What is the main message of Insight?

The main message of Insight is the importance of self-awareness for personal and professional success.

How long does it take to read Insight?

The reading time for Insight varies depending on the reader's speed. However, the Blinkist summary can be read in just 15 minutes.

Who is the author of Insight?

The author of Insight is Tasha Eurich.

Career & Success

Insight Book Summary - Insight Book explained in key points

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Insight summary

Name: Insight
Rating: 4.3 (198 reviews)
Author: Tasha Eurich

Tasha Eurich

Why We’re Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life

4.3 (198 ratings)

23 mins

Brief summary

Insight by Tasha Eurich is a self-help book that shows the benefits of knowing oneself better and offers methods to gain self-awareness. It provides practical advice to improve relationships and work performance.

Topics

Personality Confidence

Table of Contents

Insight
Summary of 9 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 9

What’s in it for me? Find yourself without trekking through the Himalayas.

Self-awareness is a uniquely human quality, but it’s something few of us truly have. And that’s a shame because it’s an extremely useful tool in our personal and professional lives. Being familiar with our own feelings and being aware of how others see us is crucial to successfully navigating social situations, both at home and at work.

These blinks will teach you to recognize damaging thoughts and behaviors in yourself and others. Step by step, you will learn how to deal with your emotions and how to request and receive feedback in order to make positive changes.

And it’s not just about individual self-improvement. You’ll realize that self-awareness is a group activity, which will help your entire team work better together.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

what naming your child Luxx might say about your self-perception;
how taking five minutes today can improve your entire day tomorrow; and
that if your partner doesn’t pick up on romantic cues now, they probably never will.

Self-awareness is the ability to understand who we are and what others think of us, and it consists of seven insights.

Self-awareness is one of the more remarkable features that set humans apart from animals. Some 150,000 years ago, the brain of Homo sapiens developed in a way that led our ancestors to begin examining their own behavior, thoughts and emotions. In this way, self-awareness was born.

Self-awareness is defined as the ability to know oneself and be conscious of how others see us. Psychologists separate self-awareness into two categories: internal and external.

Internal self-awareness is about knowing ourselves; being conscious of our likes and dislikes, our ambitions, our place in the environment and our impact on other people.

External self-awareness has to do with understanding how other people see us. It’s about being able to look at ourselves from an outside perspective.

Surprisingly, scientific research shows there’s hardly any relationship between internal and external self-awareness. But research has found a relationship between a person’s happiness and how self-aware they are. People who have both internal and external self-awareness are able to make better decisions, have stronger professional and personal relationships, are more successful and more creative.

So how do we develop self-awareness?

To be fully self-aware requires seven types of insight, the first of which involves insight into our values. Our values are the principles guiding how we live our lives. Examples of these include honesty, humility and fairness.

The second and third insights are our passions and aspirations, which are concerned with discovering the things we love doing, and what our life goals are.

Fit is the fourth insight. It involves understanding which environment will make us happiest, keep us engaged and enable us to thrive.

Then come patterns – the consistent behaviors that make up our personality. We must understand how we think, feel and act in various situations.

The sixth insight refers to our reactions – the emotional and physical behaviors we exhibit in certain circumstances. For example, our ability to control our feelings under stress.

And the final insight is impact – understanding how our own behavior affects others.

Inner and societal roadblocks disrupt the journey to self-awareness.

It’s not uncommon to encounter the kind of boss who truly believes they’re a visionary leader when everybody else in the office just sees an incompetent jerk. This is because many people are utterly delusional about their own abilities. But how does this come about?

The author believes there are three inner roadblocks to self-awareness – knowledge blindness, emotional blindness and behavior blindness.

Introspection isn't a sure path to insight, so we need to do it right.

If we spend enough time and effort navel-gazing, we’ll eventually come to understand ourselves, right?

Not necessarily.

Three mindfulness techniques can increase internal self-awareness.

What do you think of when you hear the word “meditation”? If you’re anything like the author, you might feel intimidated by the thought of yoga mats, incense and chanting. But it’s nothing to be scared of – for millennia meditation has helped people increase their self-awareness, and you don’t have to become a monk or make a grand lifestyle change to do it.

