We all have blind spots. You know, those things that other people know about us, but we can’t see in ourselves. In this episode of By Your Life, we talk about blind spots and how to deal with them.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/2019/19_10_27.mp3

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 27, 2019

Welcome to the eighty-third episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life. If you haven’t already, please sign up for notifications, and if you know of someone who can benefit from By Your Life, tag them, share it, and like it.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. A friend of mine got a new truck recently and it has this great feature on the side-view mirrors. There is an indicator that lights up when there is a vehicle in your blind spot. If you use this feature, you aren’t likely to change lanes into the path of another car and that is a saving grace! Wouldn’t our lives be better if people could be equipped with a blind-spot indicator?

We all have blind spots. You know, those things that other people know about us, but we can’t see in ourselves. Sometimes blind spots can be a positive trait or a special gift that we have that we aren’t aware of, so we don’t use it, or we are so used to it we take it for granted. But more often, a blind spot is a weakness or worse, it is a negative trait that harms our relationships with God and others.

In our Gospel reading this week, Jesus tells the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Lk 18:9-14) and condemns the self-righteous, critical attitude of the Pharisee. As I was reading it, I must admit I found myself imitating him. You know, “Thank God I’m not like the Pharisee!” When referencing this parable, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Those who pretend not to need salvation are blind to themselves.” (CCC 588) They have a blind spot.

If we are honest, there is a little bit of the Pharisee in all of us. You only have to scroll through a handful of social media posts to see it. People use foul language to condemn others for foul behavior. They are modern-day examples of “those who [are] convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. (Lk 18:9) They don’t see a problem with their self-righteous condemnation of others. They have a blind spot.

We all have blind spots and most of us want to know about them so we can do something about them. If we have spinach in our teeth, we want to know about it so we can remove it. The same goes for our unfavorable personal habits and traits. If we were aware of them, we’d want to change them.

At work, blind spots can be the Achilles heel of leadership and limit our effectiveness. Without self-awareness, we operate disconnected, unaware of how others perceive us, and unable to take full responsibility for our results. In an article in Inc. magazine, the author, Marissa Levin, listed what she claimed to be the Top Ten Leadership blind spots. I don’t know if these are truly the top 10, but it is a good list to reflect upon and I’d like to share my top 5 from her list:

1. Going it alone (or being afraid to ask for help.) Often, the blind spot is that the person thinks they are taking personal responsibility by going it alone. I have a client who feels that it is a sign of weakness to consult others. This is a symptom of pride. As a result, he invests a lot of time fully developing a plan before getting feedback and is crushed when the rest of the team doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace his solutions. He could avoid this self-imposed consequence by getting input from others before investing a lot of time and energy into going it alone.

We can try to go it alone spiritually too. We operate disconnected and unaware of our need to be totally dependent on God. St. Paul acknowledged that it was because of his dependence on God that the “Lord stood by [him] and gave [him] strength” (2 Tim 4:17) so “that through [him] the proclamation might be completed, and all the Gentiles might hear it.” (2 Tim 4:17) God doesn’t ask us to go it alone. Thinking that we need to or assuming that we can, is a blind spot.

2. Being insensitive of your behavior on others (or being unaware of how you show up.) I have another client who falls into this category. He is demeaning of others when he encounters a problem. He isn’t wrong about the problem being a problem, but he is wrong in how he handles it. These leaders lack emotional intelligence.

We often aren’t aware of how we show up for prayer either. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, just look around at Mass. Let me just say that unfortunately, there is a lack of evidence of a community that is humbled before the Lord.

3. Having an “I know” attitude (or valuing being right above everything else.) This is one of my weaknesses. I’ve been consciously working on being open to other possibilities. I may have one idea in mind, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t alternatives and better ones at that.

This is true of prayer too. There is no one right way to pray. Some people may have a formula that works for them and they want to push it on others. But as we heard in our first reading from Sirach, “The LORD is a God of justice,
who knows no favorites…He hears the cries of the oppressed.” (Sir 35:15-16)

4. Blaming others or circumstances (or playing the victim; refusing responsibility.) I encounter this in my coaching practice a lot because unfortunately, companies often reserve engaging the services of a coach for their “problem” employees who need fixing. So, when I’m working with a “problem” employee, they are quick to blame everything that is wrong in the workgroup, team or department on someone else. Every time I try to redirect the conversation back to the person in the room, they deflect it back to another person’s failings. People who do this are un-coachable, and this is why they are a problem.

