The Mirror Trick

[00:00:00] I'm gonna give you this one trick that's going to help you overcome any obstacle that you face. Now, this trick has actually served me really well in my life because when I was younger, I developed this belief that I couldn't rely on anybody. That was because of some painful experiences that I had, and I felt like I was being let down by important people in my life.

And it was only based on my perception of the circumstances. It wasn't actually the situation itself. And so I decided then moving forward, I wanted to find a way to be able to navigate the different obstacles and challenges in my life, but do it in a way where I wasn't relying on other people to help me get through it because I had this strongly held belief.

Now what's interesting was I ended up dismantling that belief because it wasn't serving me as [00:01:00] well as I thought. But while I held onto this belief that I can't rely on other people, it forced me to be really creative in finding ways that I could help myself through challenges that might be difficult or, um.

Overwhelming in some way and how I might be able to sort of go inward and find the answers that I'm looking for in an effective way rather than just getting lost in the down the rabbit hole of my own mind and my own perceptions and beliefs. So it required a lot of work and a lot of creativity. But then I landed on something that was really quite helpful to me and it wasn't new.

And the irony is that I discovered it through reading, and reading meant that I was learning from other people. So it wasn't nearly as much as a divine insight that downloaded one day while I was sitting on top of a mountain in complete isolation for four years. It was the result of other people's brilliance who were willing to share their ideas with me, and I [00:02:00] was able to take that and piece it together and come up with what I'm about to give you.

So it was really fascinating in terms of the irony, you know, the, the more ironic circumstances are unfold. The more likely and the more truthful they tend to be. So here's what it was. I kept finding that I was coming up against challenges and circumstances outside of me that I felt like I couldn't control.

And now I'm a big promoter of the idea that our challenges are not the issue. It's how we show up to them. It's not the external circumstances that are the problem. It's our own internal perception of those problems. And how we handle that then determines how we handle the external circumstances. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by a situation you're dealing with, that overwhelm will influence whether or not you get through that challenge.

And so by changing your perception of it, you can become a hot knife through butter. [00:03:00] And so by looking inwards. I had to discover what was actually affecting me and how I can show up to the circumstances differently. But then the downside of that was I would get lost down the rabbit hole of my own view.

How do I know if my view of this situation is true? How do I know if I change it, if the new perception is true? And started to get really murky and almost dizzying in a lot of different ways. And then I went through periods where I felt stuck for extended periods of time. Like I couldn't quite make. The progress I wanted, and I would try to go inward to work out what's going on, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it because they were things that were stuck in my blind spot, my psychological blind spot.

So they weren't things that were obvious that I could say, oh, it's, it's this particular challenge. There's decreased revenue, or there's this particular person in my life that I'm having conflict with. It was just things weren't making [00:04:00] progress. And it felt like no matter what input I put into the situation, it wasn't changing the outcome.

And so I was like, well, how do I work this out without going to anybody? Because this was very early in my career. My finances were very limited. I was on a really tight budget, so I couldn't just pay anybody to work with. And so to the reading that I was doing and the learning that I was doing at the time, I discovered that the world around you is a reflection of.

Your internal world. So the external world is a reflection of the internal world, and it sounded very confucius like and wise and insightful, but also vague and nebulous and confusing. So I thought, well, how do I, how do I work this out? Like how do I work out what the problem is? Because you've probably heard me say this.

If you can't see it, you can't change it. So because I couldn't see what the problem was, I couldn't change it. I just felt the presence of the problem [00:05:00] in my life. So I thought, well, how do people do this? You know, if we go back a hundred years, how did people find answers to their problems? If books wouldn't, you know, they couldn't order a book and it'd show up at their doorstep the next day.

Or they didn't have easy access to a library, or the library that they went to didn't have a vast variety of different topics from different authors, and they didn't have the internet, they didn't have connectibility, and the world seemed relatively small, but also big at the same time. So how did they do it?

And I thought, if I was dealing with the constraints of that reality a hundred years ago, how would I then solve the problems that I'm trying to solve today? And it was that idea, this concept that the world around you is a reflection, it's mirror, and that it's trying to show you parts of yourself and your life that you can't see without the mirror.

The question I like to [00:06:00] pose to my clients is if there were no reflective surfaces at all in the world, if there were no mirrors, you know, ponds or bodies of water didn't reflect any light. Blast didn't reflect anything. There was just not a single reflective surface in the world. How would you know what your face looks like?

