[00:00] This is Peter Drucker, one of the most well known in the world management consults. He’s telling you that we all have blind spots. We all need someone who can help us think through our blind spots and see what we can’t see. If Peter Drucker saying this, the biggest brands and, you know, the top leaders in the world have leaned on his advice, then you should too.
Welcome to another episode of “Success for the Athletic-Minded Man,” real talk, unharnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw, Jr. And today we’re talking about blind spots. Blind spots are these unrecognized habits that we have, these tendencies that we have, these weaknesses.
That hinder our performance until they’re identified and then address until you do something about them. And I’m going to share with you today multiple ways you can both find them and also how to address them. And the analogy that I love that I heard from, I think I heard this first from

[01:00] Donald Miller who wrote the book, Story Brand, which is kind of one of those Business books that I’ve read multiple times.
Great business book. Donald Miller is the author again, but he said this. He said, we are on the inside of the jar trying to read the label. Like that concept just really crystallizes what blind spots are about. Like we need that person who’s outside of us. Somebody who can see the things that we can’t see somebody who can see the blind spots that we have.
We just can’t see them. Right. We all have them and we all need that person or people outside of us. To help us see those things. And so, you know, in my coaching program, reveal your path, we’ve coached hundreds of men in our program now, and we’re constantly revealing blind spots and helping them mitigate those blind spots and, or even completely overcome their negative impact and their negative consequences.
I’m going to share with you sort of how to identify those and why. And I’m also going to share with you the danger In actually identifying these and yes, there is a danger that you can go too far after you identify these I’m going to share with you how to how to mitigate that as well and by the end of this episode, you’re going to know how to

[02:00] identify address your blind spots and how to address those blind spots so you can improve your performance and and really uncover this invisible force or forces holding you back in your life sort of this glass ceiling that you might be bumping up against this.
And the way I want to do this or the plan for this episode is to share with you how elite athletes address blind spots. And you’ll see this and go, ah, okay, this makes sense. I can see this as well as I’m going to share with you what one of the world’s most famous business minds. Thinks about and how he talks about blind spots and before I jump into that make sure you give this a share with your friends Alright, who do you know that that would this would be helpful for this might be a colleague?
This might be somebody who’s a direct report that works for you, you know and share with them Hey, listen, we all have blind spots and I think this is an episode that will be helpful for you to listen to around what those might B and how to address them, et cetera. So give this a share. It’s episode four 97.
Yes. Four 97, which is means five hundreds right around the corner. I’ve got a special episode plan. So make sure you tune into that one. Uh, it’s hard to believe that when I was sitting in my

[03:00] walk in closet, hitting record on my computer. In 2015, that, uh, I would be at 500 episodes. It’s amazing. And all these crazy, amazing guests I’ve had on over the years, Tim Ferris, Jack Canfield, Russell Brunson, Joe DeSena, on and on all these amazing, uh, individuals.
So here we are 497, but you can give this a share and you can always just. Share jimharshawjr.com/497 is a direct link to the web page on my website where you’ll find those. But you can also subscribe on Apple and Spotify. Those are very helpful when you do that. It lets those algorithms know that you’re listening and lets them know that people love the podcast.
And that when they want to listen to it, it will tend to show this episode or this podcast more often. So thank you for the share. Again, any shares also on social media go a long way because really podcasts grow. The word of mouth. All right, let’s get into the conversation around blind spots. I want to share with you some examples from sports that are pretty fascinating that I identified in my research for this episode, stuff that I’ve heard of before and

[04:00] did some more research and uncovered some, some stories behind them.
I think you’re going to really like, uh, I’m going to share with you very, very quickly why you should identify them. how to identify them, the danger in focusing on them, and then also sort of what to do, like action items to mitigate the negative effects. So, uh, I’m going to start with me in terms of the examples.
So, When I showed up at the University of Virginia as a freshman in college, first year, they call it a UVA, we don’t call it freshman, we call it first year, Thomas Jefferson said that, uh, we never are a senior, we never graduate from learning, it just happens to be our first year of learning. So anyway, a little background about, uh, Thomas Jefferson’s university there.
But as a first year, I showed up in the wrestling room and My coach actually wasn’t even my coach. He was the senior wrestler on the team. He was an all american the prior year now He’s a fifth year senior just kicking my rear end up and down the mat. I mean just humiliating humbling Experienced wrestling with Mike his name’s dr.
Mike Krafchik. He pointed

