I was recently listening to a podcast with Noah St. John. Noah has written a wonderful book called The Secret Code of Success in which he teaches a concept that he calls “The Loving Mirror”.
He gave the example that the woman interviewing him had blue eyes. If all her life growing up all the people around her had told her she had brown eyes, she would think she has brown eyes. Imagine she went off to first grade and her first grade teacher said something like, “You have beautiful blue eyes ” she would have thought the teacher was strange, but first graders usually don't argue too much. She may have grown up a little confused but would be able to live with it.
If the interviewer had grown up and no mentioned her blue eyes until her first boyfriend in college, she would have probably thought he was crazy and dumped him. After all, she grew up her whole life being told and believing that she has brown eyes and all of the sudden, someone comes along and says she has blue eyes. He must be nuts!
Obviously, Noah was making a point using eye color. What if she had been told all her whole life that that she is lazy? Her parents always told her that she is lazy because her older brother did so much more. Or that if she would be able to do better if she only tried harder? What would happen the first time someone told her that her hard work paid off? She would say, “Oh no! I was just lucky! That can't be because I was always told that I don't work hard enough!.” Or perhaps she was told she was stupid? Or careless?
Noah teaches that all the interviewer needed was a good mirror to know that she had blue eyes. A good mirror would have solved the problem of knowing her true eye color.
There are some things you cannot see in a mirror. For that, you have people around you who interpret for you what you cannot see. If I have something stuck between my teeth, my wife will interpret for me if it is still there or if the toothpick removed it. If I am being stubborn, my wife will interpret that for me as well. And I can usually make a pretty decent choice about whether I should believe my wife or not and how I should react. And when my wife tells me something, she usually is pretty nice about it. For me, my wife is a loving mirror.
What do you do for your kids? Don't forget that your children cannot usually make a good choice about whether the information you give them is true or not, they will take everything as if it were from a mirror made of glass and silver. Do you give them a reflection that they are clumsy? That they are lazy? That they don't try hard enough? That they are messy? And whatever it is you tell them, are you a loving mirror for them?
Now I am not going to tell you to never criticize your child. You have to criticize to help them improve. You want them to be less messy, to try harder, to be more careful. But how do you do it?
Do you show them by example? Do you help them lovingly? STOP! Do not beat yourself up for every time you told your child to clean their room when you were frustrated. Please be a loving mirror to yourself also! You are doing a good job raising your kids and far be it from me to say otherwise. But this might be an area where you notice that you can improve a little.
So how do you change this? Every day for two weeks before you go to sleep, journal for just a few minutes about how good a job you did at being a loving mirror. Don't journal any of your failures. Just focus on your accomplishments. What you focus on expands, so focus on what went well.
Can you expect to be perfect? Probably not. Can you expect to improve? Certainly.
Try this for three weeks and then drop me an email and let me know how it goes. You can email me at DrShaya@PositiveParentPlus.com
