thought exercise on Blind Spots

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

In this short poem, the psychologist Daniel Goleman (the developer of the concept of Emotional Intelligence (E.Q.)) builds on the work of R. D. Laing’s “knots.” The poem is a helpful reminder that our...

When I went to seminary to prepare for the ministry, I met an African-American student, Elward Ellis, who befriended both my future wife, Kathy Kristy, and me. He gave us gracious but bare-knuckled me...

We all have blind spots. We all have flaws in our personalities, behavior, or work habits that we can’t see, and they block our performance and growth. But others can see them. If we permit them to gi...

Professional football players often get heated on the field, sometimes letting their emotions get the best of them when penalized by an official. Art Holst, a longtime NFL referee, recalls a Sunday ga...

Earl Palmer frequently tells the story of a cross-country with two other young pastors early in his pastoral ministry. They were making a cross-country trip from the East Coast back to California. I...

Some years ago I was doing a seven-part series of talks on the Seven Deadly Sins at a men’s breakfast. My wife, Kathy, told me, “I’ll bet that the week you deal with greed you will have your lowest at...

Editor’s Note: This story is often told as a true story, when in fact it is probably fictitious. Nevertheless, there is a significant illustrative point: sometimes the things we fear most may in fact ...

But it is important to be aware that the act of judging others has its origins in our self-judgment. As I often tell patients, “Shamed people shame people.” Long before we are criticizing others, the ...

Even for those of us who follow Jesus on a daily basis, the reality is, our sinful nature has infiltrated our minds, and we often find ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, judging those aro...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

Some of you may remember the film A Beautiful Mind , named after the book with the same title. The book is based on the life of John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, a brilliant mathematician and profe...

In Annie Dillard's Pulitzer Prize winning book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she mentioned the work of Marius Von Senden who became curious about the effect it had on people who had been born blind to...

Søren Kierkegaard told a parable about a rich man riding in a lighted carriage driven by a peasant who sat behind the horse in the cold and dark outside. Precisely because he sat near the artificial l...

A student who had recently lost his sight was sent to the Seeing Eye Institute for the Blind in Morristown, New Jersey, for specialized training. Upon arrival, he was greeted by another young ma...

Helen Keller, the blind-and-deaf woman who made history by learning to overcome her disabilities, was once asked if there was anything worse than being blind. She answered, “Oh yes! There is something...

For fifty-one years Bob Edens was blind. He couldn’t see a thing. His world was a black hall of sounds and smells. He felt his way through five decades of darkness. And then, he could see. A skilled s...

One of the most dangerous driving situations is when it is raining at night. Not only are the streets slippery and visibility obscured by water on the windshield, but wet streets can reflect light fro...

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons conducted an experiment at Harvard University more than a decade ago that became infamous in psychology circles. Their book The Invisible Gorilla popularized it...

I absolutely love Marvel movies. I’m talking about Thor, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Widow, Guardians of the Galaxy. All of them. In Ragnarok , Thor, the Norse god, played by the incredibly good-...

In this little thought experiment, Harvard psychologist David Ropeik demonstrates just how easily our fear of uncertainty can make us as we imagine driving a car with our eyes closed: Imagine driving...

Self-deception . . . blinds us to the true causes of problems, and once we’re blind, all the “solutions” we can think of will actually make matters worse. Whether at work or at home, self-deception ob...

One of the biggest challenges in the Christian journey is grasping the heart of grace. Oftentimes there is an internal battle between our theology and our lived experience. In this short excerpt, Fred...

On the effect of seeing for the first time after Cataract Surgery: The mental effort involved in these reasonings proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do ...

Our eyes are remarkable and accurate signs of our inner spiritual health. They narrow into slits when we hate, envy, and scheme. They open wide in wonder when we live in adoration and generosity. W...

A youth group leader took his kids to a ski resort, where he saw two people skiing down the slopes one behind the other. They were so close it was almost as if they were tied together. When he got clo...

Jesus is clear that it is dangerous to close one’s ears, eyes, and heart to the leadings of the Holy Spirit. In The Magician’s Nephew , a novel from C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series, Narnia i...

R. C. Sproul recounts an unusual healing by Jesus. In Mark 8, when Jesus visits Bethsaida, a blind man is brought to him to be healed. Jesus leads him out of the village, puts saliva on his eyes, and ...

The rural country roads where I now live are very different from the roads I grew up around in the suburbs. When I lived in the suburbs, the roads I traveled between my house and a friend’s, or the st...

When my grandparents were in their eighties, their television developed a fault that made the screen permanently bright green. It was good for viewing garden shows or nature programs, but it was prett...