Lack of self awareness is the No.1 blind spot for perfectionists + overachievers. We mistakenly believe we are SO self-aware that our "high level of self-awareness" IS the problem. But what if believing you're super self aware actually reveals how highly you're lacking self awareness? Find out what's fueling your hidden lack of self-awareness, how being judgey erodes our ability to improve self awareness and overachiever self awareness examples that keep you in the dark.
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Inside this Perfectionism Podcast on Lack of Self Awareness You'll Learn:
Why self awareness is important for overachievers and perfectionists
How to improve self awareness
When You're judging over perceiving
Signs you're lacking self awareness
⠀Timestamps for Ep. 81:
00:54—Why self awareness is important
01:44—Saying this shows lack of self awareness
04:36—How “Overactioning” Blinds Lack of self-awareness
06:09—Improve self awareness + stop doing this
09:45—Judging over perceiving
11:11—How to improve self awareness
Self Awareness Quotes
"Self-awareness without change is simply entertainment." —Courtney Love Gavin, Perfectionism Rewired podcast Ep. 81
"You cannot improve self awareness from resistance, judgment, shame, avoiding, pretending or trying to outrun it. And until you disrupt where they are actually coming from, your brain will continue choosing what's familiar over what's functional." —Courtney Love Gavin, Perfectionism Rewired podcast Ep. 81
Trusted Sources Cited in this Perfectionism Podcast:
Daniilidou, A. (2023). Understanding the relationship between the multidimensional perfectionism and self-compassion in adults: The effect of age. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 19(4), 371–386. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.11981
Dunning, D. (2011). The Dunning–Kruger Effect. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 247–296. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-385522-0.00005-6
Hitchcock, P. F., Britton, W. B., Mehta, K. P., & Frank, M. J. (2022). Self-judgment dissected: A computational modeling analysis of self-referential processing and its relationship to trait mindfulness facets and depression symptoms. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 23(1), 171–189. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-022-01033-9
Ong, C. W., Lee, E. B., Petersen, J. M., Levin, M. E., & Twohig, M. P. (2021). Is perfectionism always unhealthy? Examining the moderating effects of psychological flexibility and self‐compassion. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 77(11), 2576–2591. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23187
Phaedonos, P., & Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous, X. (2011). Self-Judgment. Springer EBooks, 1318–1319. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79061-9_2549
Perfectionism is very powerful. But only if you know how to leverage it. For more on optimizing your perfectionist tendencies go to perfectionist.solutions
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:00:00]:
Hello. Before we start today's episode, if you would like a condensed version of what I'm talking about in this podcast, go ahead and subscribe to the Perfectionist Guide. You can read the entire thing in three minutes or less. To access this, go to Perfectionist Solutions newsletter. Are you a bit of a perfectionist type a hyper performer? Then you know that having the audacity to see an ideal and bring it into reality, while breaking generational habits of hustle can be tough. But it doesn't have to be. If you are ready to burn bright instead of burning out to lead without losing yourself and to enjoy the life you have worked so hard to create, then keep listening. I'm your host, America's leader on rewiring perfectionism.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:00:54]:
See lg and this is Perfectionism Rewired, the podcast. Welcome to Perfectionism Rewired. Today we are talking about what self awareness really is and how to cultivate it, or cultivating awareness. Hold the judgment, please. Why are we talking about this? You do not have power over what you do not bring awareness to. If you don't know, now you know. Self awareness is meant to be liberating and a creative space for you to grow your consciousness into self actualization. Being an evolved person when you don't have awareness or when you are suppressing takes crazy amounts of energy to fight, especially when you are fighting against yourself.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:01:44]:
One of the biggest misconceptions about awareness, my clients tell me all the time, every day when I coach them, they're like, I'm aware, I'm aware. But this is the thing, I don't coach psychopaths. And I know that everyone listening to this podcast is a very smart, sane person. You are a sane person and we are not masochists. So if your consciousness was really, really aware, you would stop fucking doing it. Let's stop lying to ourselves and saying that we're aware. Because if you're really aware, you wouldn't be. It's like taking dumps in your own mouth.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:02:20]:
If you're aware, you wouldn't be doing that. No one shits in their own mouth for fun. I know, that's a great visual. I was trying to think of something that would be very foul on purpose to wake you guys up. Consciousness is when you are aware of your environment, your body, your lifestyle. Now, self awareness, how meta is this? Self awareness is the recognition of that awareness. Self self awareness is how you consciously know and understand yourself. Your character, your feelings, your motives and your desires.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:02:54]:
Labeling, distracting and justifying. Those are three things. Cock blocking Your own awareness. Awareness without change is simply entertainment. It is like watching the Lakers where you're sitting at home, but you're actually thinking that you're LeBron out on the court. To score in life, you gotta get in the game and play. Play. Self awareness is something that I am constantly refining.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:03:20]:
It is something that you are constantly polishing. And the hardest part about this is being able to be gentle with yourself. You know how when you're coloring with crayons, how you can press really hard so you have a very intense pigment? Like, yeah, you can do that. That's what little kids do. Once you get older, you realize, oh, I can actually use the crayon to shade. I can use it for all these things. I don't have to scroll, squeeze so hard that my fingers turn red and I break the crayon. That's what we're talking about.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:03:51]:
When it comes to being gentle with yourself, it takes skill in order to do this. It also takes treating yourself with compassion and having boundaries with yourself. The reason why most people are unable to even get aware is because the moment you start to see something, you don't have the safety inside to calm yourself the fuck down, or you're going too fast that you don't even allow for it to happen, which is because the safety isn't there. You're covering over it. You're busying over it. Here's how you know that you don't actually have awareness. Some ways that this shows up for you. I'm also gonna let you know how you can cultivate awareness without judgment.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:04:36]:
