Hi, this is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track. Welcome to the latest episode.

Okay, in this one, I want to talk to you about something that's quite deep, a little confrontational and is potentially one of the best learning things you will ever get. It's a little thing called projection. You see, when we encounter people who challenge our perception, which is a nice way of saying they annoy the buggery out of us.

When you encounter these people, they bring up or they trigger within us, I should say, all of these what a lot of people refer to as 'negative' emotions. So these 'negative' emotions could be anger, frustration, disappointment, annoyance, rage, all of these sorts of emotions, and when they get triggered, one of our instant responses is "You made me..." whatever emotion it is.

The trouble is, this goes against us in two ways.

One; It infers that they have control and sovereignty over our emotions, about our reactions, about how we behave, and therefore they dictate the quality of our life. I'm pretty sure that's not what you want to do. You don't want to give dominion of yourself to someone who is not you. I'm sure you would rather have control of yourself. If you would rather have control of yourself, this episode is going to be good for you.

So you have someone who has come along. They have triggered you. A particular emotion has come out. You've reacted, retaliated, justified, explained, or whatever in response to what emotion they have triggered. Many years ago, I used to subscribe to this method where I would say "You made me angry", "You made me..",  "The issue...made me that", until one day I started thinking about my emotions and what I realised was, and I'll go into this in other episodes about the emotions.

When we suppress our so called 'negative' emotions, we also suppress our 'positive' emotions. So a lot of the time we're told, don't get angry, to calm down, all of this sort of thing. In other words, ignore these 'negative' emotions. Now, if you try to ignore them, they're just going to come back in a bigger form. So you will be triggered more and more by someone because you're trying to suppress these emotions.

These emotions are trying to give you an opportunity to learn about yourself so that you can become more and become more congruent with who you really are. So when you get triggered, the key is not to react in that way, but to explore where that reaction comes from. A lot of the times where that comes from is that person that has triggered it is not being a catalyst, they're not being a trigger, not the cause of our problem. All they are doing is mirroring back to ourselves something about ourselves that we may not like.

We might have repressed it. We might have disowned it. We might have tried to ignore it. Basically, we tried to cut ourselves off from that aspect of ourselves. So a lot of the times we're not angry at them. We're angry at ourselves and a lot of the times, exactly what is being mirrored back to us is what we need to learn from. To accept back into ourselves, to re-own, to assimilate back into ourselves, so that we can start to become more of what we already are. We just want to become more of who we are.

So this little thing called projection is something that is rampant in our world, people find it very easy to blame, very easy to point fingers, very easy to abdicate control of themselves to other people. The problem with this, of course, is it's never ending. If you're blaming one person, you've got to blame another person, until you stop blaming others and own these things that you're projecting onto others. Then you can start to become more of who you are, become more in control so that you start to choose your life.

You start to choose your results, you start to choose your emotions. Then once you get to that situation, then you start to move into the position of empowerment, where you are not at the whim of other people and their so called control of you.

So projection is something that is a powerful tool to learn about, because it's something that a lot of us do, and it doesn't work for any of us. It just causes more frustration than it needs to. So if you want to move forward in your life, one thing you should start looking at is your projections. The things that you push on to other people that are really your stuff. It's your stuff that you need to deal with, that you need to explore, that you need to draw back into yourself so you can become whole.

You can become complete from your efforts, not relying on someone else to complete you will make you whole. It's your job. So projection, it's a very deep hole to go down. If you want to go down, it's worth exploring, though it is worth exploring.

Some of my best a-ha moments have been when the mirror has been held up in front of me and I couldn't look away any further and I had to admit certain things. When I admitted those things, things really started to change. So that's your little lesson for today.

Start to own what is being mirrored back to you and stop projecting it onto other people. Bear in mind, of course, you are also a mirror for other people, so if you annoy them, frustrate them, disappoint them, whatever, that's then their journey. You're just mirroring back to them.

So there you go. Really good epiphany. Really good lesson. If you want to be open to it, you may need to listen to this a few times to be able to drum this into your head, how big a moment this is.

So Yeah. There you go. Thanks for listening to my podcast which has started to gain momentum. I'm getting more and more listeners around the world, which is really cool, starting to hopefully make an impact on people. You can send me feedback questions, whatever you want, because there's a link in the show notes where you can leave a quick ninety second voice message, so you'll get a chance to record it, listen to it to make sure you're happy with it, then send it. Then I get to hear your wonderful voice saying, "Hi", and giving me feedback, telling me a question, whichever it is, we look forward to it.

Otherwise, look after yourselves, keep practising everything and remember, here's to a good life

You can listen to the Life Back On Track podcast on your favourite platform by visiting our podcast website. Click HERE to check it out. 

You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE 

Thanks for listening.