“If all the world’s a stage, please stick to your own script and read your own lines!” – Joe Contrera

With all of the chaos unfolding in the world, I am struck by the level of judgment folks have towards others. Social media has given everyone a voice  and so they use it to project their judgments and opinions onto the world’s stage.

While most people are the star in their own movie, many believe this star status entitles them to produce, direct, censor, and critique everyone else’s role and film.

So they judge, they post, they give unsolicited advice to everyone, believing they know what is best for every other actor in the world.

What they don’t realize is that what they are really projection onto the big screen is their own flaws and poor characteristics. This, in psychological terms is the exact definition of the defense mechanism we call projection.

Projection is defined as the process of displacing one’s own’s feelings, judgments, or emotions onto another person, animal, or object.

For example, If I say someone is arrogant, what I am doing is projecting my arrogance (yes, the arrogance I am not willing to own) onto another person.

The million dollar question here is this: Are we willing to face the truth about ourselves instead of trying to make it about others?

Two Immutable Truths

The real truth is that you cannot escape these two immutable truth about you no matter how hard you try.

Truth #1: YOU have NO idea what others are going through or experiencing at any given moment in time. Even if your statements have a grain of truth in them, don’t believe you know what is best for someone else.

Truth #2: How you act, what you say, especially about others is really you giving the world a snapshot into your inner self. Yes, your opinions, judgments, sarcasms, hatred, fears are what is actually on display for the whole world to see.

That said, can you imagine how much better the world would be if we were all willing to accept these two truths about ourselves?

Your Truths & Leadership?

So what does this have to do with leadership? Here’s how, I define a leader as a person who influences others to do or to be their very best.

At a time when the world is in dire need of great leaders, don’t you think this would be an incredible time to stop judging others and start projecting kindness, empathy, and love of self and others onto the world?

So maybe this is a good time to ask this question: What are you projecting onto the world stage?

You Have a Choice

You have a choice; you can project fear, judgment, and hatred or you can project love, respect, kindness,  and empathy into the world.

Just remember, you have no clue what others are experiencing…

And what you say, how you react to what’s going on is giving everyone else a snapshot into who you truly are.

For your sake and the world’s please choose wisely!