Many years ago I learned a very painful but valuable lesson. It started with the realization that I could so easily see the negative things in others but was totally blind to the flaws in my own life. The lesson is the bitter truth that one of the reasons we can see things so clearly in others is that those same issues live within us. This Forbes post is very revealing:
“A few years ago, I was on an executive retreat with 10 friends, all of whom run successful businesses. The idea was that we would learn from one another about how to grow our companies and deal with the challenges we faced.
John Drury, who became an executive coach after selling his advertising agency, served as our moderator. In an exercise that I will never forget, he asked us to list three adjectives to define the person we admire most.”