The Blessing of Your Blind Spot

Why always focusing on the big picture is short-sighted.

During a recent surgery (thank you, I'm fine), as I sat in the pre-op waiting room in a backside-baring gown, I realized that the fellow in the next cubicle kept looking at me. I admit that, on a typical day, my ego might have gotten a boost. But on this day, with no make-up, no sleep and no food, I was frustrated rather than flattered. I couldn't reach my curtain to close it. I couldn't find a nurse within earshot. There was only one thing I could do - I took off my glasses. As soon as I couldn't see my nosy neighbor, I didn't care who or what he was looking at. Less sight, less tsuris. U.S. Olympic bobsled pilot Steven Holcomb had been piloting his four-man sled virtually blind due to an eye disease when he decided to have surgery to restore his vision. While the operation was successful, Holcomb found that his newly sharpened vision interfered with the instinctive driving style he had developed to compensate for his lost eyesight. So he scratched and dirtied his visor, deliberately obscuring his vision so that he could go back to driving by feel. His result? The Gold medal touch. The best yoga class I ever took was when one contact lens fell out on the way to the gym. Instead of my regular Zen-free practice of comparing everyone else's upright Roman columns to my Leaning Tower of Pisa, I focused exclusively on enjoying my own experience.   Om. We all know that having a clear, concise and crisp vision is critical in our personal lives and for our organizations. In fact, I facilitate countless meetings that help teams and organizations clarify and articulate a shared vision. I begin my work with coaching clients by asking "what do you want?" to help them discover and crystallize their personal vision. But in order to focus on what we want, and what we need to do to get it done, we sometimes need to deliberately blur our vision from peripheral distractions. By actively choosing to ignore (for a moment or for a while) what the other guy is doing, who's judging us, or how something looks rather than how it feels, we can better focus our time, energy, attention and actions. Click here to download 10 Questions to Help You Focus on What's Most Important. To your Success without the Tsuris, Deborah www.myjewishcoach.com