BONUS | Self-Awareness vs. Self-Consciousness: Do You Know the Difference?

0:00Ryan Holiday: Shopping at Whole Foods is one of the things I do in our family. Like the grocery shopping is my job. So I was glad to be able to do that even on vacation. And then, you know, being here in Hawaii, it was the same Whole Foods experience we're thinking about. But then also a bunch of regional stuff, too, that they only have at this Whole Foods. We love shopping at Whole Foods because there's always new flavors and foods to choose from whichever Whole Foods you are like, whichever Whole Foods you happen to be at. So save on regional flavors at Whole Foods Market, and maybe I'll see you at the Whole Foods in Austin sometime.

0:40Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a Stoic-inspired meditation designed to help you find strength and insight and wisdom into everyday life. Each one of these episodes is based on the 2 ,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women to help you learn from them, to follow in their example, and to start your day off with a little dose of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. For more, visit dailystoic.com.

1:30Ryan Holiday: What do you think the difference between self-awareness is and self-consciousness? Because self-consciousness strikes me as the enemy of almost all kinds of elite performance, creativity, etc. When you're in your own head of like, how are they, you know, that's the enemy. And yet also like a lack of self-awareness is the downfall of so many people. I think it's a curiosity versus a threat. Okay. So curiosity is self-awareness where you're exploring. You're like, okay, what internally does this feel like? What's the experience like? When it's that self-conscious, it's that threat where you're sitting there being like, does this feel right?

2:11Is this how it's supposed to be? And you can see this again. Athletes, if you look at elite athletes, is they're better at reading their internal signals? So, you know, understanding whether a feeling of pain in the muscle is pain, that means injury, or it just means fatigue or, you know, I'm working harder. They can distinguish that stuff really well. but it gets to that self-conscious versus self-awareness that can easily translate where you start being like too conscious of it of especially if you started to have poor performance where you start saying oh that signals that i'm about to slow down and i'm not even at halfway even if it doesn't you start getting the wrong message because like it's almost tapped into this threat mode.

3:01Ryan Holiday: So it's a very fine line, I think. Well, the irony of self-consciousness is that it's actually not so much about you as it is about what other people think of you. And so if you're like, well, like imposter syndrome is self-consciousness, right? You're not actually thinking so much about, am I a fraud? You're thinking, do other people think that I am a fraud? Of course, they're not thinking about you at all. This is just all in your head. But yeah, Self-awareness is more an introspective understanding of the self. Why do I do this? What does this mean? What is this like? Versus self-consciousness, which is like, if I do this, are they going to laugh at me?

3:42Ryan Holiday: Is this pretentious? You know, or whatever. But it's about how what you're going to do is going to be received or is being received. Or you're thinking about what you're doing as you're doing it. Like you're in the audience watching you as a spectator instead of being in your body, which was probably more of what self-awareness is trying to do for you. Absolutely. I think that's a perfect way to explain it. And again, tie it back to choking. One of the world's greatest sports psychologists told me, he said essentially, I've got the quote in the book, but I'll butcher it slightly. But he's essentially, the essence is you feel the pressure, cortisol, stress go up.

4:20You get self-conscious. you start overthinking yeah and then it's over yeah and i think it's it's what i mean is like that self-consciousness is like you go from like oh i feel a little bit different and instead of being curious about what that means yeah you start thinking like oh everybody's gonna know yes everybody's gonna know i don't have it and i'm gonna be embarrassed because i'm supposed to do this, this, and this. And now I'm going to be back here doing this X, Y, and Z. And that causes your brain to start going on like this ruminating catastrophizing cycle.

4:58Ryan Holiday: Yeah. We're like, this is a big game. This is so important. This is my only chance versus the, what I have to do here is X. And if you look at it, that translates to your actions, because what happens as an expert performer, you've taken stuff that used to be conscious. When you learned how to throw a ball, someone probably taught you, you know, you've got to do this. The mechanics. You know, you've got to do the mechanics. Once you become the expert, you're not thinking, this is what my elbow does, and this is where my release. You've got it ingrained. But what research tells us is that once we get that pressure, that expectations, that self-consciousness, it's almost like we revert to being a beginner and we start going segment by segment.

5:43And what happens is that formally smooth process now doesn't work. And it's the same in other things. I mean, it's the same in writing. What happens when you try and force yourself to do it? It backfires.

6:01Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic podcast. I just wanted to say, We so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it. And this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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