[05:00] out to me He said he kept attacking the same leg over and over and over, getting a single leg, which is, if you’re not a wrestling person, uh, leg attacks are the most common sort of offense or ways you, uh, attack your opponent and, and, and try to score a takedown. And I’m right handed and it’s most common for right handed wrestlers to have their right leg in front.
You have kind of like, boxing. You have one leg in front and one leg in back. It’s actually in boxing. If you’re right handed, it tends to be your left leg forward, but in wrestling, it tends to it’s your right leg forward. Okay, so I’m a right leg lead, and it’s most common for a right handed person to reach and make contact or tie up with your opponent with your right hand.
So if you can picture In a wrestling stance, right leg in front, right hand reaching for your opponent. Well, I had this blind spot that I never had addressed to me by my other coaches prior, Mike said, Jim, when you have a right leg lead and you’re reaching with your right hand, you are leaving nothing to defend your right leg, your leg is exposed and it’s very easy.
Take a single leg. This is why I’m taking you down

[06:00] constantly. And so I adjusted, I kept my right hand down and started making contact and reaching with my left hand. It was hard. It was different. It was a change. It was an old habit that I had to break and a new habit that I had to develop. But I got reminded of this blind spot over and over every time I failed to change the habit, but I eventually did, and it was a huge.
Huge improvement in my wrestling. This blind spot that was revealed to me, I didn’t even know that existed. You have those too. I have them too. Like we have, we all have these blind spots. Like we don’t even know that they are there, but when, once we identify them and reveal them, we can do something about it.
In this case, I had some coaching around it and I kept getting reminded of it. And it was pretty obvious when I didn’t change this flaw and now I’m. But on the mats in years, unfortunately. But even if I’m just messing around with my boys or I get on the mats, actually I do get on the mats with my sons every once in a while, we get on the mats and scrap a little bit, but it’s just very natural for me to keep my right hand down and reach with my left hand and make

[07:00] contact with that left hand.
And I’m a much smarter about that now. And this is something that I always had to work on though. It never really went away completely. I had to always think about it, always work around it. I would always pay attention to it for years and years. And it just helped make me a better wrestler. All right. So that was an example I can think back of in my life, but let’s think of somebody else who you actually know, or you have heard of Tiger Woods.
So I had known some of this about Tiger Woods, but I did some research on it. I thought it was really fascinating. I think you will find this fascinating too. So in 1997, he won the masters. historic 12 stroke victory at the Masters. And this is a big deal. This young guy comes out, you know, this Tiger Woods comes out and dominates the Masters.
Holy mackerel. He is on top of the world. Well, um, He actually realized, with the help of his coach, Butch Harmon, that he had several huge flaws in his swing.

[08:00] And this is the guy, he had a dominant win, dominant performance. He decides to go through this. Complete overhaul in his swing. Total change in his swing.
With the help of a coach. So Butch Harmon helped him realize what these flaws were. Helped him make these changes. He didn’t realize he had these. He was obviously very good at what he did. He was coached well. He was trained well. He won the freaking Masters. But he had a blind spot. I hope that’s enough information for you to go, ah, okay.
Yes. I have blind spots too. I need to make these changes. I need to figure out what those are and make changes. Well, this was in Tiger Woods, this multiple times throughout his career. So he went through this major swing overhaul and it changed how he played. Completely changed how he played and he did nothing but get.
Better because of it. And I actually found a YouTube video. It’s fascinating. A YouTube video of him talking with Butch Harmon and going through all the modifications he made to a swing. So if you’re a golf fan, or if you just think it’d be fascinating to watch. I’m going to put that YouTube

[09:00] link in the action plan.
So go to jimharshawjr.com/action. Or if you’ve already done that, you’ll get my Monday emails with the action plan right in it. So you’ll have that YouTube video in your inbox. Um, really fascinating. And if you’re listening to this, you know, who knows, you know, months or years, even later, you can still always go back and grab that action plan, um, and check it out.
So episode four 97. Okay. The next example is. This is a name you probably heard when watching the Olympics, the Summer Olympics. Shelly Ann Fraser Price, Jamaican sprinter. And she was young, she was this world class. Young athlete, young sprinter. And everybody knew that, you know, kind of this, you know, she’s got all this amazing potential.
And then she started working with a coach named Steven Francis. Steven Francis helped her identify these flaws in a running posture. Like she, they realized that she had this, this exaggerated forward lean. In her posture as she was running.

