Consequences of Perfection Demanded upon Public Speakers
by Dave Smart
Many years ago, before the advent of word processors and Office programs, when correspondence had to be prepared on a (ahem!) typewriter (remember those?), typists had to struggle mightily if they were to produce a “letter-perfect” page. One mistake, and the whole page had to be done over. Time was money, then as now, and so if you typed for a job or a living, you had to discipline yourself to make each page letter-perfect the first time.
Then came word processors and all the modern stuff. Now if you made a mistake, you could with just a few keystrokes correct it and have letter-perfect results. Typists could now type at many more words per minute, confident that any mistakes could be corrected in a matter of seconds. It seemed like a whole new age of efficiency had dawned.
Maybe. But it has appeared that while efficiency maybe has waxed, quality has waned. The result of relaxing that discipline to make pages letter-perfect the first time has been a preponderance of sloppy work throughout the correspondence industry. Letters arrive these days with missing dates, addresses, phone numbers, sometime whole missing paragraphs, misspelled words, and typos out the wazoo. It’s not a perfect world anymore.
Unless, you communicate through public speaking. If you are famous, and make just one little mistake, the consequences hit home real fast - as all who have been on the campaign trail, or listening and looking at those who were, have been finding out. There is no ‘delete’ key on the lectern! If you are aspiring to become famous and make a mistake, it is remembered in the context of: ‘not another Kerry!’ or ‘not another Sarah!’; or whatever politician or public speaker has made the latest gaffe. Examples of perfectionists in today’s world are found in public speakers; and there has come about a need for a discipline at the lectern not unlike the discipline that the typist once needed at the typewriter.
How has this affected the flow of archetypal energy in today’s world? In other words, the way people cope with situations, and the way people go about attaining their goals in terms of developing archetypes - and their opposites. The Perfectionist is an archetype; like all archetypes it is a part of ourselves found, to a greater or lesser extent, in everyone. It is narrowly focused and puts great energies into an extremely fine state of balance. Looking over the Perfectionist’s shoulder is the Judge - another archetype. The Perfectionist’s Judge is unforgiving and relentless. These are the archetypal energies that yesteryear’s typist drew upon. Today, speakers drawing upon these archetypes are the news anchor, the talk show host - and the politician.
To see how that changes the world, we must consider the opposite of these archetypes, for whenever anyone repeatedly draws on the energy of a specific archetype, the psyche, always seeking balance, draws on the energy of its opposite: whatever is the opposite for that particular person. He may be conscious of this opposite archetype as it develops, or not. But if not, the archetype will still develop subconsciously: it will be part of the person’s SHADOW. The opposite of the Perfectionist’s energy is likely to be complacency, an attitude of ’so this is the way it is? all right, I will go with the flow, be it good or bad’. And where there is a vacuum of standards, the attitude becomes sloppiness, anarchy. And the opposite of the Judge is an attitude that there is no absolute right or wrong, there is only moral relativism.
These opposites, once the shadows of typists, are now the shadows of those who live by public speaking: news anchors, talk show hosts, and most importantly, politicians. Their need to be ‘letter-perfect’ in what they say WILL lead to developing parts of themselves that are complacent, sloppy, anarchic, and hypocritical. Even as a jeweler who disciplines himself to do precision, close work will find recreation in expansive, adventurous and muscular activities where he expresses the opposite that has developed in his psyche, so the politician will have a need to do similarly with his opposites. You look and hope for a person to own his opposites, and find a place in his life to honor them. You know that if he does not honor them, if he is in denial of them, they won’t just go away, they will buzz around his head like invisible mosquitoes, influencing his life, visible to others regardless of how much in denial of them he may be. The politician who is in denial of his opposites will be complacent, sloppy, anarchic and hypocritical, regardless of what he may be saying.
Living with the opposites within ourselves
We develop opposites as a result of the continued and prevailing energies we bring in coping with ongoing situations in our lives. Also, when in our striving toward our goals we bring particular energies on a prevailing or repeated basis, we develop opposites.
What do these opposites look like? If we are not too badly disconnected from them, we can first consider the efforts that they are bringing to our situation, or their impact upon our efforts to our goals. Then, just imagine what that opposite would look like personally.
Having imagined that, we need now to see where we are using that energy in our lives - or where we could be using them. And if we can acknowledge only that we should be using them, we may see that changes in routine will be in order. A hobby or sports activity may provide an application for these opposite energies.
Copyright (c) 2009 Dave Smart
Dave Smart, the lead coach for Transcendence Coaching and Mentoring, has had extensive education and experience in coaching and in Jungian psychology. The latter explores archetypes, and opposite parts of ourselves, and Dave has worked with clients extensively with these. If you find strange impulses within you that seem to stand in the way of coping with situations, coaching is for you. Check out TCM’s website: http://www.transcendencecoach.com
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