Transcript: Ängela: Hello and welcome to the What's Career Got to Do With It? podcast, where we hope to provide a space for honest conversation and information that encourages the listener to take the next steps in their career journey. Wherever you are in this process, we hope this episode meets you with affirmation guidance, and maybe some laughs along the way. Rudi: On today's episode, we will discuss an answer or many to the question, What does it mean to know yourself? Nicole: Why did Mr. T come in my head? “Know yourself, fool!” Kai: I don't know but I feel like... Ängela: That was good. Rudi: Yeah. That's it. So I mean, we get to hop into the research if we wanted to, but you know, we're operating right now and 5:30 p.m. or 5:30 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, although we record the show on the the East Coast. So never mind that. Ängela: It’s 5 am somewhere. Rudi: Let's try to pick our brains and see what we all think about self-awareness and what does that even mean to us? Ängela: I think, uh, I think it means kind of just knowing everything. Your goods, the bads, the uglies, what your boundaries are, what it means to get you going. What stops you in recognizing how to figure out how to work through issues and how you work through those issues. It's just…it encompasses a lot. Kai: I think just because self-awareness is kind of like a big part of what we all do in the Career Center and then it's also a part of like discovery and exploration. I think it also ties to like decision making. Yeah. So knowing why you like to make certain decisions and what those decisions might say about your beliefs and your values. Shout out to the Design Your Life book that we kind of use a lot in the Career Center. So I think it ties to that too. Nicole: To me, I'm going to take it as an old lady view right now, and say knowing yourself equates to freedom in so many ways. Um, because again, like everybody is talking about, you are self-aware. You know what works; you know what doesn't work. You know what you're willing to accept; you know what you're not willing to accept. It just kind of opens a path that you didn't even know needed to be open. When you are secure in self, not even secure in self, but when you know yourself enough to where you don't really have to think. It becomes second nature. This is who you are. So I don't really need to place too much thought on it because I already know. Kai: Yeah. Rudi: Yeah, definitely. And I think that we often think that knowledge, self-knowledge or any type of knowledge is absolute, and we think that it has to be completely formed, and we have to completely understand it. And I don't think that's the case at all. I think self-awareness is this concept or ability to be curious about yourself and discovering more and more each day, while also accepting that you're not going to know everything about yourself. Uh, I like the story of, or the stories I hear, of kids sitting in a classroom. And there's always that one kid that asks all the questions, always doing that. The class is almost over. The teacher has decided to close out the lesson early and they go, “Hey, does anybody have any more questions?” And then there's that one kid. Kai: Rudi, were you that kid? Nicole: Sounding familiar... Rudi: Maybe. But they were willing to ask questions when nobody else was. And I think the question asking was always framed as a negative there. But also the person asking the question should have a little bit of self-awareness around when to ask those questions. Ängela: That part too. Rudi: That part too. So the fine balance of when to ask questions and when to drop the question. So psychologists say, here’s psychologists, this is they from 1972. Now, this is an old book. So we can be aware about that, that it's older. So things may have changed, but “Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts or emot
