Jung had a lot to answer for ...

Notes on Perception is Projection ...

Carl Jung’s thinking behind “Perception is Projection” is central to the thinking and philosophy of training in NLP … after all, NLP is about modelling excellence (and it’s an excellent idea to model ~ thanks Carl!) and it’s also about understanding your perceptions so you can change or ‘edit’ your projections!

As I said, Perception is Projection has its roots in Jungian psychology, and it suggests that what we see outside of ourselves is, at some level and in some aspects, a reflection of who we are … 

‘Hold the mirror up to yourself and have a good look’ … kind of thing!

Some reflections you like …some you don’t!  … and ain’t that the truth!

Jung says that we all have a shadow self which is made up of the aspects of our personality we don’t like. (MBTI advocates get this or anyone who has taken the NLP Master Practitioner with Inside Performance …)

Sometimes we dislike these aspects so much we repress them and deny that they’re there (think of Freud’s concept of defence mechanisms), and however much we deny their existence, they’re not going away …

To reduce our feelings of discomfort ~ otherwise known as ‘cognitive dissonance’ this repression and denial means they’re outside of our conscious awareness, stored away in our unconscious minds (to us at least) so we can happily ignore them and remain in blissful ignorance!   

Of course, these things will bubble away under the surface, and become apparent through our language, attitudes and behaviours, particularly to someone who has undertaken an MBTI or NLP Practitioner or Master Practitioner Training …

We project these disowned parts of our personality onto others, in an attempt to feel better about ourselves and also to avoid the sometimes painful truth…the truth that there are some aspects we could do with sorting out on a personal level too … instead of pointing out these faults and aspects that we think belong to someone else!!

You see, unless we learn to face our own shadows, we will continue to see them in others, because the world outside us is only a reflection of the world inside us. … hold the mirror up …

How much of your time is spent commenting on what someone is doing and whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad?

How often do you find yourself helping or advising others by pointing out what someone ‘should’ improve or what they ‘must’ do to ‘make them better’?

What about we all hold up the mirror and ask … How are these areas related to me? How much of what I comment on in others is really what the mirror reflects back to me? Maybe it’s time to take a more objective look in the mirror to find what is really going on inside? 

Maybe … just maybe … it’s time to discover a bit more about how we can assist ourselves and others by adopting the concepts of Perception is Projection …. and getting under the skin of how this operates within us and what effects it has on what we project … time to get that mirror out …