27 Check Your Blind Spot
Franklin: [00:00:00] Right now, the world needs great men who will stand up and lead with honor, serve with purpose and courageously fulfill their God given roles as husbands, fathers, leaders, and men. I'm your host, Franklin Swan, bringing you practical tools and powerful conversations you can use every day to build yourself into the man God is calling you to be.
This is the world needs men. Let's go. So a few years back, I participated in a hour training event, you could call it, or bootcamp, called SEAL Fit Kokoro Camp. Uh, it's held out in, uh, California, run by a organization called SEAL Fit, led by Mark Devine, who's a former SEAL commander. And originally the program was designed [00:01:00] to be kind of a prep course for aspiring SEAL candidates.
I think the first group they ran through, there are a bunch of SEAL candidates and one, one guy in the group is a CEO. And they said, what are you doing here? And the guy said, I just always wanted to know if I could do it. So that opened their eyes to a whole different business model and a whole different potential clientele.
And so now most of the people going through that are not, are not SEAL candidates, but are just aspiring athletes, husbands, moms, business owners. weekend warriors, just, uh, trying to make themselves a little bit better, improve themselves, test themselves, challenge themselves. And so I jumped into seal fit number, uh, Kokoro number 46 starts on Friday morning and goes all the way till Sunday afternoon, all through the night, both nights, no sleep.
There's all kinds of things from running to physical PT tests to [00:02:00] getting put in the ocean for a while, climbing mountains, going on rucks, carrying logs, put in swimming pools, and doing all kinds of aquatic activities all in a, in an effort to just kind of grind us down. And really you get to see what you're made of.
You get to see just how far you can push yourself. On the second day, I had a really interesting experience. So we're in this particular evolution as they would call them, the different, uh, different things we would do. They would, they're all evolutions and they would be anywhere from one to multiple hours.
And this particular evolution, they had taken us to a swimming pool and they were having us do all kinds of exercises and things in that pool. We'd probably been in there for a good three hours. We were all just freezing cold by that point doing swimming laps and doing underwater stuff. And doing team events and in and out of the water and just kind of kind of beating this down for a [00:03:00] while.
And at the end of it, they had us, uh, there were probably, oh, by that point, about about 16 or 17 of us in the group. And at the end of it, they had a little competition and whoever, whatever, two people in that group won the competition instead of helping carry the logs back to the starting point, we got to ride in the van.
So everyone needless to say was, uh, was highly motivated. So me and my partner in that particular event ended up winning the event, meaning we got to ride back in the van and for a lot of the events where they needed to transport us, they would use these passenger vans that were just those typical passenger vans with multiple rows all the way to the back.
They could see, you know, 10, 12, 14 people pretty easily. So me and this other guy, we're going back to the van and it's in a public park, right? So there's, there's other people around. There's, it's not like we're just secluded and isolated out there. There's, there's other people in this area. It's a public space.
And [00:04:00] so, We're getting up to the van to get in to go back to the starting point, and we're getting in and there's this voice inside of me, just kind of this little intuitive spirit voice that says, you need to get in the back. Now, keep in mind, we're the only two getting in the back. There's two cadre, two of the coaches getting in the front seat, the driver's seat, and we could sat wherever we want.
They didn't tell us where to sit. But, but this little voice in my mind said, you need to. You need to go to the back. And so I told the other guy, I said, Hey, we need to move back. So we go back a couple of seats, sit down. And that voice in my, we weren't quite at the back yet, but that voice in me kept saying, No, you need to go sit in the way back.
And so I said to him, Hey, we need to sit all the way in the back. There was no, no logical reason for this, but it was just this intuitive feeling I had in that moment. So we go all the way to the way back, and we're sitting there in the very back seat. Keep in mind, we've been awake for this, at this point, probably 30, 36 hours, and, and just been training and being worn out [00:05:00] that whole time.
So I'm exhausted. And then the, that little voice and that little intuition came back to me and it said, look over your shoulder. And so I look over my shoulder out the back window of the van and I look down and there's a little girl, probably eight or nine years old. She's standing right behind that van where the driver wouldn't have been able to see her even looking in the rear view mirror.
