We talked about being the cause of what is happening in our life.  Today we will talk about the second principal of NLP and that is

Perception is Projection

meaning we see things not as they are, but as we are.

Sounds confusing? I will attempt to enlighten you…

Maybe the easiest way is to look at the filtering process of generalisation. We have been taught what a window is supposed to look like so anytime we see a transparent wall with a frame around it, we call it a window even though it might have a totally different shape or function.

So the next time we see another window, rather than re-learning the concept and it’s function afresh, we refer to the understanding we had earlier and project that understanding onto this new object by calling it again a window. Thus we believe this new window is just like the first window in our experience with the same properties and that it will behave in exactly the same way.

With something as simple as an object this process generally works pretty well for us. People however are much more complex than windows or doors and our perceptions of them can be totally off as we have a very biased view = we project our perception.

Let me try it another way also because this NLP principal can be confusing.

Our thoughts are our personal internal representations of all events filtered through our background and experiences (and many other things like the above mentioned generalisations). As a result you perceive the outer world (our so called reality) through your filters which will grossly delete, distort and generalize the true event.  Therefore perception is projection as you can’t see anything in others that you don’t have in yourself.

I hope I was able to clarify what perception is projection means and why it can totally change your outlook to life.

Anyway, not to worry, this is about as theoretical as I will ever get.