And the thing is, we don't. It requires being able to see into reflective surfaces that give us a perspective on things that we would otherwise not be able to see. And so the. I believe, at least this is analogous to our psychology. There are things in your psychology, your unconscious mind that you can't see because of the very nature of them being unconscious.

They're in your blind spot. And so how do we become aware of what those things are that are hiding in the shadows of our consciousness? Well, it's by looking into the world [00:07:00] outside of us, we, or I should say, looking out to the world outside of us. Looking out to the mirror because that mirror is going to reflect back an angle so we can see aspects of our psychology, our unconscious, that we can't see otherwise and is trying to help us, which is really beautiful because then suddenly, and this is where the irony comes into play, suddenly it actually allows us to use the external world and all the things that we might call problems or challenges or difficulties as a tool.

To help us become unstuck, to help us overcome our greatest challenges and to discover what the solution is that we're seeking to whatever the problem is that we're facing. This was a huge shift for me. It was, it kind of had me fall back in my seat and say, well, hold on a second. The thing that I've been avoiding my whole life, which was relying on [00:08:00] people, was actually the solution to my problem.

Again, this comes back to the irony. That instead of me looking at the external world as being an issue, uh, a problem of circumstance, it's actually an opportunity for me to learn something new about myself, which is very egocentric. And that was appropriate for me when I was, uh, what was I 19, 20 that was necessary.

But what that enabled me to do was it helps me unlock a different perception and unlock a different view of the world outside of me and stop looking at other people. I. As a nuisance to my existence, and I started to see other people as an opportunity to learn something new about myself. And so I became more curious about other people as a result, which then helps me become more curious about elements of myself.

So my judgment of the world decreased significantly. I became more open, less closed off, and then I started to make traction in small ways initially. [00:09:00] But those small. Forms of progress and traction that I was gaining made significant difference as they built up over time. And so I use this regularly and this looks like really simple concepts for a lot of people, but in reality, they hold a lot of power.

They can make a significant change in the way we live our daily lives. So what does it look like? Well, it looks like the person that's bothering you at the airport terminal. The phone's too loud while they're scrolling through TikTok videos or it's that person at their cafe while you're trying to get some work done on your laptop or your phone, and they're talking obnoxiously loud about some trivial issue that's almost gossip based about some girlfriend or ex or whatever that is being a little snarky.

And they said this and they should have said it this way, and they don't realize that. [00:10:00] How valuable I am and you know, getting into whatever the drama might happen to be and they're completely distracting you from you being able to focus on your work. Or maybe it's a colleague that continually grinds your gears in the way they show up, where you feel like they take things off you in terms of tasks and exercises and, and projects, and it feels like they undermine you or you feel like somebody's playing the political game in the organization.

That really bothers you or they keep trying to best you. Or maybe it's a family member just keeps pushing on that same button over and over again and they get the same reaction from you. Whatever it is, I'm at the moment, I'm focusing on things that bother us, things that we perceive to be negative, but whatever it is, all these different buttons, there are opportunities for you to learn about what's going on in your unconscious mind and too.

We look at these situations and say, well, I don't like them, so I'm going to create as much space or [00:11:00] insulation between me and that situation or that person. But what that does is that's the equivalent of sterilizing your environment. Now, if you live in a sterilized environment, long term, that's not great for your physiological wellbeing because you're not exposed to any contaminants, you're not exposed to anything that's gonna challenge your immune system to help your immune system strengthen.

So you start insulating yourself from all these difficulties and challenges saying the world is shit and it needs to stay away from me. And then you start to actually decrease your ability to adapt and develop psychological and emotional immunity. And so when you do eventually step out into the world and you do start to engage with the world, because at some point life will force you to do that, whether you like it or not.

It will be incredibly overwhelming. It will be like shocking the immune system. And what can happen is the immune system starts to shut down because it's so [00:12:00] overwhelmed and it needs to conserve as much energy for survival, that you can go unconscious. And so psychologically speaking, you can go out into the world and it can be so overwhelming engaging with, with all these different people who are all pressing these different buttons because you've been insulating yourself from it for so long and then suddenly you have this desire to switch off and go and isolate even more.

The wisest thing you can do is use these different triggers, these different button pushes outside of you to learn about yourself, to resolve and work through. Whatever that is, allow it to be the opportunity that it is to discover something new about yourself and learn, and then by doing so, they will stop being triggers.