She was in his his blind spot and I turned around and I just screamed at the driver to stop. He had was just about to put the van in reverse. It was already started and going and there's this little girl right behind the van and so easily could have run over her. So easily could have backed up, hit her and, and had just a, just a catastrophically bad situation.
But thankfully, for whatever reason, there's this little voice that was telling me to get to the back of that van and to look over, over my shoulder and to [00:06:00] look out that window and lo and behold, I looked down and see there's this little, little girl. And I've thought of that moment so many times in my life.
And, you know, I think that God prompts us in particular moments. And if, if we are clear enough to listen and obedient enough to listen, maybe he leads us to, to something he wants to use us for. So why do I bring up this story today? Why do I share that experience with you? Well, for today and today's topic and conversation, men, It's all about blind spots.
And the truth and the reality is we all have blind spots in our life. And I've been, I've been really working on and contemplating this particular message for several weeks now. And I think we all are familiar with a blind spot in terms of When we're driving a vehicle, that's what this example really is [00:07:00] all about.
You know, there was the driver in the van, that coach, he did not have visibility around the back of that van. These were the older ones, so it didn't have any backup cameras. There were no sensors. It was just an old school passenger van. And so we probably first learn about blind spots when we're in driver's school, you know, I was looking up some stats and according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there are 840, 000 blind spot accidents in the U.
S. every year. And those. result in approximately 300 deaths. So a blind spot is any area around a vehicle that we cannot easily see. It's that, that space that, you know, when we're turning lanes or backing up that, that we just can't see very easily. And ultimately that's the place a lot of times that a lot of the danger in driving ends up coming [00:08:00] from.
I have a, uh, previous mentor who liked to say what you can't see can kill you. His name was Keith Cunningham. And he said, what you cannot see can kill you. Now he was applying that to business and to knowing your numbers and having optics inside of a business. But the same principle applies when driving a vehicle.
The same principle applies men as we're living out our lives. The things that we cannot see can kill us. And the spaces that we cannot see, those are ultimately our blind spots. And so just as we have blind spots when we're driving, we all have blind spots when we are living. And it's in those blind spots of life that we're often caught off guard and caught up in a life collision.
So why do we get blind spots? Well, I think one thing for us to realize men is we have tunnel vision. I think the, you know, one of the gifts God gave us as men you know, oftentimes we are very good at focusing in on something. We can get [00:09:00] hyper focused on a particular goal, a particular problem, a particular challenge that's in front of us.
And the good thing is, is we can focus in on that to the point that we're able to bring all of our resources and capacity and ability and strengths and and resources to bear in order to overcome that challenge, solve the problem, achieve the goal. But the flip side is we end up missing so much of what's around us because we have this tunnel vision for that one thing that we're focused on.
And when we have that tunnel vision, that can create these blind spots. According to Webster's Dictionary, a blind spot is any area in which one fails to exercise judgment or discrimination. So let's think about that again. A blind spot is an area in which one fails to exercise judgment or discrimination.
So if you're driving, maybe you don't see that car or that motorcycle or that pedestrian that's in your blind spot that ends up causing an [00:10:00] accident. But in our life, it's, it's often that blind spot is an area that we're just not using good judgment. We're just not being discriminant in how we're living.
And We're taught men in when we're trying, you know, learning to drive that there are these things as blind spots. But are we really taught that growing up that as we go through life, there are going to be blind spots. And, you know, rule number one, when you're learning to drive. about blind spots is just knowing that they exist to begin with.
Just the awareness that they are there makes us more cautious, means that we're going to look over our shoulder more, means that we're going to take extra time to check the space that is hard to see to make sure that we don't end up in a wreck. So, but what if we're taught that that same thing applies in our day to day lives as men, as husbands, as fathers, as leaders, business owners, employees?
I don't think a whole lot of us probably get told [00:11:00] and taught that specific principle, but once we understand it and know it, then we can become so much more aware and begin to live our lives a little bit differently. So, we have the ability to be highly focused, and this is great, but there's downsides to this.
And it creates two different types of blind spots. I think that there are those blind spots which we truly do not see. I'll call that our blind spots that are just basically out of ignorance. We just don't know what we don't know, right? We make a mistake, but we didn't even know we were making a mistake, purely out of ignorance.
