They say we are our own worst enemy. 100%! When it comes to giving advice to others, we act and sound like experts. But when it comes to following our own advice, we become paralysed and lose our way very quickly. At times, we even sabotage ourselves for that matter. It’s like everything we’ve learned about how to tackle life issues, big, small or ugly, all goes out of the window in a flash. But why is it the case?
In the first five month of my blogging experience, I talked about many great lessons and inspirations that came to my life. When I wrote, I often had this thing in mind: I want to walk readers through my journey and give them the leverage to deal with their own challenges in similar situations. Yes, on paper, I did just that. But then one day when I ran into a bump in the road, The irony? I found myself not coping well. The positive stuff I’d been advocating all went down the drain. I felt like a fraud. At that point I decided to cancel my website altogether. It may sound a bit over the top or too dramatic in my reaction but my then-sentiment was that if I can’t be a testament to the things I pitch about, then it’ll probably be useless and meaningless for me to keep on doing this. So, I went ahead and shut down my first website completely and permanently. Of course, I came back a few weeks later, launched a new website and started blogging again.
Strangely, in the last few days, I kept going back to the idea of “blind spot”. We know in the context of driving a car, there’s an area we can’t see. Therefore, checking our blind spot is essential if we want to stay safe on the road. Using this as an analogy, it’s fair to say that in life we also have a blind spot somewhere – an area for improvement we can’t see ourselves. Now as I look back on those times why I failed to put knowledge into action, in part if not all might’ve had something to do my blind spot. To that effect, it may well explain the reason why it’s harder to take our own advice when a blind spot gets in a way.
So, where can we start to reduce our blind spot and make way for action taking? Perhaps it’s a matter of:
- Learning to give advice to yourself like you do to others
- Learning to see the subject from a third party’s standpoint
- Learning to view things from a different angle or corner
- Learning to appreciate the whole reflection in the mirror
The list can go on and on if I dive in deeper and deeper. That’s the beauty of taking a personal development journey – there’s often something new and profound to explore and expand. For now though I’ll just take one step at a time, look before I change to the fast lane…
Ted Tsai 