Those things will literally just fade out of your awareness and they won't bother you anymore, and you'll be able to proceed. And so as a result of you being able to use that approach, suddenly you develop a strong psychological and emotional immune system, and [00:13:00] then you start to live your life with a greater sense of ease.

And you might still be, you'll definitely be triggered and bothered by things, but you'll start approaching it with a curiosity. You'll notice this frustration. You'll notice this emotion that comes up for you, and you'll take a step back and you'll start to wonder, well, okay, what is it about that? What can I learn about myself here?

What is that reflecting back in me that I could utilize, that I can learn from? When you start looking at these different people and opportunities as ways for you to learn for yourself and learn about yourself, you start experiencing it with a sense of gratitude and a sense of appreciation instead of a sense of frustration or judgment or condescension.

How do we get into this? How do we actually start to use these opportunities outside of us? These different issues as a mirror and as a reflection? The best question you can ask yourself whenever you're being bothered by somebody or whenever somebody's pushing a button, is simply [00:14:00] ask yourself, what is it about this situation or this person that's bothering me so much?

What is it about this person or this situation that's bothering me so much? And what that does is it helps you get into the specifics of it because it's about your perception. What are they doing? What are they being that's bothering you so much? Are they being condescending? Are they judging you? Do you feel like they're undermining you?

The more you get specific about it, the more you start to see that it's not. The entirety of the situation. 'cause we tend to overgeneralize, oh, it's that whole person. They're just a rubbish individual. I'm holding back on my language intentionally here, but you know, you've probably got a pretty harsh judgment of that person when in reality there's something specific about it.

And when you get specific, it makes it easier to sort of grasp and understand. Whereas when you generalize, it feels like it's this huge cloud and. Imagine literally trying to wrestle a [00:15:00] cloud. You wouldn't be able to do that. That's quite difficult. But then suddenly, if it's actually a glass of water, which is essentially a cloud, it's just in a different form.

It's easy to manipulate, fill, it's more tangible. It's something that you can actually work with. So you wanna work out what it is about this person or this situation that's bothering you. So. And what that does is it starts to reveal what the trigger is. And then from that point, you can ask yourself, and I love this quote from Peter Cron.

He says, who would I be if I didn't have any of the concerns that I have today? So how that relates to this question is, who would I be if this didn't bother me right now? And it immediately places your imagination into a place where. You start thinking about the kind of person you would be if that wasn't something that was concerning you, if that wasn't something that was triggering you, that was bothering you, [00:16:00] it starts to open up your awareness and start thinking about and focusing on a different outcome, a different reality, and it doesn't take much.

If that was a concern of yours, then you start to open yourself up to something that is different, is a different reality and a different outcome, and it can start to take the sting out of the emotion that you're feeling. Now I like to take Peter's quote and add a distinction to it, which I found has been really empowering, which is the question, who would I be if I was to take total ownership of this situation right now?

So if that person's bothering you and you decided you wanted to take ownership of the fact that they were bothering you, who would you have to be in that moment? Who would you have to be? Who would you have to show up as and suddenly you stop giving them all your power? And you start to divert it back towards yourself, and then you ask yourself, what is it about me that I can change?

So this situation doesn't bother me so much [00:17:00] because we tend to look at external circumstances that push a button and then we try to change the external circumstances so it doesn't bother us anymore. But that's, that's like trying to control a river that's really difficult. What you can do is control how you show up and how you feel about it.

So you ask yourself, who would I have to be if I was to take total ownership? What is this trying to show me about myself? What can I learn from this situation about myself? Can I actually overcome this? Can I transcend this situation? Can I let go of the fact that this is bothering me? Now, what's really interesting is if you want to keep going down the rabbit hole of thinking about this and analyzing it, there's something about that person that's trying to show you an element of your past.

So if you are thinking about this individual and. Let's say you perceive them to be condescending. The reality is they're reminding you of some experience from your past. That's why they're triggering you. They're trying to show you that there's some aspect of you that has felt [00:18:00] condescended to by somebody else in your past.

There was someone in your past who you felt was condescending to you, and that bothered you back then, and that's probably bothered you ever since. And whenever somebody shows up with some kind of a tone. That could be perceived as condescending. You immediately react the same way that you did in that first experience.

