it. But weaknesses matter too, not because we need to spend our lives obsessing over everything we’re bad at, but because Life isn’t going to conveniently present us only with situations that fit what we do well.
Sometimes what you’re good at is exactly what the moment requires. Sometimes it isn’t. The ability to recognize the difference is part of self-awareness.
I’ve seen a simple version of this on a basketball court. When I’m teaching players to move the ball forward on a fast break, I’ll tell them that passing the ball is faster than dribbling it. Sometimes a player doesn’t quite buy that because he’s quick, he’s good with the basketball, and maybe he’s the fastest dribbler on the team.
So I’ll ask the players who the fastest player with the ball is, and somebody usually gets nominated pretty quickly. I bring that player to half court with a basketball, have another player stand underneath the basket with his hands ready, and take a basketball myself.
Then I tell the player we’re going to race.
I usually make sure everybody understands the matchup. I’m old. I’m slow. I’m heavier than I want to be. He’s young and fast. Still, I tell him I’m going to beat him.
READY, SET, GO!
He takes off dribbling. I pass the ball to the player underneath the basket. Race over.
Usually I get some version of, “Oh, I see what you did there, Coach.”
Then we do it again, and I beat him again.
What I like about that example is that the player’s assessment of himself wasn’t necessarily wrong. He is fast. His speed with the basketball is a real strength. But knowing that wasn’t enough to solve the problem in front of him because his strength had to be understood in context. The pass is still faster.
That’s why I don’t think self-awareness can exist entirely in isolation. Knowing what you’re good at matters, but you also have to understand when that strength is useful, when it isn’t, and when the situation requires something different. Sometimes Life is easier because we’re really good at what’s being asked of us. Sometimes it’s harder because we’re not. Either way, we still have to adapt, respond, and stay in the game.
Knowing what you’re good at isn’t enough. You have to understand when what you’re good at is the right solution.
Other People Can See Things We Can’t
Part of my original definition of self-awareness was understanding yourself in relation to other people, which means I don’t think we can completely know ourselves by ourselves.
Psychologist Simine Vazire has studied the question of whether we know ourselves better than other people know us, and the answer isn’t simply one or the other. Her research suggests that we have an advantage when it comes to some of what’s happening internally because I know my own thoughts, feelings, and intentions that you can’t directly observe. At the same time, other people may have an advantage when judging characteristics that are more visible or evaluative because they’re watching our behavior from the outside.²
That makes sense to me. I know what I intended to say. You know what it felt like to hear me say it. Those are different pieces of the same interaction.
I’m reminded of the John Wooden quote about being more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are while your reputation is what others think you are. I’ve always liked that distinction because other people’s opinions shouldn’t define who you are. Your understanding of yourself matters enormously.
But self-awareness asks us to go a little further. If enough people experience you in a way that conflicts with how you see yourself, that deserves your attention. Research into self-knowledge suggests that feedback can reveal blind spots that introspection alone may not uncover.³ That doesn’t mean everyone else’s perception is automatically correct, either.
So I’m not sure the useful question is, “Whose opinion matters more?”
The common denominator should be truth.
Maybe the better question is what I can learn from what you’re seeing that I can’t see myself. Your perception gives me information. My perception gives me information. Neither one has to become the entire story, but if I’m genuinely interested in knowing myself, I probably shouldn’t ignore either one simply because one is more comfortable than the other.
Intentions and Behavior Don’t Always Agree
This is where knowing ourselves becomes even more complicated because we have access to our intentions in a way nobody else does.
If I think of myself as a helpful person, I can probably remember all kinds of moments when I wanted to help someone. If I believe I’m a good listener, I know that I intend to listen when people speak. If I see myself as dependable, I know how strongly I want to be someone others can count on.
The problem is that our intentions can sometimes give us a flattering view of ourselves. Research on what’s sometimes called the introspection illusion suggests that people can place too much confidence in their internal explanations while overlooking evidence contained in their actual behavior.⁴
So, what happens when your intentions and your behavior disagree?
