Judgment and Projection
Language powerfully shapes our interactions with others. As humans, we all have judgments bouncing around in our minds all day long – “It’s a beautiful day,” or “The guy driving in front of me is a jerk,” or “Gee, Frank is such a sharp guy, so smart, and a real man’s man!” What we choose to do with those judgments is a whole other thing. I can lean on my horn when the guy in front of me is going too slow, cut around him, give him the finger, or yell out my window at him. Or I can just let it go – pass him, put him in my rearview mirror, and continue on my way.
Perhaps the most unhelpful thing I can do to myself with language is to project my feelings onto someone else. In the example I gave above about anger, if I witness someone behaving with anger, I will absolutely have judgments about the situation, and about them. I might tell them that they’re a bully, or they’re not being very mature, or to just shut up, or that they’re generally a flawed human being for getting angry about whatever it is that they’re angry about. Here’s the thing – those judgments have nothing to do with that other person. They are my projections onto that other person about what kind of person they are. In the same way that I filter my observations about their anger through the prism of my own experience of anger, my judgments about another person are not about that person at all, but rather about me, myself. Whether they trigger something old in me, a memory, let’s say, about how my father used to be when he was angry, or something that is true about myself, projections are always rooted in something that is true about me, not the other person.
Projections do not just have to be negative evaluations of someone else. I might project that Mike, my neighbor, has it all together – a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, nice cars – clearly he’s super successful, and has a perfect life. The truth is that I don’t know anything of the sort about Mike. Behind all the amazing things I think are true about him, he may have demons he struggles with that I know nothing about. His marriage may be on the rocks. He may be stretched to the breaking point financially, not sure how on earth he’s going to continue to sustain what looks like a storybook life. What’s far more likely true is that my beliefs about Mike’s amazingness have a basis in my own feelings about my own life. Maybe I believe that my house and my cars aren’t nearly as nice as his, and so I’m not as capable or successful a human being as Mike is.
The power of projections lies in what they can teach me about myself. If I can take a step back, breathe, and probe myself for what’s going on that is leading me to project those feelings onto someone else, I can uncover whatever it is that generated that reaction in me, process it, and see something I may not have seen in myself before. And that is a big step toward understanding and healing my wounds. Whatever I think about somebody else is never about them. While I can observe someone else’s behavior (the facts of the situation, if you will), my reaction to it, and my beliefs about that other person and about the world are exactly that – my beliefs. Having the self-awareness to realize that, and to be curious about what’s going on in me when I project is one more step in my journey of self-discovery and healing, and it is entirely shaped by the language I give to it.
Accountability and Integrity
A basic definition of accountability is when your words are aligned with your actions. “Her word is her bond,” or “when he says something, you can take it to the bank.” Accountability is about doing what you say you will do. Integrity is a closely related, but different idea. Integrity is about being who you say you are. Let me give you an example to illustrate the difference. Let’s say that I make a commitment to meet you at a particular place at 5:00 this afternoon. 5:00 comes and goes, you don’t hear from me, and I don’t show until almost an hour later. I am out of account with my agreement to meet you at 5:00. When I arrive, I tell you that the reason I didn’t make it on time, and didn’t call to let you know I was going to be late, is that I came across an accident, and I stopped to render aid to the injured people in the wreck until the police and paramedics showed up. Even though I am out of account, I am in integrity, because if the same thing happened again, I would do the same thing – stop and render aid.