Blind Spots: Looking for Change in all The Right Places

Sometimes the most important things to change are the ones you can’t see yet.

In this episode of Notes for an Awesome Life, John Spence and Josh Wilson  dive into one of the hardest challenges in personal growth: recognizing the patterns, habits, and assumptions that quietly shape our decisions without us noticing. They explore why self-reflection is so rare, why repeating the same outcomes might reveal more about you than your circumstances, and how separating your identity from your behaviors can make real change possible.

If you’ve ever wondered why certain problems keep showing up in your life or how to develop the kind of self-awareness that great leaders possess, this conversation offers practical tools and honest insight to help you start looking in the right places.

• Email us: awesomelifenotes@gmail.com
• Learn more about John: JohnSpence.com
• Familiar Wilsons Media: FamiliarWilsonsMedia.com

About John Spence: John is a globally recognized business thought leader, former owner/CEO of five companies, and advisor/coach to organizations from startups to the Fortune 10. He’s lectured at more than 90 universities and was named by the American Management Association as one of “America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch.”

About the show: Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence focuses on personal growth, happiness, clarity, and the everyday habits that compound into an AWESOME life.

Credits: Hosts John Spence and Josh Wilson • Produced by Josh Wilson for Familiar Wilsons Media • Special thanks: Amanda Wilson (writing and production), and Domingo Jimenez (writing and marketing).

Transcript

Meet John Spence

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is a familiar Wilsons Media Production. John Spence is recognized as one of the foremost business thought leaders in the world, a global top 100 business thinker and advisor to companies from startups to the Fortune 10. But it didn't start that way. In college, John hit rock bottom, kicked out of one university and rejected by another. That's when he made a decision to change his attitude and take a systematic approach to building the life he wanted. Through hard work and relentless learning, he went on to create a life full of meaning, joy, and connection. I'm Josh Wilson, and this is Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. We invite you to join us in conversation as John shares with us the lessons, habits, and tools that he used and that you can use to build an awesome life. Welcome to Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. I'm Josh Wilson.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Apparently I'm John Spence.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Apparently.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

So we're gambling on today.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, it's kind of what I'm hoping for. It'd be amazing if I was doing this for you uh this whole time and find out that you are an AI-generated version of you.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

There is two of them that exist that aren't my I I actually have one that I've used when I teach at uh the Wharton School of Business for the future of leadership or the future of business. I have one that speaks in uh French. And I will put it up on the screen and it speaks to the class for a little while. In French, it says, I don't know how to speak French. I've never been to France. I have no idea how to speak the language. This is all artificial. And if anyone in the audience speaks French, they start laughing and everybody else says, What's going on here? And I tell them what I said, and then I replay it like three times, and they are freaked out. I did one in Spanish and sent it to my team who all speak Spanish fluently. Two of them were upset because they thought I'd been, you know, uh pulling the wool over the eyes. And the other one said, I figured it out wasn't you because the accent was too good. Other than that, they could not tell. They literally could not tell. That's scary.

AI Voices And Authenticity

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Well, it is scary, and as a podcaster, I really dislike the fact that it's getting better and better. I do believe that, and maybe naively, that podcasting media, all these things, you won't ever replace humanity because I think that there's a certain spark that you can't iterate.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

You and I definitely have that spark. Row.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

More like the shine off of our bald heads. Um, but it is, it is pretty disheartening to to put all the thought and effort into this and then uh turn on a podcast, be excited about it to only find out the hosts are AI. I'm not a big fan of that.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, one of my team members is creating one of those and using a program called Hey Jen, so that he's gonna show it to me. They can put my blogs in, summarize it, and have little short videos of me describing describing the blogs or doing the blogs completely AI generated. And I'm concerned about that as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Are you concerned that it's gonna be too good and you're gonna be tempted to use it?

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, yeah. And then now I do know there's a a pretty famous guy in in my arena that uses that, but he has a big disclaimer on the bottom that says this is AI Josh.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Uh, and he thought at first people were gonna re you know rebel against that. They're like, no, we love it. It's great ideas, sounds just like you, we're fine. And I would not have expected that sort of a response. But there's two companies in the world that have AI generated John Spences for chatbots.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

So you can ask it a question, it will answer based on all my work, which is a little freaky because I go and ask it questions when I can't remember my own stuff. What the hell did I think about this?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Um, the thing that concerns me the most is I'm starting to hear them now, and they are intentionally putting in mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Like or coughs or starting a word and then you know, saying another word as if that was uh a mistake. I'm not a big fan of that. Don't like it.

SPEAKER_02 4:21

For everybody listening and watching, this is really us.

