Just as you can improve your knowledge and intellectual intelligence, you can also become more emotionally intelligent—and a stronger leader as a result. Self-awareness is the recognition of one’s own mood, motives, behaviors, strengths, weaknesses, and other elements of the self, and is a critical skill for everyone’s personal and professional life. It can look like taking a step back and reflecting internally on your actions and emotions and can help you better understand how you feel and how you are making others feel. 

Check out our top 10 favorite quotes on self-awareness from successful psychologists, activists, lawyers, and more to get your employees inspired! 

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

– Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist, founder of analytical psychology

“Self-awareness is the ability to take an honest look at your life without any attachment to it being right or wrong, good or bad.”

– Debbie Ford, coach, lecturer, author of New York Times Best Selling Book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers

“Great leaders develop through a never-ending process of self-study, self-reflection, education, training, and experience.”

– Tony Buon, British workplace psychologist

“Self-awareness gives you the capacity to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes. It enables you to keep growing.”

– Lawrence Bossidy, American Author and Businessman

“Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance.”

– Anthony De Mellow, spiritual teacher, writer and speaker

“Until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life.”

– Iyanla Vanzant, American inspirational teacher, lawyer, New Thought spiritual teacher, author, and life coach

“Practice self-awareness, self-evaluation, and self-improvement. If we are aware that our manners – language, behavior, and actions – are measured against our values and principles, we are able to more easily embody the philosophy, leadership is a matter of how to be, not how to do.”

– Frances Hesselbein, American businesswoman, CEO of the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum, at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership.

“We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”

– Malcolm X, American Human Rights Activist