Self-Help
What Does It Mean to Be Insightful?
Manage your life by becoming aware of your life.
Posted April 16, 2025 Reviewed by Davia Sills
Key points
- Insight is the self-knowledge that helps people make productive decisions and navigate relationships.
- Key elements are knowing stressors, regulating emotions, and taking responsibility for their own behavior.
- It helps for them to be aware of their emotional state, have clear values, and realize what they can control.
One of the boxes that therapists and psychiatrists typically need to check during a standard mental health assessment is whether the patient is insightful. But what does that mean? In these formal assessments, insight focuses on the patient’s awareness of their problems and motivation to follow a treatment plan.
However, we can consider insight in more casual, less psychiatric terms: the ability to step back, recognize our behaviors and emotions, and make adjustments as necessary. Here’s how this can translate into your everyday life regarding both awareness and skills:
Know when you’re stressed.
People often talk about feeling stressed—life appears chaotic or overwhelming—but this is different from identifying your specific symptoms or the effects of stress: overeating or drinking too much, snapping at your partner or children, or considering quitting your job.
Skills: Whatever you do when stressed is like your Achilles’ Heel. The key is to avoid going on autopilot or justifying bad behavior; instead, use your symptoms as red flags to calm your system and environment.
Know your triggers.
There are clear triggers for stress—excessive work, an argument with your partner—but the challenge is to think more broadly and specifically. What derails your emotions, goals, and relationships? This is where a colleague’s promotion ignites your resentment and competitive instincts, the refrigerator beckons after a tough day, or how your partner waving their finger in front of your face makes you feel like a 10-year-old.
Skills: Understanding your triggers can assist you in managing your stress, anticipating and acting, and addressing the issues you’ve been ignoring—not resorting to the refrigerator for beer or avoiding conversations with your partner about her waving finger.
Be aware of your emotional state; regulate your emotions.
This is about emotional responsibility. We all shift between our rational and emotional brains throughout the day. Being insightful means stepping back and knowing which brain is running rather than operating on autopilot.
Skills: Check in with yourself periodically throughout the day. How are you feeling? If you sense any irritability or anxiety, take a moment to identify the source. Do you have any problems you need to address? Do you need to take a break and destress? By checking in, you train yourself to be more sensitive to your emotional state, allowing you to catch problems before they escalate rather than waiting until they reach an explosive level.
Take responsibility for your behavior.
People who don’t take responsibility for their behavior tend to be reactive: They blame others for making them angry or creating problems, believe they are always right, and view situations in black-and-white terms. Others perceive them as controlling or self-centered.
Skills: Rather than engaging in black-and-white thinking, you want to understand that relationships are more complex—that your actions contribute to a problem, and you’re willing to acknowledge it. Taking responsibility is not about giving in, walking on eggshells, or being controlling, but rather seeing both sides of the relationship equation and focusing on your part.
Realize the limits of your control.
Insightful people are aware of what they can and cannot control. Others often believe that their problems stem from another person’s behavior, thinking they will feel better if they can change that person. This indirect approach is generally ineffective, leading to power struggles and frustration.
Skills: Your only control is you, not others. That said, if you change what you do, it is likely to change what the other person does, too—you’re breaking the dysfunctional loop, but it’s not guaranteed. You work on your side of the equation, see what happens, and tweak your behavior, but then you’re done—you’ve done the best you can, and it’s time to let it go.
Have clear values.
The foundation for the above is having a clear set of values. Values differ from the “shoulds” many people walk around with. Shoulds are rules inherited from others in authority—most often parents, but also teachers and religion—that cause you to feel guilty and self-critical when you don’t follow them.
On the other hand, values are what you, as an adult, deem essential to being a good person and for life. They are proactive and defining rather than reactive. You may still feel guilty when you violate your values, but by being insightful, you can quickly self-correct instead of emotionally flagellating yourself.
Skills: Sit down with yourself and develop a list of 10 values—not a hundred—that create the person you ideally want to be. Next, consider how each value will impact your everyday life, and be aware of what you may need to change in your relationships and daily routines. Map out baby steps to ensure success.
The starting point here is to be curious, to step back from your autopilot life and examine what’s working and what’s not. Next, take behavioral steps to break dysfunctional patterns and concentrate on the skills you need to incorporate into your life. Finally, take time to step in and envision the life you want to create rather than continuing to do what you’ve always done.
Insight is about awareness, choice, and empowerment. Is it time to step back and step up?
