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

What’s the difference between self-awareness and self-consciousness? In today’s bonus episode, Ryan shares an excerpt from his conversation with high-performance expert Steve Magness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhlm3aLREI on how to spot the difference. 🎥 Watch Steve Magness’ FULL interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhlm3aLREI 👉 Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast onInstagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en:https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store:https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan 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, 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.

• 0:56Ryan 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 the, you know, that's the enemy. And yet, also, like, a lack of self-awareness is the downfall of so many people.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  I think it's curiosity versus a threat.

• 1:19Ryan Holiday?

  Okay.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  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? Is this how it's supposed to be? And you can see this, again, athletes, if you look at elite athletes, is there 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.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  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. So it's, it's a very fine line, I think.

• 2:30Ryan Holiday?

  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.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  And so if you're like, well, like imposter syndrome is self-consciousness, right? You're not, you're not actually thinking so much about, am I a fraud?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:45Ryan Holiday?

  You're thinking, do other people think that I am a fraud? Of course, they're not thinking about you at all. Uh, this is just all in your head. But yeah, self, 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?

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  Is this pretentious? You know, or whatever, like you're, but, 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, to do for you.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  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. You get self-conscious, you start overthinking.

• 3:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  And then it's over.

• 3:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  You start thinking like, oh. Everybody's gonna know.

• 4:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  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 gonna be back here doing this X, Y and Z. And that causes your brain to start going on like this ruminating catastrophizing cycle.

• 4:23Ryan 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.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Right? When you learned how to throw a ball, someone probably taught you, you know, you've got to do this.

• 4:47Ryan Holiday?

  The mechanics.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  You know, you gotta do the mechanics. Once you become an expert, you're not thinking this is what my elbow does. And this is where my release, you've got it ingrained.

• 4:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  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. And what happens is that formerly smooth process.

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  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 like to do it?

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  It backfires.

• 5:26Ryan 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 of 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.