[10:00] And so they changed her posture. They, they focused on improving her posture, improving her start, improving all the different phases of her sprint.
And it completely changed how she ran. And you’re like, well, it’s running, right? It’s just put one foot in front of the other really fast. Well, no, there’s, there’s techniques to it. And without the help of a coach, she would not have made these changes. She was already world class. She went from good to great.
And I think that’s why you’re listening to this podcast and listening to this episode is you’re like, okay, I’m, I’m good. I want to go from good to great. I know I have potential. Uh, I want to unlock that fully unlock that potential. And, um, she went on to be an eight time Olympic medalist, a three time gold medalist, which she had been good.
Otherwise. Yeah. She might have won some Olympic medals, who knows, but she went from good to great because she had blind spots that were identified by a coach. Now, the last example I want to share with you before we get into the why to identify, then how, and then what to do about it. I want to give you a quote from a guy named Peter Drucker.

[11:00]
If you don’t know who Peter Drucker is, if you are a manager or a leader or you’re an executive, This is absolutely a name you probably have heard his name, or you may even have one of his books. Um, the book that I have of his is called the daily Drucker. So Peter Drucker, he’s a world famous management consultant or was he he’s passed away, but business week years ago called him the inventor of modern management.
I mean, that’s how big of a deal this guy is. He’s kind of the original management consultant and the book daily Drucker. It’s like one of the, it’s the first or one of the first, or maybe, maybe, maybe the first. Uh, of the sort of daily books. Um, you know, there’s the daily stoic, there’s, um, the daily press field.
There’s these daily books out there. And this is the first one I ever bought. The first one I’d ever heard of, and I’m holding it in my hand right now, but it is, um, such a good book and has all these sort of tidbits and pieces of wisdom in it, but it’s a really, really good book. And it’s for a desktop reference.
You should, everybody should have a copy. I really feel like, but he said this,

[12:00] he said, we all need somebody who can help us think through our blind spots. and help us see what we can’t see. This is Peter Drucker, one of the most well known in the world management consultants. He’s telling you that we all have blind spots.
We all need someone who can help us think through our blind spots and see what we can’t see. If Peter Drucker saying this in the biggest brands and, you know, the top leaders in the world have leaned on his advice, then you should too. So let’s talk about why, why should you identify these? So these are invisible.
These blind spots are invisible forces that are holding you back. Um, I train sometimes I run with a weight vest on, especially when I’m training for the Murph. The Murph is, uh, if you’re not familiar with the Murph, it’s a crossfit style workout that was popularized by when Lieutenant Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL was killed in action.
Uh, it was his favorite workout. It got renamed the Murph and it’s, uh, it’s this, it’s a one mile run.

[13:00] Then you do a hundred pull-ups, 200 pushups, 300 air squats, and then another one mile run. Okay? So one mile run, 100, 200, 300, and then a one mile run, all with a 20 pound vest on all for time. And you time yourself and.
It’s become really popular every Memorial Day, there’s a MRF and, you know, with my clients in our private group, you know, I’d make a post and everybody who wants to volunteer to train for the MRF and do the MRF, we all, a bunch of us do it. It’s really a cool thing to do. And it’s a great way to sort of kick off Memorial.
It’s, it’s done every Memorial Day. And I actually have a group of guys I do it with every week here. I, Pretty regularly anyway, but there’s this Murph and I train with a weight vest on. And I always noticed. So I always start by training. I put on 10 pounds first and then when, then the next week I add two pounds, add two pounds, add two pounds.
I worked my way up over the course of a couple of months to the Memorial Day Murph. And man, if you just put 10 pounds on. You feel it, especially in the pull ups, you know, but man, you feel it in the run. And there’s just this, this weight,

