How to Find Your Blindspots in Life and Turn Them Into Strengths

To achieve change, you need to have clarity about where making changes will most help you. The simple and effective method of reviewing your ‘wheel of life’ will trump the confusion of not knowing where to start. Grab a pen and paper, draw a circle and divide it into pie segments that represent the major compartments -- the wheel -- of your life:

Firstly, rate how satisfied you are with each area of your life. One equates to lower satisfaction whilst ten indicates complete contentment. Now provide a second rating against each area to represent where you would like that level of satisfaction to be.

Look at the areas denoting lower satisfaction. Look to see where the disparity between where your actual and desired satisfaction levels are greatest. Those are clues as to where you might be best to pay primary focus. Sometimes personal areas of your life need attention before you can operate better in other areas such as your career and business.

Don’t make the mistake of asking non-qualified individuals for feedback or ideas as to how you could improve. It makes no sense to seek advice and ideas from your partner or spouse who has only every known employee land. Their support role for you might be best as a cheerleader, not as a business coach or advisor.

Invest in finding the right people who have demonstrated the capacity and a competent history relevant to your journey to become primary sources of advice and recommendations. Let your due diligence entail asking potential coaches to provide evidence of the changes and results you desire. It’s one thing to develop a strategy and be told what to do. It’s another to work with practitioners who can also see cracks in your road ahead and help you decipher what will be most relevant to you and your industry.

Don’t dismiss the value of your coworkers’ feedback, too. Co-founder of human capital management consultancy Talentsmart, Dr Travis Bradberry highly endorses three hundred and sixty-degree surveys as apt tools for fleshing out attention-needing areas. Getting to see yourself through others’ eyes who are most affected by how you think, behave and operate is one of the rawest, valuable and accurate sources of feedback.

As harsh as peer feedback can be, it is a golden opportunity to take a hard stare at yourself in the mirror. How you now go about your personal transformation shouldn’t just include setting goals for improvement. Also, aim to recognize areas that reflect positively upon you.

Give as much attention to capitalizing on and continuing exercising those activities which allow you to obtain your optimal flow. Research shows this state is the prime foundation from which you stretch and grow through some uncomfortable lessons and achieve long-lasting positive change.

Did you realize you automatically accept advice from associates with qualifications or titles but put those with relevant runs on the board under more scrutiny? Perhaps you become more jovial or flirtatious when in the company of colleagues you consider to be more attractive. We all do it.

Unconscious biases can be the thorn in our side making us oblivious to recruiting new employees in our own likeness. The diversity of skills, approaches and perspectives becomes insular. It’s not just our own effectiveness that is suffering. Our business becomes thwarted too.

Engaging a coach, mentor or psychologist (and ideally, all three) doesn’t just afford you a supportive, encouraging guiding light of another professional perspective. It’s a probe without personal agenda to prod and poke you to recognize your blind spots -- those pivotal opportunities, warning signs and alarm bells.

Set an ongoing agenda with your psychologist to include reviewing attachment patterns and maladaptive coping strategies that stall you from exercising your potential. Create an agreement with your coach to call out you out on your shortcomings without the fluff. Confess to your mentor that you’re afraid to admit your prejudice.

Continually work on identifying triggers that rattle your emotional and mental cages. You become more fully informed of values you hold that are underpinning your performance, productivity, quality of results and also lack thereof. The transparency can liberate you to turn the tables on belief systems that no longer serve your career success.