First, you are overactioning. You are overtly focusing on the action. And you are not asking your what is underneath your actions or decisions. You're not asking yourself, why am I doing this? It is a pattern of where you don't want to look or question why you're doing what you're doing, or you do. But you are not creating active acceptance because you think mistakenly, if you accept something for what it is, then you can't change it. But actually it's the opposite. You need to accept it in order to change it. You're having your actions take the responsibility of your awareness.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:05:18]:
You're thinking you can action your face off. You can get this program, buy this thing. You do not want to sit down with yourself and just hear what's in your brain. I used to be like that. I told a lot of my first coaches, blatantly, I don't want any of that mindset shit. Even my first coach, she was like, well, coach me. We coach on three areas of your life. I rolled my eyes and I was like, fine.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:05:41]:
I even told her. I was like, you can pick the other two. Because I, I was just there for work. I wanted help with negotiations for my upcoming contract. I mean, honestly, my life was a hot mess, but like, I couldn't see that at the time. And luckily for you, I'm here now because I had the self awareness to know, hey, this isn't working. And the common denominator is me. So let's see what can happen.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:06:09]:
Another way that you know, you're not really aware and that this could use some work is if you've been thinking, I've been doing every everything right, or I've been doing so much, why am I not getting results? This just shows you are very, very far from adequate awareness of how much defeated or full confusion is running in the background. And I see this a lot actually with my clients that get hyped up in moments of belief. They're like, yeah, fuck yeah, I'm gonna like do all of this stuff this month. I feel aligned. I'm so confident. But then what happens is they get so, so attached to when they feel that way that they kind of forget, slash, purposely check out of being aware of what's happening in their brain the rest of the time. We don't want to fluff our pillows when the dog just took a shit in the middle of the living room. That's what happens when you're not giving yourself the gift of self awareness.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:07:07]:
Self awareness is like the kaleidoscope that allows you to actually look at things in different ways. And like, it's beautiful when you are judging yourself, you're not being self aware. When you are judging yourself. You are living in black and white. It is impossible to see color. You are colorblind. And the only way that you can move forward is if you allow the richness and you allow the color. It's going to help you more if you don't judge it.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:07:36]:
And the reason why you are judging it, refer back to the last episode, episode 80 is because you and your brain think that that's helpful. Another way that this shows up is maybe you're not judging, but you don't have self awareness. If you are blaming, if you are saying it's time or it's your kids or it's your husband or it's your boss or it's your job. I want you to have compassion with yourself as you start to recognize this. Because once this comes into your Awareness, like, oh, no, I'm doing this thing where I don't take responsibility and I'm blaming it on other people. Like, just laugh at yourself. It's not you that's doing it, it's your brain. And your brain clearly has some past programming where it was safer for you to blame it on other people.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:08:22]:
And usually this happens when there is a deep shaming of ourselves. Cultivating self awareness without judgment is critical skill because it determines all of your results and it gives you every single solution you will ever look for. This is a skill that, like, even if you are my worst client, I guarantee a hundred percent, at the end of our time together, you will walk away with an extreme exquisite ability of self awareness without judgment. Now, we don't want to judge the judgment at all because that just puts you in a place where you're feeling shitty about feeling shitty. This is something I catch my clients on all the time. Because if you are new to this work of self awareness, your brain is going to do this on default. You don't even know that you're doing it because you've been doing it for so long. Also, it's not your fault, because if you have been raised in a traditional school system, all they do is judge us.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:09:18]:
It's called grades. That's how we were taught. They're going to judge me. Who's judging me? Silently judging you, Right? It's like, no. This is where I, like, pull out RBG vibes and I'm like, I dissent. Be notorious. Don't judge yourself. When you can begin the work bringing acceptance and compassion to yourself, you can talk to yourself in a productive way, but you cannot have power over what you are not aware of.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:09:45]:
If you are not aware of the beliefs, the thoughts, the emotions that are animating that are fueling your actions and your life and your decisions, you have no power to change them. Judgment is one of the top three things that I coach on. For some reason, our brain thinks feeling shitty about feeling shitty is productive. It is not. It is not. It's not. It's not. So what I want you to do is I want you to take all your judgments, I want you to write them down, then I want you to put them through a shredder.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:10:12]:
Okay, we're going to take all your judgments, we're just going to light it on fire. We do not judge the judgment. And that is where having a protocol inside your brain where you're just like, yeah, you are unauthorized to do that anymore. Not allowed. Just like, when I'm Babysitting toddlers. They're not allowed to drink my vodka soda. It's just not allowed. I don't care how much they want it.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:10:32]:
I'm not giving the toddler shots of alcohol. Just like you're not going to judge your brain's judgment. So even if your brain does judge things, let's not judge that and then feel shitty about that. Do you see that? It's just like this shit spiral. When you are starting to become aware, then you judge it and you shame yourself on top of it. It's so much harder to break out of. You cannot get awareness from resistance, judgment, shame, avoiding pretending or trying to outrun it. And until you disrupt where they're actually coming from, your brain will continue choosing what's familiar over what's functional.
Courtney Love Gavin (CLG) [00:11:11]:
If this has given you awareness of some gaps in your brain, and it's like you're smart enough to see it, yet you still can't shake it, I have created the calibration. It makes it so you are no longer in the dark about why and what you are doing. The calibration is precision neural engineering. We cut right to the root of the root. So you walk away knowing exactly why you have been stuck on autopilot and knowing how to disrupt it in the moment without wasting any energy blaming yourself, being like, oh, why am I still doing this? Right? None of that. If you are like, say less. Where do I go? Go to perfectionist solutions. Calibration.