Perception is projection - Part 1

In this blog, we will look at the 2nd pillar of empowerment that I introduced to you in my blog about how to become empowered through NLP. This pillar is called perception is projection.

Perception is projection is a concept that was introduced by Carl Jung. It essentially states that the world reflects you and that you only see outside of you what is inside of you. This can be good or bad depending on how you think. For example, my mother used to say this to me when I was little, when you point a finger at someone to blame them for something, look at how many fingers are pointing back at yourself. I’m sure many of you are familiar with this axiom, but the meaning behind it is that when you’re becoming upset, disturbed or agitated by something or someone out there, that’s you, and that’s probably the thing you need to learn about most at this moment. 

Anything out of our conscious awareness can control us and anything that we bring into our conscious awareness, we can gain control over. When we’re pointing outside and blaming something or someone else, we are not learning. We are not integrating that information into our conscious awareness. And we are not accepting it as a part of us. Many people, when they look at perception is projection, immediately only look for the negative aspect and look at it as a negative thing, but that's not the truth. Like I mentioned earlier, perception is projection can also be good.

When you see someone and you find them to be amazing, aspirational, powerful or confident, you see something outside of you, but guess what? That’s actually you. You project that out from the inside. You couldn’t see that in someone else unless that lived inside of you too. You have to be able to recognize it inside of you and really own it to feel and connect with it. 

According to the book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, there are about 2 million bits of information flying around at any given time. Every second, there are 2 million bits of information flying into your nervous system, but your nervous system can only handle about 134 bits. As my NLP mentor would say: imagine 2 million toothpicks of information going right past you every second, and as you reach out to grab them, you can only grab 134 of those toothpicks. This means you delete, distort, and generalize all the other bits of information and only take in about 134 bits. That’s how much information you’re not seeing. These same 2 million bits go past me, you, and everyone else. The big question is: who's in charge of what they reach out and grab? Well, you are.

I will continue to explain how perception is projection and how you construct your reality in part 2 of this article.