Changing Focus Through Your Projections:

If you've been in a relationship for any length of time, you've probably gone through moments when you couldn't stand the sight of your partner. Your internal dialogue may have gone in a downward spiral of "Why can't he squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom" or "can't he pick up his dirty socks and put them in the laundry basket" And all you can think of is shipping him off to another continent, until consciously or unconsciously you remember the roses or the unexpected cuddle and you suddenly reconnect to why you are together. All that happened is that your focus shifted from noticing all the negatives about your partner to noticing the positives.

The same principle applies to friends, bosses, colleagues.

Much of NLP is about holding up the mirror closely to yourself and looking at your own thoughts and behaviors. Only then can you understand that what you perdeive to be the case and what you focus on may just be a projection of your needs onto another person rather than a complete map of a situation. Your projections can often provide valuable clues as to what you focus on and how this reflects what your true needs are, which you may not have articulated.

The psychoanalyst Jung thought the process of projection was very important because we tend to blame the other person for what we don't like or don't recognize in ourselves. Jung coined the phrase "perception is projection: which means that hwat you perceive in others is often what you are looking out for or holding in your own map of the world as an aspect of your personality. For example if you find yourself complaining about Sunday drivers..is it because you are sometimes guilty of driving slowly and without care and attention???? Perception is projection!!!!