Let The World Be Your Mirror

Lil Wayne said:

“Be something more than what you see in the mirror.
 Let the world be your mirror.
Don’t let them judge you.
 Because the mirror can’t judge you.
 You judge what you see in the mirror.”

And I took that personally.

I started looking at the world as my mirror.

Every interaction, every conversation, every opinion I had on others, and with that, every opinion others had on me.

I took everything as a reflection of my own mind.

I treated reality as self-generated, every single thing in it, is the result of my own mind.

And That was one of the best decisions I made.

Ok, let’s roll back a little bit, and get some background.

I was released from the Israeli Army in 2018, at that time I wanted to start an online business. I didn’t know what kind of business, but I surely knew that I wanted to work on my terms.

I tried different things like E-Commerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing. I understood very quickly that the money alone is not a strong enough driver and I need to put some meaning into the business, so I did a Fitness Coaching Certification.

The plan was to build an online presence on Instagram, Facebook and get coaching clients that way.

The moment I got my certification, I opened a Facebook business page, switched my Instagram Profile to a business profile and added “Coach” to my bio.

The very next thing of course was to publish an exciting post that I am now a Coach, and this is my business profile. I rang every single bell I could with the announcement.

And then the moment to post actual content came.

And that moment slapped me in the face so hard.

Even though at that point I already had 4 years of online coaching under my belt, and some satisfied customers (I started coaching before the certification, sue me).

I was terrified to post my opinions and point of view.

I was so afraid of judgment.

“What will people say?”

“What if they catch me bullshitting?”

“What if I will get bad comments?”

I was paralyzed Big Time. That declaration was the only post I made that year.

After some time, I tried again, posted another one and again faced paralysis.

That cycle went for a few iterations until I gave up on online business and stuck to 9-5 (don’t worry we’re getting to the plot twist).

I let other people's opinions get into my head.

I also criticized others. Both people who were in the position I wanted to be in and people who were less positioned than me.

I had an opinion on everything and everyone, always could find something negative to say.

I couldn't see others succeeding, it made me feel bad, it made me hate them a little bit (sometimes more than a bit).

The worst part was that I didn’t know why.

Overall, these were people who had done me no harm.

Some of whom I had never even spoken to.

Others were coworkers with whom I had good conversations and overall relations.

But still, their existence just bothered me, with no particular reason in sight.

And here we are reaching the plot twist.

I heard Lil Wayne talking about making the world your mirror, I had to hear it several times before I actually decided to act on that.

And then I took it personally.

I changed my entire perspective on opinions and judgment, both my opinions on others and others' opinions about me.

I treated it as if there was a mirror in front of me.

The flaws I saw in others are the flaws I saw in myself. Others are just reflecting that back to me.

As the saying goes: “it takes one to know one”.

I took every negative thing I had to say about them, and immediately flipped it and said it about myself.

Every time I had a bad feeling about someone, I took a moment and thought to myself “what is it about him that makes me feel negative?”

I dug deep and found the specific behavior that I saw in the other person and asked myself if I behave in the same way.

100% of the time the answer was yes.

When I got angry at someone for not telling the truth, I actually got angry at myself for not being honest.

When I was unsatisfied from another person constantly talking about things he wanted to do and not doing them, I actually saw that in myself.

Every single negative thing I saw in others turned out to be negative things about myself.

On the other hand, when others formed an opinion on me, I tried to distill the opinions that evoked discomfort in me, those were the opinions which I knew I judged myself by.

After distilling those opinions, I question them, get to the source of that self-judgment and act accordingly.

If it is something that I need to change about me: I go and change it.

If it is unjustified self-judgment: I delete it from my mind.

If it were an opinion which I knew was not truly reflecting my inner state, and not evoking discomfort, I treated it as reflection from their side, they see in me what they think of themselves.

The Mechanism here is: The Mind uses other people to reflect our own misbehaviors back to us.

Just like looking in the mirror.

The Mind says: “Look at that person, look at the way he behaves, see how bad it is?”

And waits for you to connect the dots and say to yourself “Oh, I behave in the same way, I should change that”.

On the other hand, the mind targets people who say things that make us uncomfortable.

And our default go-to is to hold a grudge against the speaker, and not against their words.

What really offends us is the content of the words, and not the person itself.

We need to make that distinction, examine the words and question ourselves:

“Why does it bother me?”

And again, reach to the source of that opinion, which is an opinion we hold against ourselves and resolve it. Either with changing our behavior or changing the way we think (if behavior change is not necessary).

Majority of the process of dealing with opinions has to do with us more than it has to do with the other side.

We have to think with ourselves about the reasons certain words offend us.

Or the reasons we think negatively of others.

We need to question our own reaction to others’ behavior.

Why do we react so much to the behavior of another human being?

What do we see about the other side that bothers us so much?

Why are we reactive to certain words? What about them makes us feel negative?

When it comes to judging others, I like to use the “Reflection Card”.

When I catch myself criticizing others, I internally declare “Reflection!” as I’m using a Yu-Gi-Oh! Card and direct every part of the criticism back to myself.

That way I act as I look in the mirror, and the person in front of me reflects my own behavior.

That way I open myself the possibility to say: “Oh, I behave in the same way, I should change that”.

With a “Reflection Card” you treat your opinions about others as opinions about yourself.

If someone bothers you, you know it only has to do with you, you are the one who reflects his inner state with others.

At the beginning it takes some conditioning to get awareness when you criticize others, after some practice it becomes automatic.

After we get some repetitions in, we drop off extra weight of self-judgment (by changing our behavior and self-opinions) and are able to live in more peace with our own way of action, resulting in stopping being bothered by others’ behavior.

To close that Nugget, here’s the summary:

1. Our Mind uses others to reflect our own behavior, like a mirror (takes one to know one).

2. With being aware of that, we are able to examine our self-judgment and change our behavior or thinking.

3. When we get offended by others, we should examine their words and not hold a grudge against them.

4. “Reflection Card” is a way to examine our judgment of others and direct that same judgment back to ourselves.

For now, I will leave you to reflect on that Nugget.

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Much Love to you and yours,

Yuval.