Why Blind Spots Are Tricky

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Yeah. Really, would we program this? That's the question you have to ask yourself. Okay, John. So let's uh talk about what it is that I want to talk about today, and that is blind spots. Now I've been doing some soul searching and trying to come up with uh a plan or a process, very John Spencian way of doing things, by the way. How can how I can suss out my my blind spots? How how I can figure out the things that I'm not seeing. So, as I say that instantly, what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 4:55

It's really hard to see your own blind spots, that's why they call them blind spots.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

So I'm curious, when is the last time that you realized, oh, this is a really big blind spot for me?

SPEAKER_02 5:06

I have a I have a technique I use for this.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Okay, very good.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Um part of it is I have a mastermind group, uh, you know that. Um, and they will call me out on stuff quite often.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 5:18

Uh and and part of it too is I think a big part of understanding my own blind spots is when I listen to someone else and go, I never thought of that, or that's not the way I think about that. Maybe I need to look into that a little bit more. Sure. Uh I had a there was a philosopher, and I won't go into it, modern, that I really did not like him. Um, I had only seen him speak a few times, and I didn't agree with him, and I didn't like his point of view. But I got a video of one of his sessions and said, I I have been avoiding this guy because I didn't like one thing I heard. The guy's a genius. Watched six videos of him, and I thought, this is awesome. And I said, All right, who else then have I pushed away just because I heard him say one or two things? So the blind spot there, and I'll put it in clear words, is I was very prejudicial against what I heard this person say one time. Yeah, but and it it created a blind spot for me of missing a whole bunch of stuff. But I'll I'll tell you quickly how I've how I've done this in the past, and it's been powerful and interesting. Is I asked my friends to write a note of what do you think I do great? What do you think I'm really, really good at that I should focus on? And what are my blind spots? What am I not seeing? Where am I not doing a good job?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah.

Mastermind Feedback That Stings

SPEAKER_02 6:42

And over the and I these are friends, I tell them to be brutally honest, you're not gonna hurt my feelings at all. I need this, I need this help. They have uncovered some incredibly important blind spots I've had, yeah. Uh, and made me seriously look in the mirror and make some pretty big life changes. Uh, and I've been pretty happy or or pleased by the kind things they've said about me. But here's the most fascinating thing of all of it no one has ever asked me to do the same thing back then.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Very interesting.

SPEAKER_02 7:15

Not one. And these are all people I respect, you know, and look up to. Uh, and I just thought this is fascinating. I'm happy to take the abuse, but apparently they're not uh as enthusiastic. So what tell me about what you've been going through.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Well, see, this is what I want to do with you right now. I want to really take advantage of you, um, if you don't mind. Kind of mine at all. So I want to step you through how I've tried to set up a process, and I want you to let me know what you think of each step of the way here. And some of the things I've come up with reflect even the little bit that you just said, but this will, I think, help me and the audience. Number one, when we're trying to figure out processes on things, you know, getting some construction feedback. And number two, you know, who knows? Maybe I will uncover a way of looking at this that will be new to you. And I will get a star, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

A big gold star.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

All right. So the the first step that I did was I I tried to follow the points of friction. I tried to follow the patterns of me getting stuck, right? And maybe me getting stuck over here and me getting stuck over there in different things, maybe they're unified by a single cause. And so I have to ask myself the questions where do I feel misunderstood the most? You know, is there commonality there? What feedback do I get that I dismiss quickly? When do I find myself saying the phrase, um, that's just how I am, and it ain't gonna change? And you know, I can ask other people that as you were talking about and seeing if they give similar feedback. But the idea is just look for those pain points or those friction points and trying to figure out am I unwittingly causing those?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

That parallels the idea that I talk about is you make up all your own rules, and if your rules don't work for you, you could just make new ones.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Uh so I I like what you said with Am I the one creating my own friction?

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Most of us are the ones causing friction to ourselves, you know. Oh, absolutely. That's the thing we have. Okay, the second thing, where do I use my strengths, but they're turned up too loud?

SPEAKER_02 9:20

Oh, wow, what a great question.

Following Friction For Clues

SPEAKER_00 9:23

For me, for example, and this is a blind spot I caught early in my life. I use humor a lot. Very quickly finding the the funny in something and then shooting it out there, uh like deflating the mood. I like let's let's be honest. So I also like the feeling of being, oh, that guy's pretty clever because he he caught this or he caught that irony or whatever. But if I turn it up too much, I've found that my blind spot or what's going on there is I'm deflecting. That I use that for deflection, right? And that was something that was beat into me pretty early because I ended up trying to be jokingly sarcastic with someone that I respect, and I realized that I went too far. But the reason why I did that is because I was nervous in the situation and I wanted them to like me, so I just went out and and I said something that wasn't appropriate. If you're a very decisive person, then maybe your your blind spot is like bulldozing over other people. If you're a smart, intelligent, insightful person, then maybe your blind spot is over analysis. So I'm really trying to look at those things that are my strength and see, well, where am I over applying those or where am I turning them uh up to 11?

