Do you see a Reflection.

One of our Coaches attended a Coaching seminar and was fascinated by the facilitators witty behavior, great command over language to induce changes in the participants at a conscious and un-conscious level, charisma to leave everybody mesmerized, and a great flow to the seminar using experiential style.  One of the activities that the facilitator took the participants through was very powerful and thought provoking. Here is how the session started:

“Good morning everybody! Let’s start with a quick 3 step exercise to make the session more interesting.  All you need is a paper and pen, and do it real quick so that there’s no time for your conscious mind to reason or think.  I hope you are ready. Let’s go!

Step 1: Think about a person you like. List down 5 qualities you like about him/her on the left side of the paper.

Step 2: Think about a person you dislike. List down 5 qualities you dislike about him/her on the right side of the paper

Step 3: On both sides circle 3 most liked and disliked qualities by you and keep that aside.

When I did this exercise during my NLP Coaching program, the 6 qualities circled were – ‘selfish, fake, gossip monger’ – which I disliked, and ‘humble, caring, genuine’ – which I liked. It was amazing what I found out at the end of the exercise.

I was very happy with the friend circle I had, and I was really not keen to make more friends. On one hand I felt I didn’t need any, on the other hand I didn’t know what kind of people were out there. My friends were the ones I forged a bond with during school and college. I felt safe with them and content. One day during training, we were asked to do the above exercise and what opened up was a new revelation.

To share a fact – whenever I met new people, I always found something that I didn’t like in them; some were too absorbed with themselves, some wanted all the attention, some were busy gossiping about others. There were very few people I could really connect with, and honestly, I always had a very good feeling about the kind of person I was. I always believed that I am almost perfect in most ways. Then one fine day the trainer showed me a mirror and when I decided to look in the mirror, that’s when I saw what I saw. She asked me to look at the 6 circled qualities and check if they existed in me. You can also quickly take a few minutes to check your list too and see if the 6 qualities (like and dislike) exist in you. Do they?

Well, I was happy to see that the 3 qualities I liked existed in me, but when it came to the qualities I disliked I didn’t think I had any, and I denied it. That evening when I was reflecting alone, strangely I started realizing that all the qualities I disliked, I have also exhibited it at some point or the other. As the realization kicked in, it started to bring about an awkward feeling and then I saw myself justifying what I had done when I displayed it. “Only if you know Greek, you can understand Greek” was what I remember the trainer said.

There are always two sides to every individual; “the light and the dark”. The point is that we joyfully embrace the good, and walk in denial that the bad in us doesn’t exist. When we have a strong negative reaction to someone, we can be certain that they’re reflecting traits that we also possess but have been unwilling to embrace. We spend so much time denying that we have a dark side, and then end up projecting these denied qualities onto other people. For the same reason, we are attracted to certain people because they have the same traits that we have, only more so. Everyone we see in the world is a reflection of ourselves, and the traits we see most clearly in others are the ones that are strongest in ourselves. In fact, the most enlightened people are those who accept their own vagueness and full potential for light and dark. The realization that “What we see in others is what already exists in us” is a very powerful statement to emotional freedom.

After this realization, whenever I see something I dislike in others I quickly check within me and I have noticed that it always exists, only the size may vary. People say the more emotional freedom you attain, the more you start to enjoy life.”

Blog Credit (Sherley Mathew – NLP Practitioner & Life Coach)