How to Mirror
I was running late for dinner.
Traffic had been a mess. Parking took forever. Now I stood outside the restaurant, watching my friends through the window. The warmth of conversation and laughter spilled into the evening air, but I was still carrying the tension of failing to get to dinner on time.
My first instinct was to blame the city. The roads were congested, the parking situation was impossible, and I had done my best. I pushed open the door, still thinking about everything outside of me that was the reason I was late.
But as I stepped inside the restaurant, something shifted. The glass door caught my reflection for just a moment—just long enough for a quiet thought to land.
Was traffic really the reason I was late?
If I was honest, I had left my apartment later than I could have. I had lingered unnecessarily, checked my phone one last time, let the minutes slip away in small, avoidable ways. It wasn’t just the traffic.
There had been a moment—maybe several—where I could have chosen differently.
The window had given me something external to point to. But the mirror from the glass door had offered me something else. A chance to look inside, versus outside.
When something doesn’t go as I want, where does my attention go? Do I scan the world outside for reasons, explanations, and excuses? Or do I look within? The difference is like looking through a window versus a mirror.
Through the window, I see everything beyond my control. A partner who doesn’t meet an expectation. A colleague whose habits frustrate me. A society that feels rigid in all the ways I wish it were flexible. The window gives me a view of all the forces acting upon me, and in doing so, it offers an easy and convenient answer: This is why things are the way they are. This is why I feel the way I do.
It is comforting in its simplicity. But it also makes me a spectator in my own life.
The mirror, on the other hand, is more demanding. It doesn’t offer easy explanations. Instead, it asks: What part of this do I have control over? Not in a way that is self-critical or blaming, but in a way that returns my power to me. What can I learn? What can I change?
It’s tempting to stay at the window. But the mirror is where change happens.
The window view is seductive in its simplicity, but exhausting in its consequences. The more I look outward for reasons, the more powerless I feel. There is always something to blame, but never anything to change.
The mirror, though, offers something different. It isn’t just clarity—it’s energy.
Looking in the mirror isn’t comfortable. It requires a particular kind of courage to see myself clearly, to acknowledge my part in the patterns that frustrate me. But it carries the gift of energy.
When I shift my gaze from the window to the mirror, something transforms. Complaints become questions. “They should” becomes “I could.” Powerlessness gives way to possibility.
This shift ripples outward. Teams respond differently when I own my part in challenges. Relationships deepen when I stop assigning blame and start getting curious about my patterns.
The mirror offers no comfort, but it offers something better: a way forward.
Each day presents this choice anew. Each moment of friction, each disappointment, each challenge invites me to choose: window or mirror? The easy view or the true one? The story of circumstance or the story of growth?
I’m learning to choose the mirror.
And that is how I learned to mirror.