But then there's other areas of life. Where we're just willfully ignorant, we kind of know they're there, but we either are selling ourselves a lie, or we are sweeping it under the rug, or maybe we're hiding it in an extreme case, right? But it's that area of life that we kind of know is there. It's like you know that there's a car there when you're trying to turn.
But you're going to move over [00:12:00] anyway and think, well, I bet he'll just slow down or back up or move over so that I can do what I want to do, but you're flirting with disaster. And those second types are those areas of our life where we, we tend to just simply lie to ourselves to justify to hide or, or convince ourselves that it's okay.
And a lot of times, those are the areas of life that come and bite us the hardest. It's those areas that we were just either ignorant to or willfully ignoring that come along and create the greatest amounts of pain or the greatest amounts of regret that we face a lot of times. So, why is this important?
Why is this conversation about blind spots important? Well, if we are serious about being men, if we're serious about how we show up in the various roles in our lives as fathers, husbands, leaders, if we want to take our responsibilities seriously, then we have to realize that we all have blind spots and we all [00:13:00] have to take them seriously and to take responsibility for them.
In driving, a blind spot is a danger zone. When you apply it to our lives, men. That blind spot is a danger zone that poses a risk to your family, to your company, to your wife, Children, friends, co workers. That's the thing is the people that we love the most, the roles and responsibilities that we have as men.
Those are the things that suffer the consequences of us either not understanding or or willfully ignoring those blind spots. So our families are who suffer. But what would be some examples of a blind spot? So, in very general terms, a blind spot can be a habit that has gotten out of control. You know, maybe it started off as just something small, not that big of a deal, but it has grown and now it is not just a habit, it's a, an addiction.
It's a problem. Maybe [00:14:00] there's a relationship that you had, have right now that it started off just cordial and casual. But that relationship's gotten a little bit too close, too intimate and gone a little bit too far. Maybe there's an ambition that you had and at first it was just a goal and it was all good.
And now that ambition is unbridled and it's consuming you and robbing you. And your family of some life, maybe there's some pride that's gone unchecked, right? Your ego has gotten out of line. Any one of those, a habit, a relationship, an ambition, pride, any one of those can begin to blind us to things that we need to see and things that can become very dangerous for us men as we are showing up for our families in our communities each day.
And what's interesting is life has a way of exposing our blind spots. It has a way of, of revealing those things [00:15:00] just at the right time, and oftentimes at the most unexpected time. And that's why they call them blind spots. We get blindsided by these things. We are caught off guard, we're unaware, and we're sitting there flat footed, and then we get hit in the face with a proverbial 2x4.
Is there a place in your life right now that is coming to mind and you're like, Ooh, I've been ignoring that I've been telling myself it's okay. I've been making excuses. I've been ignoring it. I've been allowing it. I've been tolerating it. Right. But you know, inside it's like there's that thing there.
Well, so the first step is just recognizing that it's there and then we're going to talk in a second about what to do, how, one, how to identify these blind spots and then two, what to do about them. Right? Because that's the real thing. We're going to have them like every single man listening to this has a blind spot, including me.
We will always have blind spots. [00:16:00] The key is, is not to get to a place where we don't have them anymore because that's impossible. Cool. We're all human, but I think the focus is number one, can we minimize them to the greatest degree and then when we do have them and we do find things they're hiding in those blind spots that we're able to take the right action to remedy those and to course correct in whatever way is needed.
So we're going to get into that, but you know, blind spots can be in your health and in your fitness. You know, it may be that you haven't been to the doctor in years and you haven't gone and gotten a checkup and you need to do that for your family. You need to know if you've got any health problems going on.
Maybe it's in your finances or your business. Maybe you're not paying close enough attention. Maybe you're not putting enough effort in. Maybe there's something going on in your financial world or your professional world that, that is a blind spot that you're not paying attention to right now that could come along later on and bite you.
Maybe it's in your faith. You know, maybe [00:17:00] faith is a blind spot where, you know, you're just not giving time to God. You're not, you're not spending time in prayer. You're not, you're not in God's word every day. Those things create blind spots. Maybe it's with your friends, maybe it's with your wife or children, and you've, you've stopped spending time or being intentional or going on date nights or having dinner around the table.
