The Knowledge Grid (or the need for growing self-awareness)

Want to know why people can seem to respond to you strangely? Why only certain people date you? What an continual area of improvement should be. 

When I was in college, in my  communications class my first year of college we discussed a knowledge grid.  This grid explains four distinct ways that people know themselves and the world around them. There are four distinct areas of personal knowledge: the things you know about yourself that others know, the things only you know about yourself, the things only others know about you, and the things no one knows.

Perhaps the most important area of knowledge are the things that others know about you.  This is an area you should always be learning about because it impacts you in many ways. This kind of knowledge can give you a heads up at an interview, or make it easier for you to make friends. 

Self-awareness is important because you realize your strengths and weaknesses, and learn to compensate for or capitalize on them. 

So how do you use this knowledge grid to your advantage? How do you find out things about yourself that you don't already know but that other people do? Having friends, real friends, is how one learns those important lessons in self-discovery beyond those supplied by his or her family.