Welcome to Episode #126 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Blind Spots.” In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been wearing glasses for several years… but not anymore! I recently underwent eye surgery and am happy to report that I can now see better than ever! However, even with perfect vision, the fact is we can all have blind spots. We often see only what we WANT to see or only what we already know. Or maybe that’s just me? In this episode, I’d like to share what I’ve learned about vision and blind spots—both physical and psychological—and how they affect our success and happiness on the mats and off. To LISTEN to “Blind Spots,” just hit play below. Play the audio podcast below… or download to your device. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify. To WATCH the video version or READ the transcript, scroll down below. If you’d like to support this show, share the link with a friend or leave a quick review over on iTunes. Thank you! Oh—and don’t forget to sign up for free email updates so you can get new shows sent to your inbox the minute they’re released. Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life! Blind Spots in Martial Arts Here’s a video of the podcast. If the player doesn’t work, you can click this direct link. As always, if you’d like to comment (or complain!), feel free to leave a message here or through my Contact Page. TRANSCRIPT Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better. Today, if you’re watching the video, you might notice—no more glasses! That’s right, for the first show in maybe six years, I am not wearing glasses. That’s because I am one month out from having a vision correction surgery. I’d like to tell you what I did and more importantly, what I’ve learned about vision and blind spots. So, backing up, I was born and raised with perfect vision, 20/20. In fact, most of my life, I’ve had perfect vision. But then somewhere around the age of 47 or 48, I noticed, as is natural, that I was having trouble reading. And then a couple years later, I was having some trouble driving. I even failed the DMV test, which was really embarrassing for me. I’d never had something in print, on the license, saying, “restricted license, must wear eyeglasses”. That hurt. So, at first, of course, I accepted it. I realized this is normal, right? The eyes start to go as you get older. But it didn’t take long before I hated it. Absolutely hated it. If you wear glasses, I’m sure you’re aware of this. My glasses were always lost or I was breaking them. Had to buy new ones all the time. I was walking around with two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one for distance. And I was always switching in between the two. And if I’m trying to just duck down, do little fix-it projects, they’re always falling off my head. It just got to be a nightmare. I hated it. Now, of course, if you’ve been wearing glasses your whole life, you’re probably more patient and more accustomed to it. But I was weak. I admit I was weak. It really got to me. So, a couple years ago, I started looking into LASIK because I had some friends and they got tired of hearing me whine about my eyes. And they said, “Well, why don’t you just get LASIK?” At first, that actually frightened me. Lasers in the eyes—I’m old school, that seemed crazy. But then, three months ago, I finally got the guts to go see a doctor for LASIK. He sat me down and he said, “Hey man, listen—I could give you the LASIK, but at your age, what you should get is cataract surgery.” Do I have cataracts? No, I don’t have cataracts. But if you get this surgery, you never will. So it’s something called RLE, refractive lens exchange. And that was the promise: If you get this surgery, within 24 hours, you’ll be able to drive back for your first follow-up appointment, and you won’t need glasses again. You’ll have close vision, intermediate vision, and far vision. Sounded too good to be true. But I did it. So a month ago, had the surgery, and sure enough, 24 hours later, drove myself to the follow-up appointment. I don’t like necessarily using the word miracle, but it’s a miracle. I have not worn glasses now in a month, for reading or for driving. So, if you’re interested in this kind of procedure, hit me up on email or in the comments, I’m more than happy to share some information on it. If you’re living in Los Angeles, I’m happy to refer you to the doctor who took care of me. It was definitely worth it. What lessons have I taken from this experience? Well, number one, don’t take anything for granted. I absolutely took my eyes for granted. I took my vision for granted for many, many years. And that was a crutch because I relied on them too much. I think it’s