As humans, we all tend to believe that our ways of thinking and behaving are the end all be all.
Most of us feel that anybody who doesn’t think or behave in the ways that we do is wrong or odd.
You will find many examples of this in sports or politics. People will only listen to and entertain others if what they are talking about agrees with one another.
The issue arises when one isn’t willing to listen to somebody else, no matter what facts or information. When this happens, over time, people are left to wonder why certain people don’t like them or treat them differently.
If the above resonates with you, you may miss out on insight into your life. By listening to others and what they have to say, along with getting to know yourself, you will learn a valuable skill.
That skill is how to identify blind spots in your life.
What Are Blind Spots?
Blind spots are areas of your personality that you may not see but are lying in front of you. Luckily, others can see your blind spots, which will play a role in identifying them.
For example,
If you can not read social cues, you will not be able to figure that out yourself. It will take another person telling you that you are poor at reading social cues for you to realize it.
If you think about blind spots when driving, they are the areas in which you can’t tell if there is a car or not. By looking over your shoulder, you will hopefully be able to see if there are any cars in your blind spots.
In your life, blind spots take on the same form as blind spots when driving but have one key difference.
The hidden areas, or blind spots, are still hiding in plain sight but aren’t as easy as turning your head to find them. These are areas in your life where work is required to uncover them.
Remember that blind spots can be positive or negative areas of your personality. While it is more important to address the negative, you must also give yourself credit for the positive.
If you overlook the negative blind spots for too long, they will impact your personal life.
Since these areas within yourself are hard to uncover, other people will play a huge factor in helping to find them.
To uncover blind spots, we must know a few ways to identify blind spots.
Key Takeaways
Blind spots are areas of your personality that you may not see but are lying in front of you. Luckily, others can see your blind spots, which will play a role in identifying them.
Remember that blind spots can be positive or negative areas of your personality. While it is more important to address the negative, you must also give yourself credit for the positive.
Since these areas within yourself are hard to uncover, other people will play a huge factor in helping to find them.
Ways to Identify Blind Spots
Although blind spots can go unnoticed for quite some time, that doesn’t mean they must go unnoticed forever.
As mentioned above, the longer negative blind spots go unnoticed, the more impact they will have on your life.
We will cover a few ways to identify blind spots, but multiple ways exist to discover these areas.
Ask For Feedback
One surefire way to uncover blind spots within your life is by asking for feedback from trusted sources.
Trusted sources can be people such as:
Family,
A significant other,
Friends,
Or work colleagues who respect and get along with you.
When seeking feedback, you must approach trusted sources and not random people, as not everybody acts in your best interest.
Certain people may be jealous of you or secretly resent you, and they will give you feedback about yourself that will not resonate with you at all.
Authentic feedback involves asking open-ended questions so the person you speak with must think of their answer.
If you are to ask questions that can be answered by a simple yes or no, the person giving you feedback will put much less effort into their answer.
Below are a few open-ended questions you can ask to receive authentic feedback from others:
- What do you notice about me when I am at my best?
- What do you see when I am at my worst?
- Are there certain habits or things I do that I don’t notice myself?
- What is something you like about me?
- What is something you don’t like about me?
Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is equally necessary as asking for feedback when discovering blind spots in your life.
When you take the time to be with yourself and self-reflect unbiasedly on where things are going right and wrong, you will notice similarities between multiple situations.
Think back to a time when something went your way. You could have gotten a job you have been wanting, achieved a personal goal, or landed that next big client.
Now, think back to when something didn’t go your way. Whether it be a failed relationship, you lost your job or landed short on something you had been working hard for.
What were some connections, or similarities, between the two situations in which one went your way and the other didn’t? On the flip side, what were some differences between the two situations?
For example,
Somebody loves talking, so they crushed an interview and got a job. Months later, they got fired since they were talking to people too much and missed deadlines.
This person may not know that their love of talking to people ultimately got them fired from their job, which would be considered a blind spot within their life.
By engaging in self-reflection, you will come to find that some of the similarities and differences between two situations and how they played out may be your blind spots.
Engaging a Third Party
Engaging a third party is another viable option if asking for feedback or self-reflection is not, or you want more guidance.
It can be through:
- Therapy
- Coaching
- Mentoring
- Or any form of meeting with another individual that can give you unbiased insight into your life.
The benefit of seeking a third party for additional insight into your life is they will answer your questions based on what they see and not whether it is the right thing to say or not.
People we are familiar with may only tell you what you want to hear and not what you need to hear.
