Deepthy‘s very poetic take on what we see when we look in the mirror sparked my message. The question she wisely asks is: “So, I ask again and let the mirror be honest – what do you see when you look in the mirror?“

She points out that the mirror shows WHAT but not WHO IS, so what we perceive about ourselves when we look in the mirror is more a reflection of how we feel about ourselves inside, than what other people see when they look at us. Her message is beautiful and poignant, for she sees the potential in us all, she sees the beauty too.

I used to avoid REALLY looking at myself in the mirror, for I always had harsh words for the person I saw.

I learned that the person in the mirror had been told so many lies over the years, that she had internalized them to the point that she couldn’t look at herself without detest and loathing.

After I worked on teaching myself to like myself, a very, very long process because there were hundreds and hundreds of very strongly established neural pathways to redo and keep redo-ing, I found that I had grown to like, and then to love the person in the mirror. I no longer flinched when I looked into my own eyes and that was such a massive change.

So what is the trick to go from loathing to liking?

It took a long time, with many, tiny baby steps to get from there to here. I had to start really small, because when I tried the recommended phrases, I found my lips curling with a sneer when I said them to myself.

If you haven’t heard of Louise Hay’s mirror exercises, I happily recommend them, the whole concept helped me change my inner thoughts to myself!

I had to practice saying much more basic and general things to myself so that I could believe them. If you have tried to say affirmations to yourself, and nothing seems to stick, maybe those affirmations aren’t for you, or it’s just not the right time to use them.

Try smaller, gentle thoughts.

What if instead of trying to convince yourself “I am awesome! I can tackle anything I set my mind to!” just isn’t working because it doesn’t yet have the ring of truth? How about “I’m mostly good, and I am trying to work on the rest” or “I can manage this for today, tomorrow I’ll look at it again”?

When I was still very raw, telling myself that “I have a good life and I will manifest greatness” just didn’t feel right to me, because I really didn’t believe it.

However, I could get behind the thought “Always believe that wonderful things can happen” or “Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen” gave me hope that someday, sometime it could happen for me too.

At one point I had come to believe that I didn’t deserve to walk on the earth or to breathe the air, so the concept of a God who loved me and wanted to bless me wasn’t something I could stomach anymore. I had been brought to the point that God was so displeased with me that He gave me all the trials as punishment, and even extended them to my daughter to punish me. (Turned out there were real and undiagnosed medical reasons why we suffered with the health issues we did, but when doesn’t have a diagnoses, many people filled in the gaps with ideas that God was punishing us.)

When I learned that scientists were studying different frequencies of sound or even how thoughts affected molecules, I endeavored to learn more about Quantum Physics. That’s when I learned about Amit Goswami, Neural Pathways and the sound frequency of our planet is the similar to Love. Those things all helped me to rethink my views on myself and how the universe sees me.

In fact, I signed up for “Notes from the Universe” from www.TUT.com when I heard their tagline “Thoughts Become Things… Choose the Good Ones”! I still get their gems dropping into my inbox almost daily.

Another thought that gave me courage to carry on in the face of difficulties I was going through was “Everything can change in a minute”, which was actually very true! Our lives can be in a holding pattern for a long time, and then it seems as though the cogs of the universe shift, and doors that were closed before now are unlocked and possible to go through.

“I am safe!” is a good thought to repeat to ourselves when we have removed ourselves from harm’s way and have put ourselves in a healthier space.

“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a person without adversity.” (a Chinese Proverb) helped me understand that the universe doesn’t send us troubles and adversities to punish us, but to help us t develop and to grow skills and characteristics we may not have had otherwise, like going to the gym helps us build stronger muscles.

When I was fearful of getting even more criticism, Eleanor Rooselvelt’s quotes such as these two and this one helped me put some perspective on things: “Do what you feel in your heart to be right for you’ll be criticized for it anyway.” and “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

“I am stronger than I realize!” is one that helped me when I doubted if I could do something. “If I don’t know how, I will learn!” was another thought I repeated, and then I’d Google how to do something.

You do not need to try to follow anyone else’s affirmations, you are allowed to make up your own! You are allowed to create the very things that will help you!

I’ve given you a lot of the tools and information I used to change how I saw myself, and to teach myself to like me!

I found I had to keep picking myself up, keep trying, keep repeating the new steps until I slowly built up more and more Neural Pathways to help my brain go from automatically thinking badly of myself, to gradually feeling better and better about myself.

It is a process. It isn’t easy. If it were we all would be doing it wouldn’t we? It is hard, I’m not going to lie. It takes a LOT of persistence. You may want to give up, in fact you might, over and over, but if you keep getting up you’ll get the hang of it.

I figured I didn’t have anything to lose. I was sick and tired of feeling miserable, I figured my life would pas by anyway, so why NOT keep giving it a try? What did I have to lose?

As it turned out, I lost a whole lot of negative thoughts that were torturing me, which I put on re-play many times a day. I’m glad those are gone! I like the new thoughts I have created, for I know they are true!

So my question to you is: what have YOU got to lose? A whole LOT of negative thoughts, I hope!

(I have many more posts about these very same things, so please check out my archived pages!)

Here some positive posts to help you grow:

• It’s all about LOVE! When judging hurts…
• In a society that has you counting money, pounds, calories, and steps, be a rebel and count your blessings instead!
• Love is NOT all you need!
• Love is not what you say. Love is what you do.
• Setting “Boundaries with consequences”
• Is Love Enough to Help Someone Kick a Drug Habit?
• “What kind of love do I allow in my life?”
• The power of love is the strongest force in the universe.
• The more you extend kindness to yourself, the more it will become your automatic response to others.
• On Comparing Ourselves to others…
• Fall in love with taking care of yourself
• Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy
• Remind yourself that you cannot fail at being yourself
• God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know… it’s me.
• By being yourself you put something beautiful into the world that was not there before!
• If you focus too hard on the problem, the solution can often evade you.

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

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Blessings!
Thank you for sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts! Don’t forget to Like, Comment, and Follow my blog! If you want to become a Guest writer, please contact me and we’ll work out the details!
https://tamarakulish.com/ Archived Posts: https://tamarakulish.com/archived-posts/

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