MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

Every now and then we come across criticism, accusations and other people judging us. Especially in friendships and relationships and mostly when we fight.

Sometimes, we don’t realise, that most of these accusations and judgements don’t even have got to do anything with us. They are reflecting the accuser, rather than ourselves as when we are in contact with others, we are acting like a mirror. Every person we meet is acting like a mirror to us, they reflect us, the way we are and the way we behave.

And sometimes, when we don’t like what we see about ourselves, we project it onto our friends, partners or work colleagues, by criticising and accusing them in exactly these points.

I give you an example.

Whilst sorting out my emotional backpack in order to travel light and get rid of things and feelings I don’t need, I came across a little box.

I remembered it very well; it was one of the heaviest things in my bag, which had been weighting me down for some time now. In that box, there were 4 accusations:

1.   You are a coward

2.   You have back-up plans in order to run away

3.   You never trust

4.   You never commit

These were the things my ex-boyfriend gave to me some months ago and now I was sat there, wondering what to do with this.

I remember, when he gave them to me he made me cry. It hurt me, I thought he was right but now I was here, sitting calmly and centred and I am confused as all I could see here, was not him talking to me.

It was he who was projecting these things onto me, and it took me some time to realise this.

Everyone who knows me as a person knows that I am not a coward. I am very ‘fightful’, maybe sometimes way too much for the sake of good, but I would never run away from anything. Since I was born I had been facing a lot of challenges in my life, most of them I could have ran away from but I never did. I face friends’ anger; I face my fears, my demons and my bad emotions. I face jealousy and I can admit when I was wrong. I face being wrong and I am not scared to alter a course. Neither was I ever scared to go somewhere, move to places I have never been before and to let go of old beliefs and people. I am not perfect, but I am always willing to face my imperfection!

And let me tell you about back-up plans. They are not bad if we don’t cling to them, they only give me options. I never plan to bail out of a situation before I go in there. I am a very optimistic person and I never expect bad things to happen anyways (although they happen, no doubt) but I always play around with my mind. I play around with options and things, life is colourful, but that is all.

People who know me also know, that sometimes I even trust too much, rather than not all. I think a lot, sometimes I sort my own problems out with myself, but that has got nothing to do with mistrust. I am always open and show my feelings, open to talk about things, even if they are bad and currently, I have to admit, I have trusted way too much. I have trusted the wrong person and got disappointed and badly let down by exactly the person who had called my ‘untrustful’ but still here I was, facing it. Trust comes easy to me, as I don’t expect bad things to happen. And I know, that whenever bad things happen, they will subside again and good things will appear.

And everyone who knows me also knows, that I always commit to what I decide to do! If I start something, I want it to work but sure, if I find myself in the same unfruitful situations over and over again, I am not staying just for the sake of pushing through. When we are realising that we are fighting a battle that doesn’t get us anywhere, that won’t improve our situation or isn’t even OUR battle (but someone else’s), then why not just have the balls to leave the battle, put down the swords and chose! Coz this is when we realise if we are fighting for OUR dreams and of how much importance the victory of the battle is to us. There is no sense in wasting energy and health fighting for dreams that are not our own and for a victory that wouldn’t touch our hearts or at least fighting a battle that would improve our skills. In my mind, only a coward is staying in the wrong battles instead of fighting the ones that will lead him to his dreams!

Now looking back, all these 4 things apply very much to my ex-boyfriend, rather than me, and let me tell you something.

Being criticised is not a bad thing. We all should take it in openly, even if it hurts, but as important as it is to accept criticism openhearted, it is inevitable to check back with yourself.

Open your whole mind and heart to it, take it into your hands and look at it from each side and then openly decide, if this really applies to you.

It is important that we all do this, whenever we are getting accused or judged by anyone.

We need to check back with ourselves, if the criticism is honestly true or if this is only a misguided projection of our vis-a-vis who feels mostly offended by his own reflections we mirror him through our own behaviour and actions.

A good friend recently told me: “Most people say, it’s hard to be alone. But I find, it’s so much harder to be around people because all of them project all sides of us, also the ones we don’t want to see about us; our fears, our grief, our pain and our jealousy. And by us denying them, we end up hurting the ones we love…”

So everyone, check back whenever you getting criticised and even more important: check back with yourself before YOU criticise, judge or accuse someone close!

Right, JAMIE CATTO (click on the name to find out more), how did that go again?

“You such a bloody coward….like me!”

Now, this week’s gonna be fun :D