Mindfulness and Self-Knowledge

“When it comes to knowing yourself, you are likely to have some blind spots.  We all do.  Unfortunately, not seeing ourselves accurately can have negative consequences.  We may over-estimate our performance and then are surprised when we are passed over for promotion.  Even when the outcomes are not as consequential, we miss opportunities to change our behavior.  Underestimating our performance can also be detrimental.  We may have done well in others’ eyes, but having a low image of our performance can cause us unnecessary stress and may make us take actions that preclude opportunities that could have been open to us.

Fortunately, there is a way we can improve our self-knowledge. This is called ‘mindfulness’ – paying attention to our current experiences without evaluating them.  Being mindful without evaluating ourselves has two advantages: it gives us more and higher-quality information about ourselves and it overcomes our natural tendency to protect our ego (p. 38-39).”