Recovering Your Peripheral Vision

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Tom Patterson, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

I’ve come to appreciate through the years that one of the most critical assets to have while driving a car is good peripheral vision. Peripheral vision allows you to pick up moving objects “out of the corner of your eye.” Without peripheral vision, your head would have to be constantly scanning back and forth, able to take in only what is directly in front of your narrow field of vision. It would be like seeing the world through the center of a paper towel roll. Peripheral vision is part of what keeps you safe as it helps you to visually take in “the whole picture.”

There’s another kind of peripheral vision that we hope will be at work when making life decisions. This is the kind of vision that helps us keep the big picture in mind…the variety of options available to us…the range of choices that we pick from when making whatever our decision is. This kind of peripheral vision includes the ability to reflect, to think deeply and broadly, to engage the imagination, and to carefully consider the validity of one option over another—as well as thinking through the consequences of making one choice over another. This kind of peripheral vision also allows us to consider carefully how both mind and emotions are trying to get our attention, and what to do with them both.

What happens when we become anxious, though, is that this peripheral vision begins narrowing. We begin seeing fewer and fewer options, and we can find ourselves moving from a place of thought, reflection, and imagination, to a place of reaction, or even panic. I’ll bet you’ve seen this in others, or in yourself. Something really significant happens, and it throws you for a loop. There is a crisis in the family, a reshuffling of personnel at work, a sudden loss of income, or the sudden recognition that you’ve been slowly letting go of a dream you’ve held for some time. Whatever the situation, we can tend to “react” to it. And in our reaction, our field of vision narrows to the point that we are looking at our options—metaphorically speaking—through a paper towel roll. Our thinking can become black and white, either/or, good or bad, all or nothing.

This is where coaching comes in. Coaching is about helping you regain and even enhance your peripheral vision. It is about helping you discover for yourself what your best options are for the direction you, yourself want to be headed in. There’s more, though. Coaching also helps you to map out a route to get you where you want to be. It involves crafting action steps that move you a little closer and a little closer, until you’re a whole lot closer! This map gets adapted along the way by you and your coach as you find out what works best for you.

Either way, here’s to your peripheral vision expanding, and your creative responses to life’s surprises being more and more grounded in the unique person you are!