Is a reflection of what we projected to send to the public?
Answers
eceived a call from a young woman one day. She said “You have really helped my sister and brother-in-law’s marriage with your relationship coaching, and I was wondering if you would be willing to work with my husband and me”. “We are in a lot of trouble.” She went on to outline a number of complaints about her husband that she believed were contributing to the eventual demise of their relationship.
I told her that I would be willing to consider working with them, but she needed to understand ahead of time that I would be asking her to take a look at her part in how the relationship got to its present point. There was a really long pause, and then she said “Do I have to agree with that philosophy before we start? Because, honestly, I can’t think of one thing that I do that has a negative impact on our relationship”. She went on to say “Without me, there would be no relationship.”
I told her that she didn’t have to believe it, but she would have to be willing to consider and stay open to the remote possibility that she was contributing to the pain that existed in her relationship with her husband. She agreed.
These days, a couple of years later, when reminded of our initial conversation where she stated that she couldn’t think of anything she was doing that contributed to the problems in their relationship, she just smiles the way one does when they are reflecting back to a time when they didn’t even know what they didn’t know. Why is it so much easier to see the speck of dirt in another’s eye, while we can’t see the log in our own?
I recently read a research article that suggested that our brains are wired to ‘project’ rather than ‘self-reflect’. So, it is not a matter that we are selfish or bad people. It is that our brains lean in that direction.
What does that mean? It means that at any particular moment, when something happens to us (or doesn’t happen for us), we tend to project blame and assign responsibility for our experience towards someone or something that ‘caused’ it, rather than assume that we contributed as much, if not more, to our experience.
This hardwiring of blaming others for our experience seems to have served an important function back in the days when we were living more collective and tribal lives. Historically, if we were self-reflective, we would tend to ‘freeze’ and thus might become a ‘target’ for whatever the threat was. Self-reflection requires one to ‘stop and consider’. Historically, that could have been (and based on who survived, genetically obviously was) deadly.
Unfortunately, as with other things that used to be essential for our specie’s survival (i.e. being hard-wired towards having multiple intimate relationships; to run away, go silent, or attack others when frightened or anxious; take advantage of those less fortunate, less intelligent, or less able, etc.) as our civilization has evolved, those automatic responses don’t serve us as well as they once did.
One of the basic tools I’ve found essential to working with the couples, families, and groups with whom I am involved is the concept of ‘self-reflection first’. I call the process “de-constructing”. Another term for what happens would be called a “de-briefing”. If there is something that happens (I use the term “dust-up) between two or more of the people that I work with, I ask them to come back together, once the emotional tide has ebbed (at least 20 minutes of calming activities are what’s needed), and each share one or more things, that upon reflection, they might have done differently that might have resulted in a different outcome.
This is really hard to do. When one is asked to do that, they will immediately run in to their ‘hard wiring’. Try it; you will see what I mean. What we are wired to do is to go back to our respective corners and reflect on what the other person should have done differently.
The good thing about this ‘hard-wiring’ is that, because of the brain’s plasticity, we can run parallel circuits. This second circuit is the development of the complementary, self-reflecting circuitry. With practice, self-reflection can become as ‘natural’ a reaction as blaming or projection. The excellent thing about this reaction is that we have a chance to learn how to do things differently.
For those willing to buy in to this concept and practice it, the changes in relationships are almost miraculous. The level of defensiveness, contempt, criticism, and the silent treatment of the other person(s) (all relationship killers) are reduced dramatically.
Brand Image is a reflection of what we projected to send to the public...!!!
Hope it helps uh...!!!