Dear Miriam, 
In one of your workshops, you mentioned the concept of mirroring in our lives.
“The world is our mirror.”
Can you elaborate on that? It sounded interesting, but we didn’t get to discuss it.
Yours,
Dana R.

Dear Dana,

The concept of the world being our mirror is a very popular and intriguing one. As George Bernard Shaw once said: “The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror, in which you can see a noble image of yourself.” If we accept the concept that we create our own reality, the external world can be a giant mirror which reflects what we believe about ourselves and others. The mirror concept suggests that all of life is a mirror, and by looking into the mirror of life, we can learn about ourselves. Understood in this way, the world can show us aspects of ourselves that we can’t see directly. The world around us, people, things, places, and events; they’re all mirrors. It shows you who you are. In your work, in your relationships, everywhere around you. Your actions cause results, and you can measure yourself based on those results. But many ask… “What if I don’t like what I see?”

The good news is, you create it, so you can change it. In self-help oriented, short-term counseling, we can be guided to foster change – change which affects our core belief system, our self-concept. This self-concept is our biggest rival in the world, as well as our best representative. Life is a creative journey when viewed from this perspective; we can learn from the reflection of our lives, we can use it to heal emotional wounds and core beliefs that keep us in the same self-defeating or limiting patterns. If you find yourself wishing to change your world – externally and internally – notice that the most important (and available) key to that change is to understand what we feel and believe is a direct reflection in the outside world. Using the mirror concept, we can use our entire experience in life to learn about ourselves. Each and every area of life acts as a mirror to aspects of ourselves:

relationships, marriage, and family

career and professional choices

social and political involvements

religious and spiritual experiences

fun, recreation, etc.

Quite often, the area of ourselves that is calling for our exploration is the one we feel “stuck” and “entangled” in the most. When we put our conscious effort into uncovering the unconscious and deep meanings to the events around us, we learn to free ourselves from the things we find ourselves stuck in. As we continue to grow through conscious effort, we will see that everything around us is changing, mirroring the very changes we make from within.

Love,
Miriam