An individual with no pre-established relationship with you will allow you to bounce your thoughts off them. While doing this, they may help you notice habits that you are engaging in without you even knowing, which we now know as blind spots.
If you want to seek outside support, BetterHelp has been blowing up online recently.
Taking Online Personality Assessments
Whether you enjoy taking online personality assessments or not, there are assessments out there that can be beneficial in getting to understand yourself.
While they may not always be the most accurate, they help to provide a foundation for who you are and how you operate.
Upon completing most online personality assessments, you learn your strengths and weaknesses based on the questions you answered.
When given this information, it allows you to self-reflect on areas of your life that play to your strengths and the areas that play to your weaknesses.
If done correctly, you may be able to reveal certain blind spots within your life that have since gone unnoticed.
You can then bring your results to others to not only get their feedback but also encourage them to take it. Then, you and the other person(s) compare results to learn similarities and differences to discover how the two, or more, of you can connect better.
One example of a free online assessment is the 16Personalities test, which many people have taken. This test takes no more than 10 minutes and allows you to understand yourself and others better.
Key Takeaways
One surefire way to uncover blind spots within your life is by asking for feedback from trusted sources.
By engaging in self-reflection, you will come to find that some of the similarities and differences between two situations and how they played out may be your blind spots.
The benefit of seeking a third party for additional insight into your life is they will answer your questions based on what they see and not whether it is the right thing to say or not.
How to Turn Blind Spots Into Strengths
Now that we know what blind spots are, along with ways to identify blind spots, we must know how to turn blind spots into strengths.
You will never benefit from identifying blind spots in your life if you do not capitalize on the positive or correct the negative ones.
Below are three ways that you can turn blind spots into strengths.
Write Them Down
Whether you are asking for feedback, self-reflecting, engaging a third party, or taking online assessments, you will uncover certain blind spots within your life.
As you are starting to uncover these areas, you must be sure to write them down.
By writing them down and taking notes, it helps train your brain to notice certain behaviors that occur and feed into these blind spots.
If you identify blind spots within your life and forgo writing them down, you will forget or downplay the impact these areas have on your life. Ultimately, this results in allowing these areas to go unnoticed.
When you identify blind spots within your life, write them down so that you can capitalize on or correct them over time.
Visualize Them
In addition to writing down and taking notes on your blind spots, you must be sure to visualize these areas along with the actions or behaviors you are currently engaging in that feed into these blind spots.
Writing down and taking notes on your blind spots is one step to identifying them, but you must also visualize these areas.
You can start to visualize these areas by asking yourself:
- What actions or behaviors do I engage in that would lead me or somebody else to notice this blind spot within myself?
- Has there ever been a time in the past that this blind spot impacted me negatively or positively?
- Has anybody else ever hinted or made comments about this blind spot?
It is important to visualize all that comes with your blind spots, as you must truthfully be able to see it for yourself before accepting that it is a blind spot within your life.
How will you ever be able to capitalize on or correct these areas if you can not see and accept the blind spots yourself?
Embrace Them
Lastly, when it comes to blind spots, you must be able to embrace them.
People might hesitate to accept a positive or negative behavior they exhibit within their life if they do not realize it themselves as they haven’t fully become aware of it themselves.
You must first verify if what you are learning about yourself is accurate, whether positive or negative.
Take a look at:
- What evidence made either yourself or somebody else notice this behavior within your life?
- Is the evidence based on something that happened once or multiple times?
- Is the behavior impacting my life negatively or positively?
If you discover or get told that you are exhibiting a behavior that you didn’t know you were prior, which is accurate, then learn to embrace that behavior.
Regardless of the behavior being positive or negative, you must embrace it to either correct it or capitalize on it as a strength.
Key Takeaways
You will never benefit from identifying blind spots in your life if you do not capitalize on the positive or correct the negative ones.
If you identify blind spots within your life and forgo writing them down, you will forget or downplay the impact these areas have on your life. Ultimately, this results in allowing these areas to go unnoticed.
It is important to visualize all that comes with your blind spots, as you must truthfully be able to see it for yourself before accepting that it is a blind spot within your life.
Conclusion
The skill of learning how to identify blind spots in your life can be challenging and uncomfortable, which will ultimately lead to a more fulfilling life.
Through learning what blind sports are, ways to identify blind spots, and how to turn blind spots into strengths, you can find these areas within your life that may have gone unnoticed.
While blind spots in your life may not be as easy to discover as blind spots when you are driving, it will be worth all the effort that you put into it.
–Your future self will thank you.