The author suggests three alternative techniques to increase your mindfulness and, with it, your internal self-awareness. It’s easy to confuse introspection and rumination with mindfulness, but they’re opposites. Rather than analyzing and judging our thoughts, mindfulness encourages you to notice them without judgment. By taking this approach, you’ll begin to make new observations about yourself, and improve your self-awareness. You may even improve your happiness, health and productivity, as many people who practice mindfulness find.

Two major roadblocks obstruct the path to external self-awareness, but there are ways to circumvent them.

If you want to know how other people think of you, and gain external self-awareness, you might think it’s as easy as asking friends and family directly. But that’s where the trouble begins – the people closest to you won’t be honest about how they see you.

The author calls this the MUM Effect. It means we keep Mum about Undesirable Messages. We tend to remain silent rather than giving others information that will make them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, we even tell white lies rather than the truth, and this is the first roadblock to self-awareness.

To gain true insight, you need to learn how to react to feedback.

So you finally plucked up the courage to ask your colleagues for feedback. Great! Only, they say you seem over-confident. Your first instinct might be to get snarky with them, or to dismiss or deny what they’ve said, but that’s not helpful.

So what is the best way to process feedback?

To build a self-aware team, follow the five pillars of insight.

Self-awareness isn’t just a useful quality for an individual to possess – it can exist on a collective level, too. So how can a team of people become self-aware?

Just like a self-aware individual, a self-aware team knows itself and knows how others see it. To achieve this, a team must develop five areas of insight, which the author calls the Five Cornerstones of Collective Insight. These cornerstones are objectives, progress, process, assumptions and individual contributions. Any self-aware team must regularly assess how well it’s performing in each area. By asking the right questions and examining issues from all possible angles, the team can become more efficient and effective.

To develop your team’s self-awareness even further, follow the three guideposts.

If you really want to go the extra mile when building your self-aware team, there are three more general areas to consider: role models, psychological safety nets and a culture of evaluation.

Any self-aware team needs a role model. This person should be a leader who can communicate their principles clearly and, crucially, act upon those principles. Psychologists have a name for such behavior – authentic leadership. They’ve observed that when leaders are open and genuine about their own performance and how it measures against their own standards, it encourages other members of the team to be honest, too. This allows the entire team to reflect on the five cornerstones of insight truthfully.

There are three kinds of delusional people.

You don’t have to look far to find an example of a deluded individual. We’ve all seen the angry, aggressive boss who thinks his approach to leadership is the only way, or the partner completely oblivious to obvious relationship cues. The author calls these people un-self-aware, and how we deal with an un-self-aware person depends on the type of delusion they have.

There are three kinds of delusional people – the Lost Cause, the Aware Don’t Care, and the Nudgable.

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What is Insight about?

Insight (2017) takes you on a journey from self-blindness to self-awareness – a highly valuable, but surprisingly absent skill. Author Tasha Eurich explains what self-awareness is and why it’s a crucial quality to have. She identifies various obstacles to becoming self-aware and provides strategies to overcome them.

Insight Review

Insight (2017) by Tasha Eurich is a thought-provoking book that explores the power and importance of self-awareness in personal and professional growth. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Through in-depth research and interviews, the author uncovers the benefits of self-awareness, providing readers with practical tools to enhance their self-understanding.
With compelling stories and examples from diverse individuals, Eurich demonstrates how self-awareness can lead to better relationships, improved decision-making, and increased success.
The book challenges conventional wisdom and offers a fresh perspective on self-reflection, making it a captivating and enlightening read that keeps readers engaged throughout.

Best quote from Insight

When people are steeped in self-delusion, they are usually the last to find out.

—Tasha Eurich

Who should read Insight?

Individuals who’d like to gain more self-awareness
Anyone coping with peers who lack self-awareness
Leaders who want to build a self-aware and successful team

About the Author

Dr. Tasha Eurich is a researcher, organizational psychologist, and bestselling author. She gained a PhD in industrial-organizational psychology from Colorado State University. Eurich’s work has been published in peer-reviewed journals and she has contributed to The Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and CNBC.com. Eurich was named a Top 100 Thought Leader by Trust Across America and a Leader to Watch by the American Management Association. Her 2014 TEDxMileHigh talk has been viewed over a million times.

Categories with Insight

Career & Success Psychology Personal Development

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