[14:00] this invisible force holding you back. And that’s what blind spots are.
It’s like carrying this extra weight. That you don’t even see, and it’s holding you back, it’s slowing you down, it’s like driving with the parking brake on, it’s just harder, but you don’t even know it, and it’s affecting your income, you know, it affects how you talk to people, your tone of voice, your posture, the actions that you take and the confidence that you have when you take those actions, this all trickles down to your family, it affects The balance that you have, it affects your patience at home, how present you are with your family.
It affects your health and fitness, it affects all these areas of your life. And they’re all tied together, right? You’re like, well, no, it just affects me at work. Well, if it’s affecting you at work, it’s affecting every area of your life as well. So this is what blind spots do. So this is, that’s the why behind why you should.
Identify these and take the time and invest the time and the money, maybe even to identify those. And, and so how do you do it? All right. So let’s talk about the, how, how can you identify your

[15:00] blind spots? A couple of different ways, several different ways. The easiest way is to hire a coach, right? It’s just what Peter Drucker said is getting that somebody outside of you who can help you see that blind spot, who can help you see the things that you can’t see, who will call you out when you need called out, if you had a coach or at least.
A coach who, who you feel like was a good coach for you in a sport, you know that they can see things you can’t see. Hey, when you went up to take that shot, you dropped your elbow. Or, you know, whenever you stepped on the line for shooting those free throws, you didn’t do, go through your routine, and you’re out of position.
Whatever it is, like, they see these things that you can’t see. Um, so a coach can do that. A therapist or a counselor can help you. Uh, in different ways. Coaches and, and, and counselors and therapists have, have different roles. But. Those are, that’s another example of a person outside of you. Uh, here’s another one.
This is a great one. A spouse. They’ll tell you what your blind spots are. Um, this is a little bit, a little bit tongue in cheek, but, um, it’s a little bit not too, right? They’re certainly going to tell you where you’re, where you’re lacking and

[16:00] you should tune in. You should listen to a little bit of that and you should pay attention to what your spouse or significant other might be saying.
Your kids will let you know if you can open up and have that relationship with your kids. And another one is an assessment. All right. Um, we use the disc assessment in our coaching program. We’ve used another one called the BSA in the past. We now use the disc. Uh, there’s also a three 60 assessment that you can do.
And I’ve had a three 60 done before, and this is an amazing experience. Um, and it’s basically, there’s a survey that’s provided to a combination of people who report to you, also people who you report to. who are above you, so above you and below you, and also colleagues, right? People who are to your right and left, so all around you, up, down, right, left.
People who are 360 degrees around you, and they’re answering the same questions, and you’re getting that feedback. And it’s usually compiled in a way where you don’t know who said what, and then that’s giving you insights into blind spots that you don’t know you have. It’s, it’s going to reveal. Things you’re good at, maybe you didn’t realize,

[17:00] you know, blind spots that are maybe positive blind spots.
You didn’t, I didn’t know that I was actually good at this thing, but also blind spots that are, they’re holding you back. All right. So, uh, these are some different ways to identify the how, so let me talk about the danger in this and then I’ll wrap up with action. I’d like what to do about this. So once you identify these blind spots, what can you do to actually improve, fix, be aware of these over time?
And so the danger of focusing on them too much. Is this whenever I was growing up, I used to watch film with my dad, with my coaches, and we always focused so much on my mistakes and the explanation was, well, we don’t need to talk about the things you’re doing well. Because you’re already doing those well.
And so we only are going to talk about your mistakes when watching film. And you know, so the blind spots, we’re only going to focus on the blind spots. So the experience felt like me having nothing but blind spots. And so you really do have to focus

[18:00] on the positives. What are you doing? Well, put together a highlight film, like a highlight film would have been really helpful for me to understand.
Oh, you’re, you’re actually doing all these great things and things are really don’t going well. And, you know, the, the strengths that you have, like do those more, really, you know, push more and rely on those more. And while you work on your blind spots. Um, and here’s an example from sports, Tony Gwynn. Tony went Hall of Fame baseball player.
He was known for this really sort of meticulous approach to his hitting and his training. And so he would have his wife record his at bats. I’ve heard the story about told his wife recorded more or the video guy for the team would record them. And so he would animal analyze his unsuccessful. Right? So his failures, his mistakes, and he would, he would review all the film of like what I did wrong, my blind spots, essentially.
And then he would analyze his successful at bats who would watch the film of all the mistakes, all his

