The other day I noticed an Instagram influencer with millions of followers and she has messages like: “This is where your excuses come to die” and “Don’t let anything stop you.” I started wondering, why are these messages so popular? Why does this woman have so many followers? And then it occurred to me, we’re all looking for mirrors, metaphorically speaking.

What I mean is we seek people, situations, experiences, perspectives, etc. that reflect our insides in order to feel safe. If I think I’m a piece of crap and completely unlovable, then I’ll be in relationship with people who convey those messages to me through words and actions. If I believe I’m amazing, then I’ll be in relationship with people who convey those messages to me through words and actions.

We want our outsides to match our insides. Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

What does this have to do with safety? If something doesn’t fit into our worldview, it’s threatening. To go back to my earlier example, if I think I’m a piece of crap, having someone tell me otherwise will lead to suspicion. “What’s wrong with this person if they think I’m great?” or another common thought is, “If they only knew the real me, they wouldn’t believe I’m so great.” Eventually I’d stop hanging out with that person because hearing I’m awesome would be too triggering. It would then be easy to think my relationships are so terrible because other people are the problem, when in reality the world is merely reflecting what I’m projecting.

Why am I bringing this up? I’m bringing it up because it’s easy to believe life is better when something external changes, and that’s true, the external is important, but how many of us are working on our insides? How many of us recognize the connection between our inner world and our outer world?

According to the spiritual philosophy I align with, everything is a thought projection of Cosmic Consciousness. That means nothing is external and everything is internal. It then follows how and why the same is true for the individual — that my internal world gets reflected externally. I understand not everyone will jive with that philosophy, and that’s fine. The point I’m trying to make — and perhaps awkwardly because I’m still sick — is that there’s no difference between the internal and external. What we feel, we project and we seek out. We are all looking for mirrors.

I dream of a world where we understand in order to change our experience of the world we must change our internal reality. A world where we realize oftentimes the external won’t change until the internal does. A world where we realize we are all looking for mirrors.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.