Do You Know Your Blind Spot?

Today I’m going to talk about the concept of a personal blind spot as well as give an omnibus update on what’s going on in my world (and also my plan to eventually get over my hump and start catching up on my travel talk again).

For the last month I’ve been working through Baron Baptiste’s book 40 Days to Personal Revolution: A Breakthrough Program to Radically Change Your Body and Awaken the Sacred Within Your Soul via a 40 Days program/small group at my yoga studio.  I don’t always get into the woo-woo aspects of yoga but friends of mine were doing this program and I decided it might be a good way to approach Lent this year rather than just giving up something arbitrary (like social media or chocolate or meat or soda or any of the other things I’ve given up in the past).

As part of the program, we each made a personal commitment towards a goal – for some, it was about giving up sugar or another item; for others, it was about taking something on.  I decided I wanted to work on consistency as a bigger part of my “year of yes“.  I really thought I had this on lock and would be able to focus on getting back to my old routines – blogging every day, getting back to regular workouts, cooking more food at home, returning to a somewhat consistent personal travel schedule.  In fact, I wrote about repetition as a habit right before starting the 40 Days program.

As I’ve worked through the weeks of the program, I have tried to sleepwalk through parts of the homework.  I think in my head, I thought it would be a lot easier than it has been.  But one of the challenges has been to identify my blind spot.  It turns out I was staring at it all along!

My wake up came this morning.  I was headed out to have Sunday brunch with one of my girlfriends – one of my routines.  I left the house on auto-pilot and when I got out of my head, I was headed to the airport.  Perhaps too much repetition isn’t a good habit if it isn’t accompanied by mindfulness!

An aha moment for me for sure – I’ve been so entrenched in my routines that they have kept me afloat.  But at the same time, they have prevented me from swimming and making forward progress.  This weekend was good on a number of levels.  I put away my laptop for the first time in a while and focused on getting a few things on my to do list knocked out – errands, self-care, the pesky call to my homeowners insurance for the new roof I’m going to need thanks to Thursday’s hail storms (yes, plural – 4 am and 7 am – an unpleasant wake up).

On that last note, if you’ve ever been annoyed to be at DFW and dealing with delays when the weather seems to be fine, these were both microcells that popped up with no warning.  Friends a few minutes away didn’t even get rain whereas most of my neighborhood will be getting new roofs and replacement car windshields.

So know that I know my blind spot, its up to me to fix it.  One thing I’m doing is an entire Marie Kondo decluttering of my entire home – getting rid of excess “stuff” should help me focus.  I’m also continuing my work around consistency and repetition.

Back to self-discovery and travel.  Is anyone else loving this season of Girls on HBO?  The episode “Tokyo” was perhaps my favorite of the entire series.  It also brought me a newfound love and respect for Shoshanna, a character I previously despised.  Her awakening in a different culture resonated deeply with me, perhaps because I truly found the joy of finding myself through travel.

I’m about to leave on a 16-night transatlantic cruise on Seabourn and I’m planning on using that time to get caught up on some of my past due travel (Italy, France, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Qatar, Mexico, and Belize among others).  I’m also going to introduce some of my new favorite things (products, services, apps) that I’m jazzed about.  And I might even comment on my feelings on recent changes to award programs

And yes, I’ll be keeping an eye on my blind spot.