People love that guy or girl in the mirror! The people at work think they are great and so funny. The people passing by their table at the coffee shop, seeing their trendy clothes, haircut, MacBook and Grande skinny vanilla latte; envy them and secretly wish they had their lives together as well as this person you see in the mirror. People on social media regularly like, love, and share everything this person in the mirror shares. Those nice people at church are always inviting them to come over or help in some outreach or other ministry. Like I said, people seem to love that person you see in the mirror every day.
The problem… you know every dirty little secret about that person in the mirror and you are not that impressed! You have a great reputation among others, but your reputation with yourself is a bit fragile.
There is this little thing called incongruence that bothers you a little. Congruence means to be compatible or in harmony with something else. You would love for the way others see you to be congruent (compatible and in harmony) with what you know and believe about yourself… however, you know what thought was going through your head when you were smiling and nodding in front of others. You know the agenda and intention behind that “nice” thing you did for so-and-so. You know the amount of “spin” you put on things before allowing them to be heard or seen by others.
TAwhile back, my family and I were going through some “on the scale between 1-10” questions about several areas of our lives such as Financial Health, Spiritual Health, Mental Health, Physical Health, Relational Health, etc. What I found most interesting is how different the numbers were between what others would have scored us in those categories and where we actually scored ourselves. It became clear that we all felt we were no where near exceptional. Even in areas we were known to be experts in… we were only giving ourselves scores in the 5 or 6 range.
There are real things like poor self-esteem, false humility, and imposter syndrome, that people get beat up by all the time and getting counseling for those things is a great idea. In most cases, however, the truth is that we spend most of our time worried about our public reputation and completely neglect (avoid) how we feel about ourselves! The Bible teaches that we cannot love others better than we love ourselves; and so those smiles and good deeds may lead others to think highly of us; but we cannot look the image in the mirror in the eye and say we agree.
What can we do about it? We can take a moment to realize that until the truth in the mirror matches the “truth” on the street; we need to stop running, fighting, digging, hustling, grinding, denying, lying, etc., and get first things first. We need to look at those life areas that are not a 10 and start identifying what needs to change. We need to start caring for ourselves, loving ourselves, becoming someone we would willingly hangout with, learn from, be inspired by. This isn’t being selfish… this is setting yourself up to be even more valuable to others. You need to slow your roll on the short game; and start living for your legacy. If life is happening TO you; it’s time to make a change until life is something that is happening FOR you!
so… on a scale between 1 and 10; one being having no value at all & ten being absolutely fantastic; where would you, and you alone, rate the image in the mirror?
SPIRITUALLY
FINANCIALLY
CAREER
PHYSICAL HEALTH
MENTAL HEALTH
ATTITUDE
RELATIONSHIPS
FAMILY
________________
________________
________________
For any area that is a seven or less… what are you going to do about it? For example: “In the area of physical health, I will move from a 4 to a 5 in 30 days by limiting soda to 1x/day, walking 30 minutes 3x/week, and not eating after 6pm.” Keep working on 30 day goals until that category is at least an eight.
Don’t think in terms of perfection. Think in terms of what is the next right thing I can do. If you have several areas of your life that you are simply doing the “next right thing” in… it won’t be long until you can look at those eyes in the mirror and agree that the reputation on the street is congruent (in harmony) with the reputation you have with yourself!
Welcome to a new you. Welcome to a new reality. Welcome to a new peace.
-Russell