We spent last weekend in a 3 day workshop in London with Chuck Spezzano, our teacher and co-founder of Psychology of Vision. The event had a great title – Success from the Inside Out – which is also the title of his latest book. Among the many teachings one that stood out for me was about projection, which is the mechanism whereby we humans project our own unattractive characteristics on the people around us. Or as the poet Rumi said, “The faults you see in others, dear reader, are your own nature reflected in them.”
Chuck pointed out that our projections are blocks to our success, and until we recognise this we simply recreate them in some new form. The ‘Aha’ moment of the workshop for me was during one of our group exercises, when we owned up to accusing someone of doing the very same thing that we had done in some way. I was bemoaning the way my first husband announced his leaving, which was sudden and immediate, when it hit me that I had metaphorically ‘abandoned’ myself in just such a precipitous fashion at a much earlier time in my life. I say ‘hit’ me because the realisation was a physical jolt that is still with me ten days later, and which I feel is fuelling a fresh sense of presence and – dare I say it? – success.
And it is moments like these that keep us coming to workshops.