What I don’t like in others is really what I don’t like in myself. I’d like to thank Carl Jung for that thought. Carl Jung, a great therapist, said, “What you do not want to see in yourself, you project onto the world and see outside you.” Carl called it “dynamic projection” and that’s a tough one. I know it’s a tough one for me. It’s a tough one for a guy like me who automatically loves to judge others. This has been a really critical area on my path of authentic power.
For example, when I’m in a group of people, either I must have the willingness to walk up to someone in the room or on a phone call and say, “Hey, listen, I’m feeling some distance from you, and there must be a part of me that I don’t like that I see in you, and I want to clear that because this is where my authentic power is.” I’ve got to tell you, I’ve done that many, many times. That’s the power of being part of a group of people who are all on the path to having a soulful significance where you make a difference authentically.
Extraordinary things can happen when you open yourself to a constant fresh perspective with individual people in an authentic relationship. I can tell story, after story, after story of people who have come to me and have told me something that was creating distance between me and them. As soon as they shared it with me that it was a projection that they had, it disappeared and they found their voice. I invite you to do the same thing.
When you are feeling distance, ask yourself, “What is it in that person that reminds me of the part of me that I’m not connected to? That if I could close the gap between myself and that person, I might close the gap between that part of me and the most authentic part of me.” That takes enormous courage to find that power. But when you find it, you will find a voice that is expressed in a world like no other.
