If you said yes, you're in good company. 95% of people believe they have self-awareness.

Here's the problem. In organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich's research, a four-year study with nearly 5,000 people, only about 10 to 15% of people actually met the criteria.

So there's a decent chance this newsletter is about you. And if you're sure it isn't, that might be the bigger clue that it is.

Before you start making a list of all the people in your life who are definitely not self-aware, pause. That instinct, pointing the lens at everyone but ourselves, is exactly how the 95/15 gap survives.

The first of the 5 Steps to Empathy is Dismantle Judgment. It's also the hardest. And the hardest judgments of all to dismantle are the ones we hold about ourselves without knowing it.

You can't see someone else clearly through a lens you've never examined. It's like when my glasses are dirty and I need to clean them. That's the self-exploration work.

When I talk about dismantling judgment in my presentations, I tell audiences there's no magic bullet, no easy pill. There are three things you can do, and the first one is self-awareness. It comes up again and again in my talks because it's that critical. You can't see the person standing in front of you if you can't see yourself first.

So what do most of us do to become more self-aware? We introspect. We ask ourselves why.

Why did I feel that way? Why did I snap? Why am I like this?

It feels productive. It's actually a trap.

When Eurich's team analyzed interviews with genuinely self-aware people, the word why barely showed up. The word what appeared constantly.

I loved this finding, because one of the things I'm always advocating with the second of the 5 Steps, Ask Good Questions, is to eliminate the word why.

Here's the reason it backfires. We don't have conscious access to most of our own motives. So when we ask why, our brain doesn't respond with "insufficient data." It invents an answer. One that feels true. And then we defend it.

Think back to childhood. When you did something wrong, someone asked, "Why did you do that?" You couldn't actually explain why. But you knew you were in trouble. So you invented an answer, believed it more or less, and defended it to get through the moment. We never really stop doing that, even when the person asking is ourselves.

And there's a second cost. Asking yourself why you said that thing on that client call Thursday pulls you down into rumination. A spiral of fear and insecurity. We call it reflection, but it's just spinning. And climbing back out takes work.

Instead of why, ask what.

What questions keep you objective. They point forward. They give you something to do.

Eurich tells the story in her Harvard Business Review article of a man who hated his job. He didn't ask, "Why do I feel so terrible?" He asked, "What are the situations that make me feel terrible, and what do they have in common?" That question changed his career.

This is the same shift I hear from parents who stopped asking their kids why and started saying "tell me more about that," inspired by the title of my book, or reaching for a what or how question instead. The kids stopped getting defensive. They opened up. The same thing works on the person in your mirror.

You can use who, what, where, when, and how. Just take why out of the rotation.

Three quick questions. You can ask them right now:

Stay open. Stay curious. No verdict attached. These are the same kinds of questions that build empathy for others, turned inward to build honesty with ourselves. Let me know how it goes.

As I was researching this edition, I came across something that surprised me: there are actually two kinds of self-awareness.

Internal self-awareness is how clearly you see yourself. What you're feeling, where it's coming from, what makes you tick.

External self-awareness is how accurately you understand how others see you.

Being good at one doesn't make you good at the other. Some of us are bad at both.

Here's the kicker. The standard advice, journal, meditate, reflect, is all internal. And if you do that introspective work without outside input, you become an echo chamber. You're just confirming a story you already believe about yourself.

Eurich has a name for the people who break the echo chamber: loving critics. The people who care about you enough to be honest, and are honest enough to be useful. Friends, family, the ones who give you feedback in ways you can actually use.

Sit with this for a second. You cannot fully know yourself by yourself.

This is not something AI can do for us. Generative AI, the large language models we're working with today, is a very different construct. And with general intelligence being worked on and likely arriving in the next few years, Maria Ross and I felt it was important to help people reflect now. What does it mean to be human? How do we think about ourselves? How do others see us? How do we compare to other species?

That's why we made What Does It Mean to Be Human?, a six-episode limited series on Maria's show, The Empathy Edge. The first episode, The Aware Animal, is out now, and it's all about this: consciousness and self-awareness in humans, in animals, and in AI.

You'll hear a lot about me and my cats, and Maria talking about dogs. We get into Michael Pollan's work on consciousness. I was watching one of my cats while we recorded and genuinely wondering: is there self-awareness in there? Does he reflect on what he's feeling and where it comes from? Not so sure. But then also, I don't know.

We don't claim to have the answers. But every one of these six conversations ends up in the same place: connection, and empathy, and why they matter.

New episodes drop weekly, wherever you listen to podcasts. Go listen, then come back and tell me: who is your loving critic? The person you trust to tell you the truth about yourself? And what did you think of the first episode? Share it all in the comments.

I continue to talk about the conversation that preceded my presentation in Greenwich CT with the Retired Men’s Association where I was asked to discuss how to have conversations with people who have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Lately, I’ve been bringing it up with my friends on the left to help raise awareness that how we approach conversations is just as important as what we say.

I discussed how we can turn things around and change the conversation in the last edition of this newsletter.

Recently, I came across this opinion piece in The New York Times chronicling some recent research that looks at what really divides us. It may surprise you that we have more in common with people who voted for the other presidential candidate than we have differences.

What’s your reaction to this article? Let me know in the comments below.

Last edition I told you about my new research project on cross-generational conversations: how adult children and their aging parents talk (or don't talk) about life transitions, future care, and end-of-life wishes before a crisis forces the issue.

The response has been wonderful, and I'm still looking for more voices. If you're an adult child navigating this with a parent, an older adult thinking about these conversations yourself, or a professional who works in this space (doctors, social workers, death doulas, elder care specialists and more), I'd love to hear from you.

Sign up here.

It's a conversation most families wait too long to have. Your story could help change that.

🎙️ Listen to The Aware Animal on The Empathy Edge, wherever you get your podcasts. Follow, rate, and review while you're there. It all helps.

📧 If someone forwarded this to you, subscribe at readingbetweenthelines.beehiiv.com

Stay curious. Ask good questions. Let empathy follow.

Rob