What are you Projecting?

Do you present yourself as something that you are not?

Let’s be honest… to some extent, we all do. We try so hard to hide our "imperfections" and show only those qualities that we think others want to see.

For years I presented myself as a strong, confident, fun and sensuous woman to everyone I met. I may have fooled some of the people, but the truth is I was running a con.  I was not the person I wanted everyone else to see, and it was a very hard standard to hold myself to.

I heard about this con game I was playing. But I just could not bring myself to expose my dark secrets to anyone, not even myself. I struggled to even admit this was going on within me. I frequently had harsh thoughts in my mind for not being the person I projected. (This was a root cause of my anger, although I didn’t realize it at the time.) Ultimately, I was only conning myself.

We have all be conned into thinking that we can’t show our imperfections or disclose our weaknesses; that we have to dominate and avoid being dominated; that we need to justify ourselves and invalidate others; win and not lose; be right and never be wrong. If we can do all that, then we can manage to be bigger, faster, smarter and safer than everyone else… right?

Any given day, you can log on to Facebook and see people sharing strategically chosen messages with their friends in order to look good. I think we want to fully be who we really are... but this is so hard to do when we live in a culture where the name of the game is LOOK GOOD!

Here’s what makes it easier: understand that there are three sides to how we show up in the world – what we want others to see (our projection); what we are trying to hide (all of our shameful secrets); and, who we really are. Most of us are very busy manipulating the first two.

Have you ever noticed if you are run by this underlying compulsion? What do you do in an attempt to look good? If you start that inquiry, you might be surprised by what you find.