natural that we’re wired as human beings to be very hands and eyes focused, especially nowadays when you have a device in your hands, and you’re texting all the time, and you’re driving, and you’re sitting at a computer, watching TV. It’s a lot of your eyes and your hands. Then you lose touch with the rest of your body. So, I feel that that is its own blind spot of a sort. Because you’re living in this tunnel. You’re so reliant on your eyes that you don’t feel around you, you don’t widen out your awareness, you just focus on what’s in your hands and what’s right in front of you. In short, if I can’t see it, it’s not there. That’s, to me, a blind spot. Now, you can talk about physical blind spots, which is what I’ve been doing, but worse were the psychological blind spots. Not only couldn’t I literally see the horizon physically, psychologically, I could not see the future. I couldn’t set clear goals for myself. I was asking myself, where are you going? Where do you think you’re going? And I couldn’t get a clear vision of it. It was as if my entire imagination was tied to my eyes. That might sound crazy, and that’s okay. That frustration at first, feeling boxed in and somewhat limited, eventually got depressing. And then I just tied it into just getting old in general. I thought, well, you’ve been dealing with arthritis for several years. My shoulders, my feet, I’ve talked about these things. I lose my voice very easily nowadays. Lower energy. In short, I’m dying. I’ve peaked and now I’m down that shady side of the hill, the cold side of that hill. And here we go. Now your eyes are going. You’re going blind. So it’s hard to wake up and be enthusiastic when you can’t see the future. Okay. It got worse. Am I being dramatic? Maybe. I’ll tell you when it got really bad. The lockdowns, the COVID lockdowns, were five years ago now. Almost exactly five years ago. And of course, during the lockdown—I live in a very small apartment— couldn’t go outside. Couldn’t go to work, right? At one point, couldn’t go to the parks. We had fires here in Los Angeles. Couldn’t go anywhere. So I was locked into a physical space, and then locked within the rims of my glasses or just blurred vision. And that was really suffocating. But it gets worse because during the lockdowns, since I lost my business, I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. Now listen, there are nice people in Raleigh, a lot of positives about Raleigh, so I’m not bashing Raleigh. However, I live in Los Angeles, had been living in Los Angeles for decades, and it’s not Los Angeles. I’m used to sunshine. I’m used to mountains, vistas, ocean, wide expanses. There’s a freedom that comes with a large view. And in LA, that’s something else I just took for granted. When I got to Raleigh—have you been there? It’s quite the opposite. There are no mountains. It’s flat. It’s not sunny all the time. Clouds, rain, overcast. Trees. So many trees. I joked at some point, half-kiddingly, that it felt when you’re driving down these straight streets that—you couldn’t see the horizon, because they’re all curving around, flat land, just surrounded by trees. All you have are tree trunks, tree trunks, tree trunks, all around you. Which then felt like bars of a jail cell. So, I felt like I was in a jail cell with a ceiling of clouds inside the frames of my glasses and with humidity in Raleigh, also your glasses fog up often. So, talk about suffocating. I really felt like I was just being crammed into my coffin when I lived there. Couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. My freedom was just crushed. So, two years it took for my wife and I to decide, let’s go back to Los Angeles. I can’t breathe, I can’t move. And we did. And that brought some relief. Absolutely. Nurtured my soul. But I still felt limited. I still was right back to the original restrictions of I can’t see. So, that brings us to getting the surgery. I signed up. I showed up on time early, in fact. Got the surgery. And what’s funny is, the day after the surgery, my wife says to me, “It seems like you have more energy.” What? She said, “You know, it seems like you’re in a better mood.” She even said, “You know, you look a little bigger.” All of that was a shock. She was saying, “Hey, it’s the old Ando, the one from seven or eight years ago. Old Ando is back.” I was stunned, shocked, mostly because I thought I had learned this lesson. Not once, but many times. Several years ago, a doctor told me I was probably going to need a hip replacement. That was a downer, but I found a way to work around it, kept moving forward. With the arthritis, found a way around it. Herniated discs in my back, found a way around it. So I’ve always been optimistic and foun