Right. And so these big things all create blind spots in our lives that we can later regret. So, we end up developing blind spots. I'm going to give you four different ways that these often creep up. Number one is, is just ignorance or avoidance. We're either just ignoring that thing or avoiding. something that we know is there, but we just, we just tend to ignore it.
The next is pride and ego. This one may be the most difficult and the most blinding, I think, men, because our pride trips us up. There's that verse in the Bible of pride goes before a [00:18:00] fall. I mean, the number of times that I have screwed up in life, if I really rewind the tape and look, it probably all started with some element of pride.
And the pride is what blinds us. Anger and resentment will lead us down a path where we will begin to Accept behaviors and stories and things that simply aren't true, things that won't serve us and things that could truly undermine the things that are most precious to us in our lives and our relationships.
And then the fourth thing is addiction and sedation. When we have addictions, when we have habits that become addictions, when we have habits that are a way of sedating and checking out of life, those create massive blind spots that can cause some real devastation in our families. Four strategies for identifying blind spots.
Number one is simply awareness. Just being aware that blind spots exist means that we are going to be [00:19:00] more vigilant and diligent in self reflection and in understanding that they're there. And so we're, our eyes are going to be open more. We're going to be on the lookout better. We're just going to be more primed, if you will, uh, for those dangerous spots.
And in addition to awareness, it's, it's really also education, right? If you're continually educating yourself through books, through podcasts, through different, uh, you know, learning about great men's lives, learning about how other people have screwed up. I mean, one of the best ways to avoid a blind spot is just to learn about how other, about other people's lives, not looking at just their successes, but also looking at their failures and understanding how they got there and taking that lesson, applying it to your life so that you don't have to learn that same lesson the hard way.
We can learn from the mistakes of others so that we don't have to make those same mistakes. The next thing is mentors and coaches, a mentor and a coach [00:20:00] is able to oftentimes shed light on an area of our life or hear a story that we're telling or look at some facts going on for us that we can't see when we look at it, but they can and they can call us out and they can hold up that mirror and they can help us expose those blind spots so that we can We're able to deal with them before they come become a problem.
We're able to deal with them before they end up in some catastrophic experience that wrecks a life. The third way to identify blind spots is to have a band of brothers. Men, when we can have other good, honorable, godly, solid men around us, We give permission to and are humble enough to share what's going on in our lives and allow them to speak into ours.
They will mirror back what we need to see. They will be able to call out those things and we do the same for them. There's a [00:21:00] reason it's called a band of brothers. Right. It's not the guys. It's not the group of guys. It's the band of brothers. And when you have a close knit group, you're able to know when you're on course.
And I think that that there's a strength in that group that you cannot get in isolation. You cannot get it alone. You cannot get it just operating by yourself. And that's one of the problems about blind spots is you need that other awareness. You think about cars these days. Now we have backup cameras and sensors and all these tools and resources in order to minimize those blind spots and the problems that come from them.
And so when we have our coaches and mentors, when we have our band of brothers, When we have more awareness. Those are the sensors. Those are the backup cameras. Those are the warning bells and alarms that we can have in place so that we find these things early. Finally, and this probably should have gone first, but [00:22:00] When you're spending time with God, when you're in scripture and when you're in prayer, when you're in a position of surrender with your Heavenly Father, you will gain insight and you will gain perspective on your life that cannot be gained in any other way.
You will be able to have that intuitive voice speaking to you more often, leading and guiding and directing you through your life and hopefully revealing to you those areas of your life that need some course correction. So if you're, if you're connected with God, if you're praying, if you're in scripture and if you're reading the Bible and, and really applying that to your life and using it as a mirror to go, what, what am I doing in my life?
And does that match up to what I'm reading here? If you've got a band of good men around you, a band of brothers, if you have coaches and mentors that you're honest with, that can speak into your life. And then if you're just walking through each day with awareness and, [00:23:00] A desire to understand yourself better.
You are going to do two things. One, you're going to be able to identify those blind spots much more quickly. And the quicker you identify a blind spot, the smaller it is. The longer a blind spot goes, the more whatever is inside of it grows. The longer you go without seeing that blind spot, the longer whatever's inside of that blind spot has to get bigger and worse.
