Another glorious year has passed. What an amazing, astounding year this was!

If you've been reading my writings for this year and more, you have seen the evolution of my ideas and growth of the concepts. Sometimes I'm struck speechless.

When I think about Blind Spots, I'm painfully reminded of my own and how many there have been and still are.

Much of my focus has been on those positive aspects of the things we discover in our Blind Spots - no doubt because I'm such a positive, optimistic fellow.

Be that as it may, I've been thinking about the negatives, too. Not the idea of Reverse Blind Spots that I discussed in October but what I'll refer to as...

Leveraging the Double Negative

There I go again - redefining terms to suit myself. But the term just seems so apt.

I was driving along yesterday, and thinking about what gets lost in my blind spots. I've talked about skills, knowledge, experience, expertise, and people in the past few months. I even addressed some negatives in the concepts of Reverse Blind Spots. But unlike Reverse Blind Spots - which are fundamentally about not seeing what we're not good at - today I want to talk about those things that I know are weaknesses or negatives, and that I consciously or unconsciously push back into a Blind Spot.

For instance, I have been known to be sarcastic from time to time. I wish it weren't so, and when I'm aware of it, I work on it. Yes, when I'm aware of it. The problem is that for some issues like this, I've buried them so deeply in a Blind Spot that sometimes I'm just not even aware that they're there.

Does this happen to you? Or - more correctly, perhaps - do you do this to yourself, too? Because the reality is that it doesn't "happen" - we "happen" it, so to speak.

How do I find these things that I've hidden oh-so-carefully in my blind spots? And then what do I do once I've found them?

Double negatives!

In Reverse Blind Spots I talked about recognizing and acknolwedging those things that I think I'm good at, but am not. Double Negatives is a step further in the process. Here's the list of steps to be taken:

1. Recognize
2. Acknowledge
3. Embrace
4. Make a plan

The first two - Recognize and Acknowledge - get us to a higher level of self-awareness, and allow us to take the third and fourth steps.

Embrace It

The things I find hidden may make me feel weak, fallible, embarrassed, or inferior, for example. To acknowledge that I'm not good at something that is part of how I define my job or role may be difficult and even painful.

But once I do acknowledge it, I can do something about it.

I can embrace it!

Why "embrace" it? Because whatever this characteristic or behavior is, it is part of who I am at this moment. In order for me to succeed in life, business, profession, I must have the greatest possible awareness of who I am, what I do, and how well I do it. Pretending, even to myself, that I'm effective in an area where I'm not will lead to discord and disharmony - both internal and external. Because it's inevitable that others will recognize these liabilities, whether they articulate them or not.

So embrace it - say "this is who I am right now, whether I like it or not." Then you can take the next step...

Make a plan

Let's get back to my favorite example...

As a manager, I realized that my strengths lay in the earlier stages of a company's life - what I call "Garage" and "Real Office". Those are the phasese that require creativity, process definition, and structure invention. That's where I shine, along with finding and training people who will do the jobs necessary. Once through those phases, though, I realized that I lose interest and stop doing an excellent job.

The plan? There were two options for me: choose to leave the position when I reach that stage (or agree with my employer/boss that my commitment is through those first two stages), or build a team that can be successful, including finding my own ultimate replacement. Either one works for me, and has many times.

But if I never recognized this aspect of my personality, or chose not to acknowledge it, I could never have gotten to the point of embracing it - saying "this is who I am" - and then doing something about it - making a plan.

Whew.

Sometimes using myself for the examples in my writing is difficult. Even having embraced myself, it's not always easy to say this stuff out loud like this. But that's part of the overall game plan - to be at least comfortable that I understand myself, if not always happy about who that is.

And that's it for this month. I'm sorry about the shuffling schedules over the past few months. Holidays and family activities took precedence for me. I'm thrilled to report that my oldest daughter, Sarah, is moving back from Santa Cruz, California to Austin, Texas! She will be working with me, learning from me, and probably teaching me some stuff along the way. If you're a client of AnotherThought or Path and Presence, you'll no doubt benefit from her new employment!

And if I haven't told you about Path and Presence, please visit the web site here. It's a new venture that I've co-founded to provide services to professional public speakers and trainers and consultants (yes, like me!). I'm thrilled with my new partner, Andy Choquette, who is a terrifically talented graphic designer (he designed our web site and my new marketing materials), and we have a number of exciting projects already under way for our professional colleagues. We're also doing a photo shoot each month that's been tremendously popular - we call it the Presence Shoot - if you or anyone you know needs professional portraits at a remarkably good price ($200), take a look at the write-up on the site.

Wishing you health, wealth, and happiness,

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Steven works with entrepreneurs, executives, and professionals who want to clarify their communications and concepts so that they can dramatically increase their business profitability.

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