You say being on time matters to you, but you’re consistently late. You say you listen, but people regularly feel interrupted. You say you’re committed to improving, but you avoid feedback whenever it becomes uncomfortable.
I don’t think the answer is to declare the intention meaningless. It tells us something about what we value or who we’re trying to become. But behavior tells us something too, and self-awareness requires enough honesty to look at both.
That may be one of the differences between self-awareness and simply believing the version of ourselves we prefer.
Sometimes We Need to Slow Things Down
I’ve thought a lot about how difficult genuine self-reflection can be in the world we’re living in now. Everything feels fast. We move from notification to notification, meeting to meeting, practice to practice. We consume quickly, respond quickly and move quickly to whatever comes next.
I don’t want to make the easy argument that technology or social media has simply made everybody less self-aware. The research I looked at doesn’t give me enough evidence to make that claim confidently, and people have probably been very good at avoiding self-reflection long before phones existed.
But I do wonder whether the speed of modern Life makes avoidance easier.
I’ve heard “I don’t have time” plenty of times, and I’ve used it too. But I’m increasingly aware that there’s a difference between saying, “I don’t have time,” and saying, “I’ll make time.”
If I’m serious about understanding myself, there have to be moments when I make time to look at what happened, how I responded and what that might tell me. That could mean looking at something I did well and understanding why it worked. It could mean admitting that something didn’t go the way I wanted and asking what part of it belongs to me.
There is an important catch, though. Thinking about yourself more doesn’t automatically mean understanding yourself better. Research distinguishes self-reflection from insight, and those aren’t necessarily the same thing.⁵ We can spend a tremendous amount of time inside our own heads without getting any closer to understanding what’s actually happening.
We’ve all probably had the experience of replaying a conversation, then replaying it again, then thinking about why we’re still replaying it. At some point, reflection stops producing anything useful.
That leads to what I think is one of the more interesting contradictions in self-awareness: sometimes we need to slow down enough to understand ourselves, and sometimes we need to stop thinking long enough to perform.
Sometimes You Have to Stop Thinking
As a coach, I’ve learned to simplify things. Players learn differently. Sometimes I can explain something verbally and a player understands immediately. Sometimes I need to demonstrate it. Sometimes the player has to physically experience something before the point finally lands.
I’ve also learned that during practice or a game, the player is already processing an enormous amount of information. Where’s the ball? Where’s my defender? What’s the score? How much time is left? What’s our coverage? Where are my teammates? What did Coach just yell? What happened on the previous possession?
If I add six more coaching points, even good information can become useless because the player has to process that too.
John Wooden understood this extraordinarily well. Researchers who systematically observed his UCLA practices found his instruction to be remarkably concise and immediate, often delivered in short bursts directly connected to what his players were doing.⁶ That makes sense to me because good coaching isn’t about giving a player every piece of information you possess. It’s about giving the player impactful direction they can actually absorb.
The same principle may apply internally.
Research on performance under pressure suggests that excessive self-focus can interfere with skills that have become largely automatic.⁷ Think about a basketball player who has taken thousands of shots. Suddenly, in an important moment, the player is consciously thinking about the elbow, the knees, the fingers, and the follow-through. Now the awareness that’s supposed to help may be interfering with the thing the player already knows how to do.
So, maybe self-awareness has a rhythm to it. Before the performance, learn. After the performance, reflect. During the performance, there may be moments when the best thing you can do is trust the work and just play.
Reflection may require slowing down. Performance may require letting go and just do it.
Emotions Give Us Information
Emotional awareness is another part of this because how we feel affects how we respond to what’s happening around us.
I don’t think our first emotional reaction to something is necessarily the problem. Something happens that we didn’t expect and we get angry, nervous, embarrassed, excited, or afraid. That’s part of being human. We react while we’re still in a process whose outcome we don’t know yet.
