Can You Get Better at Knowing Yourself?
“I hate group work.”
Alex has said this enough times that it feels like a fact. Group project announced? Terrible. Teacher says, “Find a group”? Somehow worse. If somebody asked Alex whether this was an example of knowing yourself, the answer might seem obvious. Alex has done group work before and knows it is not enjoyable.
Then Alex gets assigned another project. This time everyone chooses a clear job at the beginning. Nobody disappears for three days and mysteriously returns five minutes before the deadline asking, “So, what are we doing?” People listen when Alex talks. The group finishes on time, and Alex realizes something mildly inconvenient: that was actually pretty good.
When Your First Answer Is Not the Whole Answer
Maybe I hate group work was not completely wrong. Alex has had some awful group experiences. But now there is evidence that does not quite fit the original explanation. That gives Alex something worth investigating.
Looking back, Alex notices a pattern. The worst groups were the ones where nobody knew who was responsible for what. Alex would wait, become frustrated, worry that the work would not get finished, and eventually start doing other people’s jobs. What Alex may have hated was not simply working with people. It was uncertainty, unfairness and feeling responsible for rescuing the whole project. That is a more precise piece of self-knowledge. Alex might move from I hate group work to I get really frustrated in groups when responsibilities are unclear. After a few more experiences, the understanding might change again: I actually work pretty well with other people when everyone has a clear role and people listen to one another.
Alex did not become three different people. Alex’s understanding became more accurate as more evidence appeared.
We Make Quick Conclusions About Ourselves
People do this in all sorts of situations. Someone thinks, I’m terrible at presentations, and later discovers that the first thirty seconds are the part that makes them really nervous. Someone decides, I’m not athletic, and eventually realizes there are several physical activities they enjoy and others they cannot stand. Someone says, I always procrastinate, then notices that putting things off happens most when a task is confusing and they do not know where to begin.
Our first explanations are not necessarily silly or wrong. They usually come from real experiences. The problem comes when a first explanation becomes a permanent label and we stop collecting information. That is one reason self-awareness can develop. Every new experience gives us another opportunity to notice what we think, what we feel, what matters to us, what we need and what strengths we bring with us. We can compare experiences too. When does this happen? When doesn’t it happen? What was different that time?
Sometimes we discover something completely new. Sometimes we become more precise about something we already knew. Sometimes we discover that a story we have been telling ourselves for years needs an update.
Knowing Yourself Does Not Mean Finishing Yourself
This matters especially during adolescence because there is still a lot to discover. Interests can change. Skills can develop. Relationships change. Responsibilities grow. New situations reveal reactions, preferences and abilities that we could not have discovered from experiences we had never had. That does not mean there is no continuity in who we are. Values, preferences, strengths and familiar patterns can be quite important. It means our understanding of ourselves should have room for new evidence.
Think about Alex again. I hate group work sounds like a statement about who Alex is. I find groups frustrating when nobody knows what they are responsible for is different. It identifies something Alex has learned about the conditions that influence the experience.
That better information could even affect a future decision. Alex might ask for clearer roles at the beginning of the next project instead of assuming the next group will be terrible. Better self-awareness does not guarantee that the group will cooperate, but it gives Alex something useful to work with.There is one more interesting problem, though. Experiences can contain plenty of information without us noticing all of it. We can race through a day without paying much attention to what we were thinking, what we were actually feeling or why something mattered so much.
So if self-awareness can grow, how do we get better at discovering the information that is easy to miss?
