I hope you're having fun influencing people who would have said “no” until last week's tip! This week, I'm going to share a piece of “emotional magic” with you. In this article, you're going to learn a simple tool you can use anywhere to make it so people who annoy you can't get under your skin. As a bonus, you're also going to learn how to develop some great new qualities yourself.

A few years ago, I was running an NLP course, & there was a guy on the course who really rubbed me up the wrong way. No matter how I tried to reframe his behaviour, I still felt really annoyed by him. I was about to decide he was beyond hope, when suddenly I had this thought: Why him? I'd had lots of people on my courses that did a variety of annoying things, but who didn't manage to “get to me”. And why me? There was a room full of other people who he hadn't “got to”.

Carl Jung (a student of Freud's) talks about the human shadow. You can think of the shadow as being like a sack we carry around with us, that contains all the qualities that we learned were “not OK” at some point in our lives. When we meet other people who engender a big emotional response in us, they're showing us what's in our sack, in our shadow.

The people who most annoy us are actually giving us a gift, showing us the aspects of ourselves that we've slapped an injunction on.

Here's my favourite exercise for starting to reclaim & integrate the aspects of you that have been living in the shadow.

1) Think of someone you really dislike or hate, & someone you
    really admire. Write their names on a piece of paper.

2) Next to the person you hate, write the 3 qualities you most
    dislike about them. Next to the person you admire, write the
    3 qualities you most admire.

3) Circle the quality you most hate, & the one you most admire.

4) While looking into a mirror or into the eyes of another person,
    say "I am <hated quality>", eg. "I am devious", "I am
    bigoted", “I am murderous” etc. Notice any feelings or
    thoughts that come up & say thank-you. Keep breathing.
    Repeat this "affirmation" several times, leaving a minute
    between each so that the feelings have time to move.

5) While looking into a mirror or into the eyes of another person,
    say "I am <admired quality>", eg. "I am compassionate", "I
    am loving" etc. Notice any feelings or thoughts that come up
    & say thank-you. Keep breathing. Repeat this "affirmation"
    several times, leaving a minute between each so that the
    feelings have time to move.

Some of these are "negative" qualities, while some are "positive", but the integration really begins as you continue to realise that every quality is useful in some context (and inappropriate in many others). Joy is the human being FULLY alive, able to feel & access every human possibility.

By the way, sometimes when I've done this, a person will choose Adolf Hitler (or similar) and write down “Genocidal”, then say “But I'm not genocidal”. I explain to them that the seed of that monstrous behaviour lives in all of us, & that by accepting it (thank-you), we take its more dangerous power away.

Any time you notice yourself having a strong emotional response to another person, you can do this shadow exercise to recover the aspects of yourself that they're showing you.

Have a great week

To your success!

Your friend

Jamie

Jamie Smart

Jamie Smart
CEO
jamie.smart@saladltd.co.uk

jamie.smart@saladltd.co.uk