So you want a good offense, you want a good defense. I'm going to give you a few tips once you do discover that thing within your blind spot that you didn't know was there. Number one, you've got to have some humility. You can listen to this whole podcast. If you don't have this one thing, none of this is going to matter because we have to have a humble heart to just receive and own and take [00:24:00] responsibility and not blame somebody else and be a victim for whatever it is that was inside that blind spot.
It is no one's fault but yours. It's no one's responsibility but yours. Men, we have to be humble, and that's not being weak and soft spoken. Humility is massive strength. Humility says, I'm going to take ownership and responsibility for every single aspect of my life. I'm not going to blame anyone else.
I'm not going to be a victim. I'm going to be responsible and accountable. That is humility. And that's where you have to start in this. That's where I have to start because without it, I can't move forward, right? Without it, I am stuck blaming other people. I'm stuck making excuses. I'm stuck being, I mean, truly weak.
When we lack humility, that is weakness. It's a flip. It's a reverse idea, right? We would think that, and a lot of what you hear out there is, you know, [00:25:00] humility is just weakness and softness and, and, and all that. I don't believe that's true. Real humility is responsible and accountable, and there's massive strength in that.
There is nothing but weakness and neediness inside of being victims and blaming other people. So, number one, we have to be humble. Number two, we need to be grateful. I love Tony Robbins quote here. That I've heard a number of times. He says, you know, we have to decide whether or not life is happening to us or for us.
And gratitude is the, is kind of the flip side to humility. Gratitude is the other side of the coin, if you will, that is really necessary in order to take advantage of these blind spots and turn them into opportunities. Because when we're grateful for them, we can learn from them. When we are resentful of these things, then we ultimately push them away and we deny the opportunity that exists, even inside of pain or suffering.[00:26:00]
to learn and grow and improve. So when we're grateful, we can know that even though we're going through a challenging moment right now, if we're grateful, even though we're in a painful situation we really don't want to be in, we're able to learn from it and come out the other side, a better, stronger man.
With more humility, more gratitude, more resilience, more commitment, and determination to lead his family than if we didn't have gratitude. So you have to have humility. You have to have gratitude. The next thing is massive action. The thing that's there will not resolve itself. If you've got a car in your blind spot and you begin to swerve and then you notice it's there, you can't keep going in that same direction or you will have a wreck.
You have to course correct. You have to take massive action. In the Bible, it's called repentance, which means to turn. literally turn the wheel and go the opposite way. So whatever way you were going towards within that blind [00:27:00] spot, you simply take a sidestep and turn the other way and go away from it. And you take massive action every single day until you're so far away from it, you can't even see it again, and you couldn't even imagine going back to it.
So you have to take action, you have to turn away from it, and then you have to create distance between you and that thing. And then finally, guardrails, guardrails, we have sensors, we have backup cameras, but ultimately there's also things on the road called guardrails and guardrails ultimately keep us out of the ditch.
So once you, once you step in with a humble heart, a grateful heart, ready to take massive action, then when you learn from those things, set up some guardrails in your life so that you don't fall back in the ditch. If it's an addiction, maybe you need to get something out of your house or get something restricted on your phone or computer.
Maybe you need to change a habit. Maybe you need [00:28:00] to see, you know, a godly man every day that's going to be a mentor to help you walk through this, right? But set up some guardrails in your life so that you don't. fall back into the same spot. Because men, sometimes we're just kind of dumb. Like, sometimes we look up and it's like, I don't know if y'all feel this, but I do.
Sometimes I'm like, dad, gum. I feel like an idiot. And sometimes we are. That's just the reality of it. But we don't have to make things so hard. And sometimes we we make things hard because we learn these lessons and we come through them. And yet we don't do anything to set up a guardrail. Like we've all been down the road and seen that guardrail at the side of a ditch that someone else has hit, right?
They've hit the guardrail, but it kept them from going into the ditch after they wrecked the guardrail. What happens? The road crew shows back up and rebuilds that guardrail. So that's what we have to do when we discover these spots in our lives that have to be course corrected on. We have to set up those guardrails.[00:29:00]
A final word, man, on this whole idea of blind spots. Your family is your biggest mirror. Your wife is going to be able to see through the stories you tell yourself more than anyone else. And you can either resent her for it, or you can understand that she is your greatest gift for seeing the things you can't.
