Understanding yourself is a tough job. I’d like to discuss what makes it difficult, along with two other short lessons that might help you a bit on your journey through life.

1. If you want to know someone well, take a long car trip with them. 

Let’s say the destination is 1000 miles away, something you’ve never done with your copilot, who is little more than a stranger. To the good, he might be funny, an excellent driver, and someone open and sensitive to your needs.

What is the possible downside?

It is a hot day, and you discover that the two of you have different ideas about air conditioning. He wants it warmer, and he sweats a lot. You find him polluting your air.

The fellow drives differently than you do, often turning toward you as he talks and going faster or slower than you’d like. He doesn’t care for your approach when behind the wheel, either. You can’t agree on how often you need to take bathroom breaks.

Your cellmate (as you now imagine him) keeps asking you questions about yourself that you don’t want to answer. You discover he is trying to convert you to his religion. The conflict becomes distracting as you miss a significant turn. You blame him, and he blames you. By the time you reach your destination, you have to restrain yourself from strangling him.

Now, at last, you know him, and a bit more about yourself.

2. Self-awareness is painful but necessary.

Think of the following self-description: “I am a scoundrel, someone who lies a lot, puts my needs over my spouse and children as a matter of routine, cannot control my emotions, and cuts off slow drivers in traffic to let them know who is in charge.”

If you are lucky, I’m guessing you don’t know anyone who thinks of himself this way. Humans, including those in therapy, prefer to believe they are honest and decent, with sensible explanations for their actions.

Most of us are not as awful as the alienating description above, but are champions at rationalization. We do not want to know the truth about some things and tend to be well-defended against a realistic view of our mirror’s image.

Time and age alter our being, and if we are to adapt to the new version of ourselves and the speed of our world’s accelerating condition, we must increase self-awareness. Without it, our choices will be misguided, though we will blame bad luck or bad people.

As Cassius said in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

We must change throughout our lives, but the type of adjustment to personality, social skills, willpower, courage, and vocational training depends on realizing the truth in Cassius’s words. We control ourselves, at best, not others.

Such knowledge is costly, so we avoid it in part or whole. The reward can be shocking in its horror, but also transformative. It comes down to a kind of therapeutic integrity sometimes observed in their patients by therapists.

Those rare clients tell themselves, “I can’t continue this way; I must remake myself.”

3. Don’t sell yourself short.

The challenges of life must be faced. If one does not, no possibility of success exists. Luck gives us many opportunities, but we shouldn’t wait until we are confident. Self-assurance comes from trying—opening doors, failing, considering what we lack, learning from the event, remolding ourselves, and trying again.

One must talk back to self-criticism. Trauma, previous defeats, and poor parenting can be the source of the punishment of the self by the self. Early in life, time is patient. It waits for us to find a new track and defy the expectations of those who might wish us to fail or suffer.

Too much humility is not a good thing.

An example illustrates why I am a hesitant endorser of humility. My seventh-grade Chicago Public School home room teacher gave us an interesting assignment. In one of the marking periods (four per semester), we were to write down the grades we believed we should receive for the term, the marks we felt we deserved.

Up until that time, I was something of a humility addict. Whether from home or elsewhere, I’d learned not to toot my own horn, draw attention to myself, and certainly not to overstate my accomplishments.

The strategy had worked pretty well up to that point, but I did not see that it created the potential for trouble ahead.

I dutifully delivered the grades, having understated most of them. What difference did it make, I thought? The teacher would assign the bona fide grades based on the work we had completed, our test scores, and so forth.

Some time later, we received our real marks. And, wouldn’t you know it, my instructor gave me the exact evaluation I assigned to myself. Since I was enormously invested in my school performance, I was crushed.

Each kid had a mini-conference with her at her front desk. I don’t remember what she said to me, but the grades stood until the next marking period, when she would not be influenced by any external opinions. Nevertheless, I was mad at myself for understating my worth.

As miserable as she made me feel, this woman did me a favor. In fact, there probably was no better way to deliver the message: don’t diminish yourself, don’t minimize your accomplishments, or be self-effacing.

If you cannot be your best advocate, why should you expect anyone else to advocate for you? While you needn’t trumpet your attainments to the farthest reaches of the earth, neither should you hide them under a rock.

There is a price to excess humility, just as a cost to the extreme of any human characteristic. Too much confidence or too little, too much risk-taking or not enough, or 100% faith in others to do the right thing, and so forth.

My teacher is almost certainly deceased. But, if I could, I would thank her for her instruction in the cost of humility.

One more thing.

Her name was Miss Price.

Really.

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The top image is a Portrait of the Painter Manuel Humbert by Amedeo Modigliani (1916). Next is The Great Challenge by Nicholas Lavarenne at Antibes on the French Riviera, sourced from James Lucas on Substack. Finally, Cherry Trees in Blossom by Victor Borisov-Musatov (1901). The first and last of these are sourced from Wikiart.org/