EP95 Mindset Monday - How to Spot a Blindspot

This is episode 95 of the Empowered Athlete podcast. Hey there. Happy Monday and thank you for joining us. Now, before we dive in with Kari, I have a question for you. Do you know someone who has been serving throughout the pandemic on the front lines? Because it's their job and it's what they love to do, to help others, to help the community, but perhaps they've been doing that for months under incredible stress and pressure because of this pandemic. They've not taken care of themselves in some way. Well, it's time to shift the focus and press the reset button. In the show notes is a link to our incredible program that's coming in September. I can't do it justice here, but check it out. Check out the video that Kari's made to learn about this incredible life changing program. For someone that you know or love or yourself, it is time to get it to the next level. This is the Empowered Athlete podcast Mindset Monday. 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life.

Today's topic is super freaking juicy because it's all about our blind spots. Because if this is something that you can make some progress on, this is the kind of thing that will progress you leaps and bounds and all kinds of the amazing things that you really want to make progress in. So your blind spots come in without you knowing it. So I'm going to give you a quick synopsis here. First of all, this is about how to spot your blind spot. And the first thing I'm going to tell you is that you can't. Here's what the research shows. The research shows that even when people or told about their blind spot biases, they still don't recognize them. So I'm going to tell a little bit more about this so that you can get this working for you instead of against you. It doesn't matter whether it's your physicality, your training, your work, your family, your communication, you want to be able to use this in a way that can work for you. So, number one, a blind spot is our way of thinking that prevents us from seeing things accurately. It literally is a blinder. It's literally we cannot see the thing there because it's stopping us. So it's preventing us from seeing things accurately. We need to recognize that the impacts on biases, on our judgment or the judgment of others while failing. We tend to look around, we see somebody interacting, we see somebody communicating, and we can see where their bias is, but we can't see it for ourselves even when we've been told about what it is. For instance, a confirmation bias is one that we interpret or we favor any of the information that we've received that confirms our pre existing beliefs. So if we've gone through had experiences and if that experience matches up with a pre existing belief in, then that's a confirmation bias. We are tending to go towards that. So I hope that makes sense for you. I'm going to give you a couple examples that are real life examples that I would see in the gym all the time. And there's research that backs this too. So for instance, if I have a client or an athlete who wants to gain weight, they would have this confirmation bias already that they're eating plenty and that they're eating enough. They've got this blind set around their eating even though they can't seem to gain weight. So same thing goes for losing weight. Research shows that with weight loss or weight gain, the people reporting what they're eating, the weight gain people, the people who are trying to weight gain would under report or sorry, over report what they're eating and the people trying to lose weight would actually underreport what they're eating. Their brain with their biases are tricking them into reporting things that aren't accurate. Again, I'm going to go back to that definition. A blind spot bias prevents us from seeing what things are accurately, are accurately around us. I'm missing my words here. So those biases will really cause those blind spots. So why would we care, why would we care about even seeing our blind spot? This is the most important part. What's really important about seeing our blind spots is going to make a huge change in our life overall. Number one, it will allow us to grow and expand. When we're not limited by our blind spots, the things that we can't see, then we can grow and expand into other areas or ways of thinking or decisions that we want to make that'll make a bigger impact on our lives. That's number one. Number two, when we have less blind spot bias, confirmation bias or blind spots in general, we, we have a better decision making ability for your work, for your family, for your training. We always want to be able to make the best decisions. We're making thousands of decisions every single day. Some of them aren't that important. A lot of them are important though. And so we don't want our blind spots impairing our ability to make decisions. So number three, why we would care about our blind spots is, is to have greater connection. When we have blind spots, it prevents us from hearing fully what the other person is saying because we're listening through our own blind spot filter. So again, we can't see our own blind spots. So I'm going to give you three ways that allow you to start to open up and see the blind spots. If we're even trying to look for our blind spots just by ourselves, we don't see our blind spots because we're so biased. So, number one, the first thing in order to find your blind spot is going to be to get feedback. And this is very, very powerful because I've watched this in the gym year after year, time after time with clients and athletes, where they've gotten feedback on something that has gone against what they believed about themselves or their life, against what they believed about their health or their athleticism or their goals. And when that happens, it's a disruption, but it also opens up the blind spot that