WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU REALLY LOOKED IN THE MIRROR? I’VE GOT A CHALLENGE FOR YOU AND IT’S PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU THINK.

It’s 7:15am. You’re rushing out the door. Coffee in hand. Your spare hand is grabbing a hard boiled egg. Quick glance in the mirror.

Oh no, that shirt looks wrinkled. And… are you kidding me? Look at that hair. Ugh. I’m going to be late. I don’t have time for this.

You know the drill. Life is busy. You’re ON. Running from one thing to the next. Going… going… going…

Somewhere in that mix is the relationship you have with yourself. Honestly, most of us would be absolutely shocked if we really listened to what we were saying to ourselves.

In fact I was working with a client just last week who looked at me halfway through our session with an expression of total and complete bewilderment. “OMG” she said “I’ve been absolutely beating the shit out of myself. I mean really. It goes on all the time.” And this from a woman who is amazingly kind and sensitive. Who would never dream of talking to someone else the way she carries on inside. And yet inside, it’s a veritable United Nations of Negativity and Self Hatred—uncensored, unabashed.

And into the middle of this not so great self talk comes the mirror.

The mirror.

It’s a zone for most of us that should be taped off with yellow crime scene tape—emotional violence scene. It’s fraught with issues—particularly for we highly sensitive ones.

We look at ourselves but don’t see.

Evaluate and judge but we don’t see.

Meticulously dissect the outfit… the hair… the hips… the lips… But don’t see.

Objectify, judge and hand down the verdict: fat, ugly, puffy, frumpy, used up, unacceptable by a thousand names… still, we don’t see.

All this without a second of real eye contact; without a moment of real connection.

Imagine being out to dinner with someone important in your life. Imagine that person engaging in non-stop evaluation of how you don’t quite measure up—on any level.

Imagine that person never really looking at you; never really seeing you; just throwing judgment after judgment after judgment your way.

Enough already. This isn’t a journey that ends well.

It doesn’t matter how much good stuff you throw at yourself from the outside. If your relationship with yourself is rotting from the inside out so will everything else.

I have a challenge for you and I’m really, really serious about this one.

  1. Mark your calendar—every day, at least once—mirror contact.
  2. When the time comes, set the timer.
  3. Look in the mirror, get close so that you’re really looking into your eyes. Make contact. Please!
  4. Spend 10, 15, eventually 30 and 45 seconds looking deeply into your eyes. “I love you. Have a wonderful day.” Say it out loud if you can.
  5. Check it off on your to do list until it’s become such a strong habit that you can’t imagine living any other way.

I don’t know where you are in your relationship with yourself so you may need to adjust this. I want you to  If that’s too much and it kicks up too much negativity then step back.

Maybe all you can do right now is walk by the mirror really really fast and make a millisecond’s worth of eye contact and say “Hey. I see you.” In a nice tone of voice. If that’s all you can do right now, great. We’ll take it!

Then you build and build and build from there.

In your calendar. Every day. At least once. For at least 30 days.

Let me know what comes up and how you do with this and what you notice.

Here’s to loving you!

 

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