The Art of Mirroring
By Michele Laub
- Saturday, August 8th, 2009
Whenever I teach a series entitled The Four Agreements™ the class on “Don’t Take Anything Personally” is filled to capacity.
The Four Agreements are:
1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best
Participants recognize that taking things personally leads to self-doubt, self-judgment, limitation, and suffering. They continue to take things personally even though they realize they are hurting themselves. The question they ask is “How do I stop taking things personally? If my partner, friend or boss says something that really hurts my feelings, it has to be about me!” The answer to this statement is No! It is when we subconsciously agree with them that it hurts us.
As children we made agreements about ourselves based on what people told us. We didn’t know we had choices. The adults around us dictated who we were and how we were to behave. Eventually, these agreements became perfected habits, reinforced as we believed them.
When we decide to live with awareness we can *heal* the insecurities, the hurts, and the pain we feel from taking things personally. We learn that when someone says something about us, the person is really telling us about them; how they see the world, and what they believe, which has nothing to do with us. When someone tells us how we should be, that person is speaking from her perception, conditioning, beliefs and opinions; in other words, again showing us who they are.
Everyone in our lives is a mirror, posing as an opportunity to experience beliefs about ourselves that are in action just below the surface, reflecting aspects of ourselves hidden from our awareness. We are always drawing into our lives exactly what we need to heal within ourselves. However, we often miss the opportunity to recognize the mirror because we fall into the mind’s trap of taking things personally.
From this point of view taking things personally is a waste of our energy invested in suffering based on another’s projection. Instead – we can be grateful that the light of awareness is reflected on our reaction and through deliberate awareness, we can take respsonsibility for uncovering a past agreement stuck on autopilot and in turn stop believing it. We can notice behaviors in others we don’t like and ask ourselves if that way of being is active in us.
I remember a time when I let go of all the people in my life whom I perceived as being “controlling”. Today, I appreciate those people as mirrors of myself, and have healed my need to control. A key to personal freedom lies in NOT taking things personally.
Always express appreciation for the whole process. Imagine these irritations as the means to cleaning up your own act, for they are the reflections of what you have believed about yourself. Soon, not only will you know more about who the other person is, you will know more about yourself as well.
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