Your Life is a Mirror
What do you see when you look in the mirror? If you’re not mindful of your thoughts you could get stuck in a repetitive cycle of constantly focusing on what you don’t like. Your life mirrors your thoughts, both good and bad, so the question is: Are you happy with the images and thoughts you’re reflecting?
Feeling content and happy with your life comes as a result of where you are putting your focus. I saw a post yesterday from Brendon Burchard, “Something weird I noticed this year: many people are very active every day on social media and replying and commenting to random people, but they won’t return text and voice messages of their real friends and family for days.”
Ouch! How many of us fall into this? Sometimes I find myself so busy building my business and connecting with people that I don’t take the time to check on those I love. It’s easy to mask who we are and get lost online when we do this.
Social media is here to stay and has the potential to blur the mirror of who we really are.
The perfect Instagram life is shallow. A messy reality is deep.
But social media can be helpful in attracting your eye to the things and people who interest you. This all affects your mindset and can help you to develop the vision of your life into a clear path of who you want to be.
Visualization helps us reflect the mirror we seek.
Take a look at your Instagram, Pinterest, or whatever platform you use to express and experience our collective web. The images and products aren’t there by accident. They are an algorithm of your likes, comments, and follows.
It’s easy to see how this mirrors your thoughts, so again, you should ask: Do you like what you see? Is it helping you feel good about yourself and the world around you? Are they bringing you closer to the vision you have for yourself so you can wake up each morning excited about the day?
We are lucky to live in a time when we have so many choices! Achieving big goals and living a life suitable for you is more accessible than ever. Believing that your goals can be a reality for you is as simple as directing your focus on what you want and reaching in that direction.
Simple, yet not always easy.
The easy thing to do is get caught in the self-perpetuating cycle of why certain things and lifestyles are not possible for you.
Focusing on the reasons you haven’t achieved your goals is dangerous because your life is at risk of becoming a mirror that reflects failure, pain, and regret. Then you start attracting more of that into your life and resentment and shame start to show up everywhere.
True desires and feelings will be expressed in positive or negative ways, and it all depends on your focus.
If you find yourself shallow thinking or enviously focused, don’t worry! We’ve all been there.
Turning the mirror from a negative to a positive cycle can start happening the moment you decide your life is worth it.
If you are experiencing a plateau in your life and are feeling stuck, begin by moving your thoughts to what you’d like to see happen instead of what you are currently feeling.
Even in a repetitive cycle of focusing on the negative, there is something to find light in. Something in your life to help you back to a neutral starting point. It might be that you didn’t have to sleep outside in the cold, or that you are able to buy yourself a cup of coffee. Anything! Start there. It’s a practice in gratitude.
If you haven’t had practice in gratitude work it will feel a little bit like you are lying to yourself. But soon you will start to see all that you have to be grateful for, and from this space, the mirror of what you want to see will grow.
Realizing you need work in this space is about developing your mindset, and mindset work is always a worthwhile skill to develop.
Breathwork is my tool for visualizing my own reality and it helps me take back control of where I’m placing my attention and helps redirect me to where I want to go. I do this some days over and over again until I get it.
Learning to Focus Your Breath
I love breath practices because they are so accessible and everyone has the mechanics to start consciously using them to their benefit.
Conscious breathing practices put you in your body, and harness you into the moment. This is a great place to jump into meditation or visualization.
Headphones can be a great ally in this process because here you can focus on your breathing while being led into some deep visualization techniques. There are a ton of great things out there and I am a huge fan of the Calm app because you can find the voices that are best attuned to your frequency. Calm has practices that range from 5-45 minutes in length in making it accessible for your life as well.
When you are ready to get serious about visualization I highly recommend Dr. Joe Dispenza. He has a couple of recordings free on YouTube, but they are only pieces of the pie and only give you a taste of what he offers. His recordings hold a cadence that takes time to feel into but is always worth the ride.
Along with the breathwork and visualization, you can also create something of a vision board to gaze upon. Physically seeing your desires is a great tool and this is how I suggest you set up your social media scrolling. Only bringing in the good you want to reflect out. There is a company called Lifebook that can walk you through all areas of your life and help you create your perfect vision. They have a range of options to help make it accessible, but the guidance is valuable.
There are a ton of online options and you can create your own. Visualization is powerful. And when supported by your breath it can move you into a new reality. Helping you to ask yourself over and over: Am I creating the reality I seek?