What If the Biggest Thing Holding Us Back Is What We Cannot See?
As both an integrative health and wellness coach and a trained physician, I spend much of my time partnering with people to uncover patterns they cannot yet see.
Sometimes those patterns involve health behaviors. It may be the stress we have normalized for so long that we no longer recognize it, the sleep deprivation we dismiss as "just part of life," the emotional eating that appears to come out of nowhere but is actually tied to loneliness, overwhelm, or grief, or the assumptions we carry about what health should look like or even what kind of person we are.
Often, the greatest obstacle to change is not a lack of motivation or willpower. It is our blind spots.
Recently, I heard one of the authors of the fascinating new book Unseen: Blind Spots and Why We Miss What Matters Most speak about the ideas behind the book. Written by neuropsychologist David Lewis and illusionist Keelan Leyser, the book explores a remarkable and sometimes unsettling truth: human beings routinely fail to see things that are directly in front of them—not because we are careless or unintelligent, but because our brains were never designed to perceive everything.
The implications are enormous.
Our blind spots influence our health decisions, our relationships, our politics, our workplaces, and our communities. And in an increasingly polarized world, learning to recognize our blind spots may be one of the most important health practices available to us.
Most of us walk through life believing that we see reality as it is. The science tells a different story.
Our brains are constantly filtering, editing, predicting, and filling in information. If they did not, we would quickly become overwhelmed by the millions of pieces of sensory inputs arriving every second. The result is that we often see not necessarily what is there, but what our brains expect to find there.
Lewis and Leyser describe multiple forms of blindness, including inattentional blindness, in which we fail to notice something unexpected because our attention is focused elsewhere; confirmation bias, which leads us to seek evidence that supports what we already believe while overlooking contradictory information; expectation blindness, in which we see what we anticipate seeing rather than what is actually present; and priming effects, where subtle cues shape our perceptions and decisions without our awareness.
These blind spots are not signs of weakness. They are features of being human.
The problem arises when we assume we do not have them.
In coaching, I often see health transformations begin not with a new supplement, medication, or exercise plan, but with awareness. A client notices that they only snack late at night on the days they feel disconnected from people. Another realizes they tell themselves they do not have time to exercise while spending two hours scrolling on their phone. Someone else discovers that what they thought was simply aging was actually burnout, or that the stress they believed was motivating them was slowly exhausting their nervous system.
Our blind spots often protect us from discomfort in the short term while limiting our growth in the long term.
Behavioral science shows that much of our daily behavior occurs outside conscious awareness. Habits become encoded into neural pathways that allow us to function efficiently, but this efficiency can make change difficult because we stop seeing the behavior itself. Awareness is often the first intervention. Before we can change a pattern, we must first notice it.
This is why so many coaching conversations begin not with advice, but with curiosity.
Not, "How do I fix this?"
But rather, "What might I not be seeing?"
The ideas in Unseen feel particularly important in this moment in history.
Many of us now live in carefully curated information environments. Algorithms show us what we already agree with. News sources reinforce our existing beliefs. Social media often rewards certainty more than curiosity.
Psychologists refer to this as confirmation bias: our tendency to search for, remember, and prioritize information that supports our existing worldview while discounting information that challenges it.
The result is the echo chamber.
While echo chambers may feel psychologically comfortable, they are not necessarily healthy.
Research consistently shows that social connection, belonging, and community are among the strongest predictors of health and longevity. Conversely, social isolation increases the risk of depression, cardiovascular disease, cognitive decline, and early mortality. Ironically, one of the things contributing to our growing isolation may be our increasing inability to imagine that reasonable, thoughtful people could see the world differently than we do.
Acknowledging our blind spots does not require abandoning our values or convictions. It simply requires humility.
The willingness to say, "Perhaps I do not have the whole picture."
"Perhaps there is something important that I am missing."
"Perhaps another perspective contains information that I need."
This matters because the challenges facing us today are complex. Climate change, healthcare access, mental health crises, loneliness, and political polarization are not problems that can be solved by any one profession, ideology, or political party.
Complex problems require diverse perspectives.
Innovation often occurs not when people agree completely, but when different viewpoints come together and create something larger than any one perspective could produce alone.
If we can become more skilled at recognizing our own blind spots, we may become more capable of collaboration. And collaboration may be one of the most important forms of resilience available to us—not only for individuals, but for communities, countries, and the planet we share.
So how do we reduce our blind spots?
Lewis and Leyser offer several practical suggestions that align closely with practices used in coaching, leadership development, and cognitive science. The first is to assume that we all have blind spots. This sounds simple, but it may be the most important step. The people most vulnerable to blind spots are often those who believe they do not have any.
The authors also encourage us to actively seek disconfirming evidence by asking ourselves, "What evidence would suggest I am wrong?" Scientists do this routinely. Healthy thinking requires actively looking for information that challenges our assumptions rather than simply collecting evidence that supports them.
They also encourage curiosity about other perspectives. We do not need to agree with everyone we encounter, but understanding how another person arrived at their conclusion expands our own field of vision. Curiosity is often more productive than certainty.
Slowing down also matters. Many cognitive errors occur when we are stressed, distracted, rushed, or emotionally activated. Pausing creates space for reflection. The nervous system matters here. A regulated brain sees more clearly than a threatened brain.
The authors also emphasize the importance of feedback. Other people can often see patterns in us long before we can see them ourselves. Trusted friends, colleagues, therapists, coaches, mentors, and family members can serve as mirrors for our unseen patterns.
Finally, practices such as journaling, mindfulness, coaching conversations, and time in nature can strengthen our ability to observe ourselves more objectively. Awareness grows through practice.
One of the gifts of getting older is realizing how often we have been wrong. Not wrong in a shameful way. Wrong in a human way. My views on medicine, health, grief, resilience, success, and healing have all evolved over time because life kept showing me things I had not yet been able to see.
Perhaps wisdom is not the absence of blind spots. Perhaps wisdom is simply becoming more willing to look for them.
Because the moment we acknowledge that our perspective is incomplete, we create space for learning, for connection, for community, and perhaps even for solutions that none of us could see on our own.
The question is not whether we have blind spots.
We all do.
The question is:
What might we be missing?
