“The better you know yourself, the better your relationship with the rest of the world.” — Toni Collette

How self-aware are you, really? Ever wondered that? Well, if you can answer the following two questions, you are well on your way:

Who am I?

How am I seen by the world?

If you can answer these two questions then you are said to have a high level of self-awareness. However, even though 95% of people believe they have high self-awareness, a 5-year research study by Dr. Tasha Eurich, Industrial Psychologist and Author of Insight: The Power of Self-Awareness in a Self-Deluded World, shows that only 10–15% really are! Now, you don’t need to have a knack for statistics to realise that the chances of being part of the 10–15% are exceptionally small. One primary reason for why we tend to be so bad at self-awareness is because our brains function on a set of principles called cognitive biases.

Cognitive biases are systematic patterns of deviation from rationality or logical judgment in decision-making. They are inherent tendencies of the human brain to process information in particular ways, often leading to errors or distortions in perception, judgment, and decision-making. This may seem all doom ‘n gloom, but cognitive biases are not necessarily a bad thing as it is our brain’s natural attempt to simplify and make sense of complex information, often by relying on mental shortcuts or heuristics. Moreover, we are typically not aware of these cognitive biases as they occur. Biases often operate automatically and unconsciously, influencing our thoughts and behaviours without us being consciously aware of them.

One such bias is our self-serving bias, where we only attend to, and take in, information that aligns with our sense of self or our view of ourselves. Another example of a common cognitive bias is the halo effect, which occurs when our positive impressions of people, brands, and products in one area positively influence our feelings in another area. An example of the halo effect is when we assume that an attractive person is also a good person, smarter, and more successful. This is obviously an error of judgment or a faulty thinking pattern. Unfortunately, our hidden cognitive biases will fuel, and continue to fuel, or thinking patterns if they remain hidden from our conscious minds (i.e., our awareness).

Self-awareness is a skill, and like any other skill, it needs to be learned and practiced before it can be perfected. When we lack self-awareness it impacts every sphere of your life–personally, occupationally, and socially. Additionally, a lack of self-awareness also hampers your ability to exert self-control over your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, which is a key component in emotional intelligence.

Even though we know more about how to increase self-awareness today than we did ever before, we seem to be getting much worse at it. Why? The reason behind this can be summed up in two words, mindless technology.

The introduction of AI to our lives has introduced an entirely new way of being in the world. Whether we want to or not, AI is here to stay, and we can either embrace it or spend wasted energy trying to fight against its implementation in almost every sphere of our lives. Arguably, a key determining factor as to whether AI will be helpful or harmful to you is how you manage its presence in your life. We may not have control over where it gets implemented in our lives (e.g., using AI to purchase food, taking out insurance, logging into banking platforms, scrolling social media), however, we do have control over how we manage and use these AI-powered platforms. This is what differentiates mindful technology use from mindless technology use.

Mindless Technology Use: Fuelling Unawareness

Mindless technology use, refers to using technology without paying attention to the duration, frequency, or intent of its use. This mindless use of technology results in us becoming more self-absorbed and less self-aware as we burrow ourselves into our phones, laptops, and tv screens, and the scary part is that no one is immune!

When we are mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, we get a restricted view of reality and are not able to view things objectively. In fact, the algorithms underlying our favourite social media platforms are designed to show us comments and adverts that match our existing thoughts, ideas and biases. Making it harder for us to be objective about our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. These mindless behaviours do not provide us with any useful or objective information about ourselves. It actually does the opposite­–providing you with selective information, or self-serving information, which just fuels existing flawed self-beliefs.

Mindful Technology: Fuelling Awareness

Unlike mindless technology use, mindful technology use has the ability to increase self-awareness. In fact, this was evidenced in recent research (1, 2) where technology was used to increase students’ self-awareness.

Given that the use of technology is becoming increasingly woven into our daily lives, it will be futile to try and eliminate its use entirely. The best way to reap the benefits that technology has to offer is to actively and mindfully seek out those technological advancements that will actually improve your life, whilst limiting those that will hamper it. For example, using educational videos and online tools to help your children develop better social skills, or taking an online course in how to develop your emotional intelligence, or using a meditative app to help guide you into meditative state.

Another valuable way of using technology to increase self-awareness, in both individuals and teams, is the access to standardised online psychological assessment measures. With the imperative word being, standardised! Not just some willy-nilly assessment with no scientific grounding. What sets standardised assessment measures apart from non-standardised, is that the former has some scientific backing whilst the latter can literally be a thumb-suck. As a qualified psychometrist, and having done a PhD in the field of psychometry and personality, I know how utterly difficult it is to develop valid and reliable psychological assessment measures. Ensuring the validity and reliability of any psychological assessment measure is a pivotal in any scale development to ensure that the results you obtain accurately reflect what you are trying to measure. As such, non-standardised assessment measures tend to be easier to develop and make their way into mainstream society at a larger scale and faster rate. Nevertheless, these standardised online assessment tools can be hugely beneficial for our self-development, and with AI at our disposal, we could increase the rate at which researchers get to develop and validate these scales.

So, at a personal level, psychological assessments can be an essential tool in developing greater self-awareness by providing you with valuable information on getting to know who you are, how you function in the world, how you see yourself, how others see you, how you make decisions and process information, how you communicate, as well as your level of emotional intelligence, leadership skills, strengths, values, and interests.

In a nutshell, even though our brains are wired to process things automatically (i.e., unconsciously), we can learn to become more self-aware and, in turn, help us see ourselves and others more objectively.