Blind Spots - Maybe Its Time To Get Another Perspective?

I backed into my brother-in-law’s car a while back. I was in a hurry as I pulled out of the garage. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw nothing until I felt my car jerk and heard the crunch of metal. My head whipped around and there was his car in my blind spot. I closed my eyes and saw dollar signs flash. How did I not see it?There are also things I can’t see in my writing. Even though I type The End after the last sentence of my manuscript, it’s not anywhere near the end. Next begins the editing phase. I re-read my story multiple times, and then I have my computer read it to me. I pick through it looking for grammar mistakes, point of view errors, and parts where I’m telling instead of placing the reader in the action. However, even after all my fine tooth combing, when I send it to my freelance editor, Robin of Robin’s Red Pen, she will still find mistakes I never found. The things I had turned a blind eye toward.In life, we each have blind spots. We see the world through a limited and biased perspective that is uniquely ours, based on our life experiences. Psychologists call this our worldview. To better understand people and situations, we often need other worldviews to gain a different perspective to see what we can’t see. We need friends who can tell us if we have spinach between our teeth. A mentor who will tell us if the path we’ve chosen is leading us into trouble. Or, a passenger who’ll say “stop” because there’s a car parked behind me.In addition, we need to be open and willing to accept different perspectives. Receiving advice is harder than it sounds. There’s a good dose of humility and embarrassment that can accompany receiving advice or criticism, but we need to look past it or get over it. Criticism can be a dreaded word, but when it is taken objectively instead of personally, it can save us from a world of hurt. Isn’t it better to learn from someone else’s mistakes than from our own? I can guarantee it would have been a lot less embarrassing to have had someone critique my driving than it was when I told my brother-in-law that I had backed into his car.“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers, they succeed,” (Proverbs 15:22 NIV). Don’t miss a post! Sign up for my newsletter to receive my weekly posts and updates: https://lorridudley.com/mc4wp-form-preview/