Research suggests there can be value in distinguishing more precisely between emotional experiences rather than reducing everything to feeling good or bad, although the relationship between recognizing emotions and regulating them isn’t as simple as saying more awareness always leads to better regulation.⁸
That qualification matters because recognizing, “I’m angry,” isn’t enough by itself. What caused the response? What am I making this situation mean? What happens when I receive more information? Does my interpretation change? Does the emotion change? And regardless of whether it changes, what am I going to do next?
That’s where I think self-awareness becomes useful. The first emotion doesn’t have to become the final response.
The emotion gives us information. Then we have to decide what we’re going to do with it.
Pressure Reveals Something, Not Everything
We often hear that pressure reveals character, and there’s probably truth in that. But I’m not sure it’s quite that simple.
Michael Jordan is remembered as one of the greatest clutch performers in sports history. There’s also a famous Nike advertisement in which he talks about the thousands of shots he’s missed, the games he’s lost, and the number of times he was trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.
Those things aren’t contradictory. They’re all part of Jordan’s career.
A person can perform brilliantly under pressure in one moment and poorly under pressure in another, which is why I’m reluctant to turn individual performances into identities. “I failed under pressure” describes something that happened. “I’m bad under pressure” describes who you’ve decided you are.
Those aren’t necessarily the same statement. One begins with you (“I”) and the other begins with you are (“I’m” or “I am”).
The broader research on self-knowledge gives us good reason to be careful about this because behavior varies across situations, and one observation may not accurately represent a broader characteristic.¹ Pressure can absolutely give us useful information about ourselves. How did I respond? What did I notice? Where did my attention go? What happened to my decision-making?
But maybe pressure reveals who we were in that particular situation, with that particular set of circumstances, at that particular moment.
That’s very different from saying it revealed some permanent truth.
And I actually find that encouraging because if you don’t like what you discover, there’s something you can do with the information.
Knowing Yourself Still Doesn’t Do the Work
There’s a temptation with mental performance to discover a useful concept and give it too much power. Self-awareness matters, but knowing yourself doesn’t make the shot, have the difficult conversation, make the decision, get you out of bed, or execute the game plan.
Imagine two competitors with similar physical ability and technical skill. One understands what tends to make them nervous, where they’re strong, where they’re vulnerable, how they respond to frustration, what preparation works for them, when they need help, and what helps them recover when things start going badly. The other doesn’t understand those things particularly well.
I’d rather be the first competitor. They have access to more useful information about themselves, and that information may give them a potential advantage.
But they still have to perform.
That’s an important facet for me. Self-awareness, having all of this information, isn’t the performance. It’s something that can help with the performance, sure. Eventually, though, you still have to execute.
I Know Myself Better Than I Used To
As I’ve gotten older, I think I’ve learned more about myself. Interestingly, a lot of that learning has made Life simpler rather than more complicated.
I know Time is important to me, and I’m more thoughtful about how I spend it and where I give my energy. I know I’m not always going to be right, and I’m increasingly comfortable with that because when I’m wrong, I want to understand why. There’s something exciting to me about discovering that something I believed wasn’t quite right, because that means I have an opportunity to learn and get better.
I’ve learned how important consistency is. I’ve learned that I have a servant’s heart and genuinely enjoy helping other human beings as best I can. I’ve also learned that I can’t impact everyone, so I try to stay present and help the people I can.
And I’ve become more comfortable with what I don’t know.
I’d rather be one of the dumbest people in the room because I want to be around people I can learn from. If I’m consistently the smartest person in the room, I’m probably in the wrong room.
Maybe that’s one of the less obvious parts of self-awareness. Knowing yourself better doesn’t necessarily make you more certain about everything. Sometimes it makes you more comfortable acknowledging what you don’t know, including what you may not yet know about yourself.
So, How Well Do You Actually Know Yourself?
Probably not perfectly.
Neither do I, and after looking into the research, I’m not sure perfect self-knowledge is even a realistic or particularly useful goal.