[19:00] flaws, all his, all his failures, throw that away. And then he would watch his successful ones. He would reinforce the fact that he was really, really good. And he credited this, this, this style in this video analysis was turning around his career and, and helping him address his flaws, but also stay positive and realize how good he actually was.
And this was part of why he. Had a career batting average of 338 and he’s considered one of the greatest hitters in baseball history And so you had that’s the danger the danger here is saying you have these blind spots and only focusing on the blind spots Really really critical to focus on your positives and your strengths and this goes back to a great book.
Dr Nate Zinser who I’ve had on the podcast back in episode number 336, and that was like early 2022 when I recorded that, but he wrote a book called The Confident Mind. Dr. Zinsser was the director of performance at West Point for over 30 years. He worked with two time Super Bowl MVP

[20:00] Eli Manning and all these other elite athletes, but one of the exercises that he would have people do, and this is with world class athletes, world class performers in different walks of life, he would have them actually document And memorize their wins, their successes, examples of times when they crushed it.
So you’re not tagged with that blind spots or everything. I’ve only got blind spots and this negative sort of self doubt that can, that can creep into all of us. And that’s critical. That is the danger here of identifying blind spots is that you focus on them too much. You need to focus on your strengths.
You have to remind yourself of your strengths, and this is something that Dr. Zinser would do and does with his his world class clients. Okay, so now what to do about them. We covered a lot of different areas here so far. We gave you some examples from sports about blind spots and talked about Peter Drucker, and we talked about why to identify these and how to identify these and the danger of focusing too much on them.
So now let’s get to the meat here. What do we do about them? First

[21:00] thing is you have to be mindful. Okay. Just be mindful. What do I mean? Be mindful. Okay, Jim, that sounds good. Next. No, be mindful. That means be reminded of these. Okay. When I was wrestling, I was reminded painfully quite often whenever I made a mistake, every time I got taken down, but you have to be reminded.
So I, one thing that I would do when I was wrestling is I had a little notebook, one of those kind of two inch wide, three inch high notebooks, super small notebooks, and I would keep it in, in my locker. Inside of my wrestling shoes. So whenever I showed up at wrestling practice in order to put my shoes and, you know, get open a locker and put my shoes on, I would have to take that notebook out and I would look at it and I would, I would remember the things that I wanted to work on.
The thing, my focus areas, I would, I would look at those and I’d put those in my tennis shoes, my street shoes. I go to practice after practice in order to put on my street shoes. I would have to take out that notebook and I’d look at it again. I was reminded and going, okay, did I actually work on those things?
So this. Super easy, low friction way of being reminded of the blind spots and just areas that I wanted to work on and wanted to

[22:00] improve was enough for me to be mindful. And what is that for you? And that might be maybe a post it note on your computer and something written on your whiteboard, a reminder on your phone, something simple.
Right. Don’t overthink this. Don’t think, okay, I’ve got to come up with some crazy, you know, convoluted nuanced plan or scheme. No, it can be pretty simple to be honest. All right. Another thing is to create a plan, to create a long term plan, to actually improve on this. And maybe that is working with a coach.
Maybe that is, you know, getting some kind of training, et cetera. And so that training might look like, okay, let’s say you determine your blind spot is, Hey, I’m a big picture. Vision, strategic thinker, but I get, I struggle when I get into the details. I struggle whenever I get into, you know, execution, right?
I’m a, I’m a visionary. And that’s the, that’s kind of how I’m wired. Well, maybe you need to create a plan to take a project management course. Simple, right? Maybe it’s like, how do I manage my

[23:00] projects and keep things on track and continue to execute even when I have the big vision, let’s take the opposite person, right?
Maybe you find out your blind spot is man. I am really detail oriented. And this is me, by the way, really detail oriented and. So maybe you need to take a course in strategic planning, you know, maybe some kind of plan to do a course or a program or some kind of strategic planning, right? So training could be part of that plan to improve.
Another way to deal with, to address these blinds, a blind spot you might have. is to think about how you can hedge against it. So for me, I can be an over thinker, and so my plan is to be more of a ready, fire, aim type of person. Right? I’m like ready, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim, aim. Then fire, you know, like I’ve gotta overcome that.
And, and I, I do, by taking more of a ready fire aim, I, I, I know that I’m a thinker. I overthink, I wanna do things, I wanna do things right, like, you