SPEAKER_02 10:33

And as you were saying it, I'm thinking about six places I need to dial it back. Well, and you know, you said something really important that I think is sort of a getting to a mature level of this is in the past I've done this a little bit. When I've caught myself doing something like that, I apologize to the other person. I apologize. I shouldn't have done that. Yeah, I was just a little nervous that joke wasn't appropriate, or I didn't mean to offend you, or whatever it might be. But you've just nailed one that I think would be great for everybody to think about is where am I dialing it up a little bit too loud? That's a beautiful, beautiful idea.

When Strengths Are Too Loud

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Here's another one that it's pretty obvious. Where do I have strong emotional reactions? Where do I have strong emotional spikes? Am I being intentional enough in finding out if there is something going on there? What makes me defensive? What makes me disproportionately irritated? Do I quickly label people? All of these things are assessment things where I try to figure out okay, I'm really angry here, and I don't know why I'm angry. I had a situation with a a family member, and this was decades back, and we've since resolved it. Whenever they were in the room, they needed to be the center of attention. It really, really irritated me. And I really had to do some soul searching and figure out, well, why did I care so much? And so I sat down with them at one point and I had a really necessary discussion about, hey, you know, I've been judging you in this way, but it's really because I don't feel like I'm being paid attention to enough. And so therefore you come into the room, you're sucking all the energy towards yourself. And to me, that feels like, well, you're taking away something from me. But anyway, there's an example from my from my far past, and I'm trying to figure out now what are the things that that emotionally spike me.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

And to me, that that sounds a lot like the things I teach around self-awareness.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

It's backing up and going, I'm react, I I have a lot of emotion here, but I need to figure out what emotion. Is it anger, confusion? Is it frustration? Is it that I don't feel like people are paying enough attention to me, or I feel like the other person's sucked all the air out of the room, you said? And being able to, it's it's impressive again that you went and talked to them about it. Many people would just hold a grudge or frustration. The fascinating thing to me, too, this is a family member, I would then ask myself, I wonder how often I do this with just people in a room. As an instructor, I'm used to being up in front of class, the one that used to be. Yeah, the one that kind of runs the class. You know, I'm the one that's up, I'm the one at the front of the room.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

And I've since learned in my 30s, I learned this. No, I'm not the sage on the stage, you know, I'm a guide on the side. And if somebody else has a great idea, let them take over. You know, just let them, if they know more, they're gonna do a better job, or they want to be involved.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

You go for it, kid. All right, a couple more here. Watching where I rationalize. If I ever find myself saying things like, Well, you wouldn't understand I did this for a reason, or well, I had to do this, or I understand that this doesn't look right, but this situation is different because this or that. Um and again, that's a form of defensiveness, putting up walls, putting up barriers. If you're acting in a real and true way, that doesn't necessarily need protection. Where do I rationalize? And is there a blind spot that I'm trying to put protect there?

SPEAKER_02 14:01

I'm looking forward to when at the end here, when you're the one that gives the advice this week and you go over the list of questions you should ask yourself.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

I am not prepared.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Well, you do it to me every show, so this is my chance to turn it on. I'm just justifying why I'm gonna do this to you.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Um, but see, I have the power of the edit button, so we'll see how far that goes for you. This one is an obvious one. Look for repeating outcomes.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different, different results. That is an easy one that we don't often self-apply.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

You know, a lot of the stuff you're coming back to is a very high level of self-awareness, which is an area that most people, many people, not most, many people struggle with or completely ignore. They don't even want to take the time to the few seconds it might take, or a few minutes or longer, to really go inside and say, why am I doing this? This hasn't worked out well for me in the past. Why don't why do I keep doing this? I keep ending up in this situation that's uncomfortable, and I apparently am the one that's causing it.

Emotional Spikes As Signals

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Here's my hope. Then why we're doing this is that I don't want people to reach the age of 54, like I have, and have not asked these questions of themselves. You know, I want my my two sons who are in their 20s to be doing this sort of intensive self-awareness. I want my 19-year-old and my nine-year-old to be on the path where they understand that this is the necessary way to live.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

I had a long discussion with a friend about this this week. Is it's such a shame that younger folks don't learn this younger in their life. Can they? I think that you can start to understand that it's important.