they perhaps could not see before. So getting feedback is critical to open up your blind spots and be able to see. Getting feedback would look like asking someone, maybe it's a coach, maybe it's a professional, maybe it's a family member, but some someone whose opinion really matters to you, someone whose opinion is important in that field. So if it's the area of your health, if it's the area of your work performance, you want someone's feedback who is either an expert in that field or better at it than you are. If you get feedback from someone whose opinion matters to you or who's better at whatever the thing is than you are, then you're more likely to open up the blind spot that you couldn't see before. Again, I'm going to use a gym example. Someone might be amazingly coordinated at something, but they've always believed that there are klutz. And finally, me as a coach or someone else as a coach opens that up for them and they can finally start to see that, oh, maybe they had this previous belief that was a total blind spot for what actually was reality. So that is, number one, getting feedback. Number two, it's not just our own blind spots, it's other people's blind spots, too. And if you point out their blind spot, they're not likely to be able to even see it. And even if you do point it out, they still may have that bias or that blind spot in place. But one thing you can do that really helps a lot is when you're receiving information from someone, especially to help the communication paraphrase back to them what they said. When they hear their idea, their perspective paraphrase back in someone else's words, they are more likely to see what they may have been missing. It's very powerful, especially when there's decision making in a corporate setting, in a business environment, in a family environment, to make a hard decision going forward. And it's very powerful to gently paraphrase what someone else has said in order for them to start to see something in their own perspective that they were unaware of their own blind spot. So that's number two. And number three, in order to add light to these blind spots, number three is collect three compelling pieces of information that are support or evidence for whatever perspective or decision you're trying to make, and three pieces of evidence that are against whatever perspective or decision that you want to make. So when you collect those three compelling pieces of information and those three information against, then you have a greater view of being able to make the decision without your blind spots getting in the way as much. Now remember, they're still going to be there. If you have a blind spot bias, it's going to still be there even if you become aware of it. So continuing to bring in the pieces of evidence for whatever your perspective is and against whatever your perspective is is very powerful for you to start to become more aware of your own blind spot, or at least put it down on paper, so it's there for you. So again, the three reasons why you want to become more aware of your own blind spot biases is, number one, for your own growth, we want to be able to expand, number two, so that you have the ability to make better decisions. You've got very powerful decisions in your life, so you want to be able to make those better decisions. And number three, so you have greater connection. Because when we're listening through our own biases that we don't even know are there, we often don't connect or don't receive or don't hear other people the way we would like to fully receive. So, and the three ways that you can reduce your own blind spots in yourself or other people is, number one, get freaking feedback. You have to get feedback on your performance, on your ideas, on your perspectives, get feedback, but only from people whose opinions that matter to you, people whose opinions that they may, maybe they are a step ahead of you, maybe they're an expert in a field or in something that you're trying to attain. Get that feedback that's really important. Number two, paraphrase what you've heard from someone when you're repeating that back to them. They're going to be able to hear their words or their ideas in a different way than how they think them. That's really important. And number three, gain really acute. Accumulate those pieces of evidence for whatever your perspective or decision is and those pieces of evidence that are against whatever your perspective or your decision is. Because you want to be able to see all sides. It's the pros and cons list. Make that pros and cons list because you're going to start to see some of the ways that you're thinking that maybe you weren't aware of. Okay? That is your mindset Monday. This is how to spot a blind spot. This is the thing that's going to hopefully help you look at things a little bit differently this week and really light your week up. So have a fantastic rest of your Monday and have a fantastic rest of your week. So stay empowered. Keep it going. We opened up ton of this on the empowered team. This is why this is the topic today, because this came out in one of the coaching sessions and this came out is those blind spots that the person couldn't quite see, but when there's other people in the group and they're being coached, then the blind spots started to emerge and then all kinds of greater action and greater results start to come because of those blind spots being opened up. So have a fantastic day, guys. I hope this serves you. If you're not part of the empowered team, this may be a group that you really want to be for coaching, for your best health, your best life, your best perspectives, to really, really stay at peak performance every day. So we want you in. So message me, pop us a note, ask some questions, and we will see if we can get you into the empowered team if you're the right fit. Have a great day, guys.