[24:00] know, which is why, you know, in the early days of my, my building, my program and bring on clients, it’s like, gosh, I don’t know if the program’s just right. I gotta work on it more.
I gotta, I can’t, you know, really bring on more clients until I work on it. And, and it took me years to really feel comfortable, whereas. Other entrepreneurs be like, man, it’s good enough. Boom. Let’s just sell this thing and get out there and get it out to market. Now it was like, I took too long. Long as I shouldn’t say too long, but you know, it is a very good program.
It’s really dialed in because of this, right? So there, you know, there’s, there’s really two sides to this coin. I’m a detailed thinker, um, which means things are done, right. Um, but that can sometimes the blind spot, you know, the other side of that coin is simply that I can get stuck in the details, right?
So you got to think about how you can hedge against. That blind spot or that that weakness, right? Um, another way is to, to hire people, to cover those higher people, to cover those blind spots. I’ll use that, that big picture example. If you’re a big picture, strategic thinker, visionary, and you’re not great with follow through, we’ll get somebody, you know, hire

[25:00] somebody who can help you follow through, you know, you can, you can hire somebody to execute for you to be your project manager.
And, you know, you can go on like an upwork. com platform, which is, uh, I’ve hired multiple times from there over the year, many, many times over the year, probably, you know, 10 different hires over the years from that platform. And you can hire people from all over the world who are better than you. At whatever your blind spot is.
Right. For, like I said, for me, it’s, you know, I tend to do things right into a fault and I can get stuck in the details for me. I’ve hired a coach or coaches and I have a mastermind group that helped me break out of that. Right. Who called me out, who go, wait a second, you’re overthinking, pull the trigger, get off your ass, do the thing.
And so these are some ways you can address these. And lastly, is this get accountability, find accountability, you know, going back to that Donald Miller quote that, you know, we’re on the inside of the jar, trying to read the label. You need that person who’s outside of you, who can see your blind spots, who can see the

[26:00] things that you can’t see.
Um, like Peter Drucker said, we all need somebody who can help us think through our own blind spots and help us see what we can’t see. We all need someone, not like most of us, some of us, everybody but the, the Tom Brady’s of the world, everybody but the Steve Jobs’s of the world, like, not like, everybody has blind spots and we all need that person outside of us.
So you can hire a coach, you can join a mastermind group, um, and if you want to take a very, very small step, you can join my community. We have a premium community, it’s 97 a month if you love it. Great. If you don’t like it after a few weeks, you can just opt out and get a full refund after that, uh, you know, for any time in the first few weeks, or if you want to just kick the tires and join my free program, join the free program.
It will bring you accountability. It will bring you clarity. Uh, I’m going to lead you through a seven day course on how to set the right goals and achieve them faster. And you’re going to start to identify your blind spots. You’re going to start, you’re going to have that accountability that you need in place to start moving

[27:00] forward.
In the right way. All right. So you can join the free one. Just go to jimharshawjr.com/free. If you want to join the premium course, go to it’s a, we’ll have the link in the action plan. That one’s school.com, skool.com/RYP, which is reveal your path, right? We’ll have the links in the action plan.
Oh yeah. As always, you can go to the action plan, jimharshawjr.com/action. All right. Now, listen, I want you to take action on this. I want you to move forward. I want you to, to get some value out of this and. So think about your one action item. And to be honest, maybe your one action item is to go ahead and listen to the episode three 36 with Nate Zinser.
Um, really fascinating interview. And, and I hope you gain a lot of value out of it. And I look forward to interacting with you. I look forward to chatting with you over in the community. Cause we talk about these podcast episodes every week. We make a post in there and we have a conversation. I’m in there.
My other coaches are in there, uh, helping you pull the most value from this. All right. I look forward to seeing you. I look forward to seeing you in the community. I look forward to talking to you. Take action. Good luck.

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