I don't know if trying to find out what it means about you might less effective than just finding out what it means in general, because looking for the piece connected to you might lead you down the wrong path if it's a few steps removed?

If you actually have the ability to openmindedly inquire and observe your automatic thoughts (as opposed to your consciously-intended ones), then you certainly can just look at them.

However, if you don't have that skill -- and it's hard to realize that you don't! -- then you'll go less astray if you ask that question.

What I usually ask people is, "what's bad about that?" (and I already know, from their voice tone, whether I should be asking "what's bad" or "what's good"). If a person starts going in circles and complex explanations after a couple askings of "what's bad about that?", I shift to, "What does it say about you that X? What kind of person does that make you?" and usually get a better answer.

My critierion for knowing whether their answer is correct is partly by length and partly by how "rational" it sounds. When it comes to irrational behavior, the more rational your reasoning is, the more likely it is to be false.

Correct answers have a tendency to sound stupid, irrelevant, or at the very least, highly emotional and personal. They're also brief: any sentence structure more complex or lengthy than a proverb or slogan your parents shouted at you is also unlikely to be relevant.

IOW, if your answer to the question doesn't surprise you, you're probably just making it up. If it involves reasoning and logic, or lacks any non-implied emotional content, you're definitely making it up.

The part of your brain that actually runs things is not a deep thinker: it's a massively-parallel, ultra-cached machine for jumping to emotional conclusions based on expected survival and status impacts. If you're doing something that doesn't make sense, it's for a reason that doesn't make sense. So don't try to make sense out of it - try to see what nonsense you actually believe.