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I’m okay, maybe you’re not – projecting our stuff
Having just watched an Oprah re-run with Kirstie Alley discussing her yo-yo weight, and hearing the judgments I made in my mind and out loud to my partner, I’m put in mind of what Debbie Ford says, and what we all are very well aware of:
- We are helped to see everything we carry within us by seeing it in others – ie. projecting it onto others.
- Courtroom TV, reality shows tabloid TVetc. “give us an unconscious outlet for playing out the ravaging criticism and judgments we have about our own humanity” Debbie says.
I guess that’s why we don’t live in isolation, rather we live surrounded by others in varying degrees of community. What Kirstie Alley was doing and saying seemed quite odd and imbalanced to me, but then don’t I do all kinds of things that don’t make sense, and that cause my life to go out of balance? Don’t we all?
Kirstie lived healthily for a period of time, a couple of years or so, and as spokesperson for Jennie Craig lost much weight and was a model for many American women. Then about a year ago, maybe she got tired of doing it all ‘right’, I don’t know; she decided to turn her dining room, full of gym equipment, back to its original purpose so she could wine and dine her friends. She had all the equipment moved out of the dining room and shoved into a smaller room, and never looked back on working out. Needless to say, she gained a load of weight.
This show begs the big questions, “Why can’t Kirstie Alley afford a workout room in her lovely home?”, “Why would she turn her beautiful dining room into a workout room?” And a final one: “Why is she designing a weight loss program when she had already found a balanced program that seemed to work well for her?”.
- Could Kirstie and her over the top behaviors be a gift to us?…a vehicle by which we can see the imbalances we’re living in our own life?
Most of us have to be hit over the head before we get things. (I know someone who was literally hit hard on the head several times when she inadvertently struck a 2×4 jutting out from an unfinished doghouse. Each time she felt enraged with her husband who was in charge of the project; finally the last time she got it that he wasn’t the one causing her to bend down and hit her head. But that topic’s a whole other story and we’ll leave it for another time !)
Maybe Kirstie’s out there as a figurative ‘hit on the head’ for us…a gift from the Universe! Thank you Kirstie Alley!
Some people unconsciously set themselves up to fail even though consciously they truly believe that they are doing right.
Jill: Good point! Thanks for adding that.
Cheers
Ellen