unknown 15:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

I've taught the some of the stuff we're talking about, I've taught to high school students. They don't quite know their values yet. They know a few, and they're probably mostly, you know, their parents telling them or society telling them what their values should be. But at the same token, just the idea of trying to understand them and try to build your life around them, or just taking a little while to go to to become, learn to become more self-reflective. I don't think that in my experience, I work with a lot of college students all the way up to senior executives who I look at this and go, they have never done this before. Yeah, they haven't thought about their life or their goals or their values or their mission in life. So at least if we could get them in college, maybe when they're a little bit more, you know, yeah, self-aware.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Anyone uh listening to this, send this to any college students you know. Um, and then the last thing, and this is a thing that I think is pretty huge, and we've talked about this a bit, and that is take identity out of it. Take identity out of it. You know, if we cling tightly to our habits and our behaviors as if they're a part of who we are and how we are defined, then it's really hard to assess them and change them. And so that's the difference between saying, Well, I am what what you see, I'm a direct person, and all of the pluses and minuses of that, there's that, or there's well, I tend to be direct in certain contexts. One of them is defined by who you are, and one of them is how you act or what you do in a moment. If it's who you are, it's gonna be a lot harder for you to be able to deconstruct that.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Again, I use the word fascinating a lot. People that I've, you know, friends, people I've met that say, I really used to think I was XYZ. Yeah, and this was the the way I was gonna be the rest of my life until this happened or until I realized that.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Uh, and it's fascinating, you know, and yeah, I think you and I talked about this before. I I am bad at math. No, I choose not to be good at math, and I'm fine with that. But uh taking the identity out of it, this is a what you've done a wonderful job on this, Josh. This is really impressive.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Thank you. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 17:46

Now you are the gold star, brother.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

The figuring it out and the putting into action, two different things. My striving will be to okay, take these different things and really work through them so that they make a difference, or else I'm a bigger fool than when I started.

Catching Rationalization

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Could you go over the list again?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

I'm sorry, I just threw the paper on the floor. Hang on for a second. Look for patterns of friction, consider that you are overusing your strengths, look at at your extreme reactions, look for where when you rationalize, uh look for repeating and unpleasant outcomes, and then don't make it about identity.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

Man, that is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

And the reality is that this is all culled from extensive research that I did online, it's culled from some of the stuff that I've seen and heard from you. So I've not reinvented the wheel here.

SPEAKER_02 18:38

Neither one of us are. It's just trying to teach everybody else and ourselves how to use the wheel a little bit better. I'm impressed.

unknown 18:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Because, you know, based on everything I've known about you up until this point, I would not have assumed that you had the ability to deliver such excellence.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

There's my uh folks, just want to put this out there. If if you're dismayed by John's behavior, that teasing and mockery is the language of intimacy among men.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Yes. And you know, it's interesting you say that. I have told my friends, if I I only tease people I like.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

And I only accept teasing very well from people I like a lot. So that's sort of a there's a blind spot. Thank you. That is absolutely beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Now that I've done all of this, I do want you to consider what homework would you give us about our blind spots this week?

Repeating Outcomes And Patterns

SPEAKER_02 19:32

I would challenge you to do what I've done in the past, which is go to six or eight of your friends and ask them to write you that letter. What do you think I do really, really well that I'm good at I should focus on? And where are the areas you concerned concerned about me? What are my blind spots? Where, and you just, you know, mentioned a few, turn, you know, turn it up too loud. But where do you think I should maybe focus on improving? And I will guarantee you this if a bunch of your friends agree to do that, there will be a clear pattern. Yeah, you will understand what everybody thinks you do well, and you will, you know, it was pretty shocking a couple times when I read it, and I saw six or eight of my friends saying all the same things about stuff I needed to work on. I went, kind of can't ignore that now.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

And try not to take it too personally. Try not to take it. That's what I would say is it's it's very hard to receive feedback from someone like that because I've received that too. But if the people did not love you and care about you, then they wouldn't care to invest the time in giving you honest feedback. And you have to trust that. All right, John. Well, thank you again for your time this week. It certainly was an adventure. What I've edited out of this episode, folks, was the lawn man trimming the shrubs outside of my window and me first getting very cross and then doing some very quick self-assessment and realizing that the gentleman was just doing his job, and I ought not to be cross. So it was it was character building for me as well. But John was patient right throughout. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Anyone you'd like to thank this week?

SPEAKER_02 21:10

I will thank my good friend Andrew Sidwell, who's my friend in the special forces, that uh we challenge each other with books, and he did his homework. We the last one we did together was uh Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and he has assigned several good books to me, including the uh 100th anniversary of the poems of Robert Frost.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Nice.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

And not something I would normally read, uh have in the past, but I'm enjoying it greatly. So thank you, Andrew. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Thank you. And I love the emphasis on poetry. I love to write poetry and I love to hear anyone enjoying poetry. So there you go. Good on you. That's my recommendation for this week, folks. Go read some some good poetry. If you would like to know more about John, go to johnspence.com, his website that's a veritable smorgasbord of wisdom. Um, so you don't want to miss that. And they If you'd like to find out a little bit more about Familiar Wilsons Media, go to familiarwilsonsmedia.com. That's me, folks, putting together this podcast. But most of all, please, please, please, please, please, this week, as you are endeavoring to live your life well, please just try. Try, try, try to be awesome. See you next week. And then John said bye.