She can help you grow more than anyone else. She can help you to see past all the limiting factors in your life. But if you aren't humble and grateful for when she shines that light on you, if you get defensive, resentful, and angry towards it, you will push away the greatest gift you have and the greatest opportunity to see truth that could allow you to level up.
You know, I don't know that our kids are going to say anything, but our wives, I hope will. I hope my wife will. will [00:30:00] tell me, and she has and she does, tell me when I'm off course. In the Bible, I was talking to my wife about this. It's very interesting. In Genesis, God is creating the entire universe. And after each day and after each thing he creates, he says, it is good.
And I, and I heard this the other day, I think it's very profound. The first time that God says it is not good is when he looks at man by himself. I think that in light of this conversation, God probably was looking at man by himself and thought, man, this dude's got some blind spots and he needs a helper.
He needs a companion. He needs someone to do life with that's going to be able to give him some perspective. And God said, it is not good for man to be alone. Man, when, men, when we're alone, thing, we, we get ourselves into trouble a lot of times. Not that men can't operate on their own, but, uh, I think we've, most of us have heard the saying behind [00:31:00] every good man is a great woman.
And I know for me that is true. I know for many men that I know that is true. Our wives are the best gift we have. They're the biggest mirror that, uh, that we can have. A lot of times that's the most painful. We have to fight our ego in that space probably more than anywhere else, but that also holds the greatest opportunity for us to level up and really be the men that our, our wives and our kids deserve.
That's really what it comes down to because you're a refusal to listen and our refusal to be humble and our stubbornness will mean that they continue to bear the consequence and suffer the consequence of our unwillingness to take responsibility and take action on those things that they see. I mean, it's, it's a lot of times not us that bears the greatest burden.
It's, it's our families. That's who we put it on. And so keep that in mind, we're [00:32:00] doing this for ourselves. We're also doing it for them as men. That's our responsibility and what we're called to so that they don't have to carry the burden and suffer the consequence that is ours to deal with. We create majority of the problems in our lives.
So, ask yourself today, you know, where's that, where's that blind spot I have? Something, there may be something that you can see, there may be something that you cannot see. I know I've had things come out of left field for me that I didn't even know were there. But once I do, once you do, so how, how are we going to, Deal with that.
Are we going to resent it and push it away? Are we going to be humble? Are we going to be grateful? Are we going to take massive action? Are we going to set up guardrails so that we never go back to that place or do that thing? Are we going to hire coaches, find a band of brothers, humbly and gratefully receive the feedback from our spouses?
Spend time with [00:33:00] God asking Him to reveal to us those things that we need to see. That we can't. It's how we're made men. We get tunnel vision. We have blind spots, but that doesn't mean we're helpless and we can't do anything about it. So my desire, my hope, my wish, my prayer is that this would serve you in some powerful way to either get that thing out of your life that you know is there or that will equip you To deal with the next blind spot that comes along, because it will happen, it will come along, we all have them, and it's just a matter of time before we make the wrong turn into the next lane, thinking it's clear when it's not.
And so maybe this gives you a little bit of a different insight on how to handle that situation. Maybe in the past, You've resented it. Maybe you have fought against it. Maybe you've gotten angry about it. But what if you could just be [00:34:00] humble and receive it and just listen and prove to your family through your actions, through your emotions and your response, that you're man enough.
to take responsibility and be held accountable and to do what's right. That, man, that is what we are all called to. So I hope this has been beneficial for you today. Just talking it out for me is. If there's some man in your life that you think might need to hear this message, I think we all need to hear this message, but if there's someone in particular you know, please share this message with that man.
Please give us a rating review. Please do your part to show up as the man that your family needs today. That is how you serve the world. The world needs men. Let's go.[00:35:00]
If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to the podcast. Give us a rating and review and share this episode with one man. You know, needs to hear this message. We want to encourage as many men as possible to show up as the strong leaders, loving husbands and intentional fathers, their family deserves.
And until next time be the man the world needs.