We change. The people around us change. Our environments change. The challenges change. What worked before may not work now. A strength that serves us well in one situation might be less useful in another. An emotional response that made complete sense with the information we had five minutes ago may change once we learn something new.
So self-awareness can’t simply mean deciding who you are and carrying that definition around forever.
It has to remain flexible.
That means paying attention to what you feel and what you do. It means looking at outcomes without allowing any single outcome to define you. It means listening to how other people experience you without automatically surrendering your own judgment. It means looking for patterns, considering context, and making time to reflect when reflection is useful.
Then, when it’s time to perform, it also means knowing when to stop analyzing and just go do the thing!
The more I’ve thought about self-awareness, the less it seems like arriving at some final answer to the question, Who am I? Maybe the more useful goal is to keep getting closer to what’s true while staying open to the possibility that the answer can change.
Self-awareness isn’t deciding who you are. It’s staying curious enough to keep finding out.
If we’re going to learn how to compete, knowing the person doing the competing seems like a pretty important place to start.
On the accompanying MindCompete Podcast
I’ll continue exploring self-awareness, including why other people may sometimes know things about us that we don’t, how thinking about yourself too much can actually interfere with performance, and what a race between an old, slow coach and the fastest dribbler in the gym can teach us about knowing ourselves.
Notes & Further Reading
1. Thielmann, I., et al. (2026). “A Consensus Statement on self-knowledge conceptualization, measurement, outcomes and changeability.” Nature Reviews Psychology.
A multidisciplinary expert consensus examining what self-knowledge means, how it can be measured, its consequences and whether it can change. Particularly relevant to the ideas that accurate self-knowledge is domain-specific, context matters, and more self-knowledge is not automatically better.
Read the consensus statement in Nature Reviews Psychology
2. Vazire, S. (2010). “Who Knows What About a Person? The Self–Other Knowledge Asymmetry (SOKA) Model.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Research examining when people know themselves better and when others may have an informational advantage. Useful for understanding why neither our own perspective nor other people’s perceptions provide the complete picture.
View the study through PubMed
3. Bollich, K. L., Johannet, P. M., & Vazire, S. (2011). “In Search of Our True Selves: Feedback as a Path to Self-Knowledge.” Frontiers in Psychology.
A review examining introspection and interpersonal feedback as routes to greater self-knowledge, including the role other people can play in revealing blind spots.
Read the full open-access article
4. Pronin, E. (2009). “The Introspection Illusion.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology.
Reviews evidence suggesting that people can place disproportionate confidence in introspection when explaining themselves while evaluating other people more heavily through observable behavior.
View the publication on ScienceDirect
5. Grant, A. M., Franklin, J., & Langford, P. (2002). “The Self-Reflection and Insight Scale: A New Measure of Private Self-Consciousness.” Social Behavior and Personality.
Distinguishes reflection from insight, an important reminder that spending more time thinking about ourselves does not necessarily mean understanding ourselves more accurately.
View the study
6. Gallimore, R., & Tharp, R. G. Research on John Wooden’s teaching practices.
Direct observation and subsequent analysis of Wooden’s UCLA practices documented the frequency, specificity and brevity of his instructional behaviors, providing an unusually detailed look at how an elite coach communicated information during performance environments.
Read a recent scholarly analysis of Wooden’s teaching
7. Research on choking and attention under pressure.
Sport-performance research has identified both distraction and excessive self-focus as potential mechanisms behind performance breakdowns under pressure. This work helps explain why greater conscious attention isn’t always beneficial once a skill has become highly practiced.
Read the review of attentional explanations for choking under pressure
8. Seah, T. H. S., & Coifman, K. G. (2022). “Emotion differentiation and behavioral dysregulation: A meta-analysis.” Emotion.
Research across multiple studies found a modest relationship between greater differentiation of negative emotions and lower behavioral dysregulation, while broader research suggests the connection between emotion identification and regulation remains more complicated.
View the research through PubMed
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