So this individual is trying to show you that you have an issue with someone talking in a condescending tone. Now, their condescension isn't actually the problem. They may not even be condescending to you, but your perception of it is that, and so they're trying to show you this trigger. It's kind of a beautiful way that life likes to show us these unconscious triggers that are stuck in our.

Blind spots in our unconscious awareness. And so it gives you an opportunity to reflect and go back to the wherever that started. Was it mom? Was it dad? Was it a sibling, a teacher, a coach, a trainer who knows someone from your [00:19:00] past that maybe you were trying to demonstrate your ability and they were, you felt like they were talking down to you.

They weren't acknowledging or validating how you felt or what you were trying to achieve, and so they were judging it. Or maybe you're saying that you could have done a better job or maybe making a criticism that you don't know enough and you were taking that personally. So this person in the present day is trying to help you go back and resolve a wound from your past to let that go and show you your baggage.

And then once you've done that, this person that in the present day that's supposedly condescending, is no longer a trigger. And moving forward from that point, you'll probably stop being triggered by people who. Use a tone that can be perceived as being condescending. And so this is the way that I use my external environment as a source of learning and a source of healing because it gives me the opportunity to look at the circumstances outside of me.[00:20:00]

So these are the opportunities that we have that we can use to learn about ourselves, work through our own internal challenges. And our own unconscious baggage. And what that allows us to do is step into the person that we can be when these things no longer bother us, which allows us to show up to the challenges and the difficulties that we're facing with a different perception and a different outlook.

And because we carry a different outlook, you will overcome the challenges and difficulties and the obstacles with a greater sense of ease. To go back to what I was saying earlier, you will feel like a hot knife through butter. You'll just carve through it because suddenly you start to see the solutions that are right there.

You'll see the opportunities that are present in the obstacle, and you won't carry so much baggage from your past into this present circumstance because you'll be open and you'll be more receptive of different subtleties about this experience that are different to your original [00:21:00] experience. So using this trick of the world around you being a mirror, trying to reflect aspects of yourself back to you, aspects of your own past, back to you to say, Hey, it's time that you heal this.

It's time you resolve this. It's time you let go of this baggage. Suddenly you become unstoppable in your own life. And when I say unstoppable, I mean you stop stopping yourself. You are no longer the person that's stopping yourself. Because as it's obvious to most of us, we are our greatest obstacle. It's our own thinking.

It's our own constructs, our own mindset that gets in the way. So when we are using the world around us to help us look inward and work on our mindset, change, the frameworks, change the context that we're looking at things through, we start to unlock a different reality for ourselves and different possibilities.

And it literally feels like we, from being in this place where. Things aren't moving. It's sort of like a dead end to when you work through it and you realize [00:22:00] that all these different opportunities are showing up to help you work through things. Different paths of possibilities start to open up from this dead end street, and you might have three or four different streets that open up from the dead end, and then suddenly it's like, well, which option do I want to take?

You have a different problem, but it's no longer a problem of being stuck. It's a problem of opportunity. So I want to give you this tool because it's changed my life. Which I know is a big statement, but that's what I'm trying to offer here. In everything that I'm doing, I'm giving you all the things that have worked for me that I know if I hadn't learned them and then utilized them and applied them, I would be in the same place that I was 15 years ago.

So using these tools ensures that you start to create different possibilities and different outcomes for yourself. 'cause we all get stuck as, especially as we expand. Even as you use these tools, you will get stuck, but the issue isn't that you get stuck. The issue is how long you stay stuck for and how quickly you use the [00:23:00] tools and understandings and lessons from the people you're learning from to help you unstick yourself to help you make that progress.

And I use these tools to this very day. It helps me on a weekly basis. So feel free to use it. I know it works. I've got the history of in my own life that it's worked and the places that I've learned it from, the people that I've learned it from have many more years experience than I did before then. So lean on all of these people's experiences because it works.

Don't try and work it out through trial and error. You don't have to if you don't need to. So I hope that was valuable. Please make sure you utilize these tools. Look at the world around you as a reflection. It's trying to show you the parts of yourself you can't see, and that can be incredibly empowering.

Very different to the people that feel like they're a victim of their environment and a victim of the people around them and their [00:24:00] circumstances. You're not, and you don't have to be. Anyway, thank you for being here. Please make sure you leave a review. It makes a huge difference and it helps get everything that I'm teaching out to more people.

I appreciate you being here and for hanging out. I'll see you in the next episode.

Bye.