Blaming others is victim-speak. Being a victim is a blind spot. But listen to St. Paul. He wrote, “At my first defense no one appeared on my behalf, but everyone deserted me.”, but he didn’t blame them. Instead, he wrote, “May it not be held against them!” (2 Tim 4:16)

5. Treating commitments casually (or not honoring the other person’s time, energy, resources.) I encounter these people a lot in my volunteer roles. These people think that just because they are a volunteer, commitments are optional and not obligatory. What they don’t realize is that when they fail to follow through on a volunteer responsibility, they violate trust. This hurts them professionally as I would never recommend them for anything because they aren’t trustworthy.

What about our spiritual commitments? By our baptism, we entered a covenant with God. Do we treat this commitment casually? In his letter to Timothy, St. Paul encourages faithfulness to God. He writes, “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:7).

So how do we address blind spots if we don’t know we have them? This is a good question. Before we ask it, let’s go back to the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector where Jesus teaches that the fundamental attitude of the Christian disciple must be the recognition of sinfulness and complete dependence on God’s graciousness. If we want to address our sinfulness, we must acknowledge that our human nature includes sin. If we want to address our blind spots, we must acknowledge that they exist.

The problem is that there is an underlying paradoxical attitude that gets in our way. It is the attitude that separates the weak from the strong. The weak hide behind a mask of strength. They fear the truth that might expose them, so they avoid it. The strong, on the other hand, acknowledge they have weaknesses and seek to identify and address them so they can continuously improve. The weak can’t handle the hit to their ego of being less than they think they are. The strong, on the other hand, have the wisdom to seek out the truth because they have confidence in their reliance on God to overcome their sinfulness and confidence that with the help of others they can overcome their weaknesses.

Back to the question of how to address blind spots if we don’t know we have them. The first step is to create awareness. Because blind spots are usually unconscious behavior, we must bring them into our consciousness. We have to become aware of them. When we have spinach in our teeth, we can use a mirror to reflect our image so we can see what was previously hidden from us. When we have a blind spot, we can ask others, a coach, a colleague, a family member or a friend, to be our mirror by asking for feedback.

A small but relevant example of seeking help to reveal blind spots is used by public speakers or anyone who cares about improving their communication skills, and that is identifying and eliminating filler words. We all know when someone else uses filler words, the problem is that they don’t know they use them. They are blind spots. I can think of a dozen examples. A friend who says, “and um”, a client who says “and everything”, a colleague who says “absolutely, absolutely”, a priest who says “really and truly”, a millennial who says “like”, a talk show host who says, “you know”, and the list goes on.

Years ago, I met with a young man who was interested in career coaching. He was bright, had good experience, but included “and, um, you know” two to three times in every sentence he spoke. It was exhausting to filter these fillers from his talk so I could hear what he had to say. I asked him if he realized how often he said “and, um, you know” and he had no idea how bad his habit was. So, before we did anything else, I gave him some homework. He had to go home and ask his roommates and friends to help him by raising a finger every time they heard him saying “and, um, you know.” When he met with me the next week, he had practically eliminated these fillers and when he used them, he caught himself.

Awareness is the first step to changing a habit. Asking for feedback is the first step to creating awareness. Humility is the first step to asking for feedback. Humility is the prerequisite to addressing our blind spots and humility also necessary to address our spiritual blindness.

The Catechism says humility is the foundation of prayer (CCC 2559) and as Sirach beautifully wrote, “The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds; it does not rest till it reaches its goal, nor will it withdraw till the Most High responds.’ (Sir 35:21) This was the prayer of the tax collector who with great humility “stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’” (Lk 18:13) By contrast, the Pharisee’s prayer is a boastful, self-aggrandizement that is thinly-veiled as gratitude to God.

St. Paul too had been a student of the law. He too thought salvation was achieved by following the letter of the law and self-righteously persecuted those who denied this teaching. But then, he was transformed by an encounter with the Risen Lord and his life was lived dependent on, and for the glory of God, as he proclaims, “To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.” (2 Tim 4:18)

Are we, you and I, living our lives dependent on and for the glory of God? Where are we missing the mark? Are we like St. Paul, being poured out like a libation? (2 Tim 4:6) Are we giving our all? Do we offer 100% to God? Are we 100% dependent on God? If not, what are we holding back or choosing instead and is it worth it?

God is your blind spot indicator, but you have to allow him to show you the way. Let your prayer make you available to God and your encounter with Jesus in prayer help you see what you need to avoid or move toward that which you have been avoiding that will make you a better-version-of-yourself. I am confident that God will bless you abundantly if you ask him and like St. Paul you will glorify the Lord by your life.

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