The Girl in the Mirror

I hope that some of you have been reading my previous post about dealing with sadness, and gaining confidence, and trouble with boys and I hope that by now some of you will trust me. Maybe you have even taken some of my advice and it has worked for you. And hope that you know that I am writing all of this to help you. I don't want to make fun of you. I'm not trying to cause drama. I'm not going to rub any if you faults in your face because we all have faults and I have no room to talk.
I also hope that you trust me. I am going to tell you to do something but you have to trust me enough to know that I'm not going to tell you to eat a handfull of bugs or drink a gallon of shampoo or something. But I want you to promise me something. And I mean PROMISE. I want you to promise me that before you read any further you will do EVERYTHING that I am about to tell you to do. Okay. Did you make that promise?
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I mean it. I want you to promise that no matter how strange or difficult it is that you will promise me that you will do eveything I tell you to do.

Okay, I want you to take out a pen and a piece of paper and start writing. I want you to write down everything that you don't like about yourself, everything you wish you could change, everything that you just absolutely hate. Your hair, your laugh, your body, your teeth, your shyness, your socially anxiety. I want you to be very specific with it.

Then I want you to imagine something. Imagine yourself in 15 years. You are doing your dream job. Married maybe. Maybe you have a few kids. You are more mature and wise than you are now. Imagine you are successful and stronger then you are now. Because right now you hate everything about yourself, you are uncertain of your future, you may even be suicidal because you just can't handle it anymore. Life is just too hard.

Once you get the perfect picture in your mind of where you will be in 15 years I want you to imagine what you will look like in 15 years. Maybe you dyed your hair. Maybe you changed your wardrobe or you decided to start wearing a little makeup. I want you to get a good picture. Close your eyes if you have to. But I want that picture in your head to be vivid.

Okay, now that you have that future version of you in your mind's eye I want you to get up from where you are and take that list that you made earlier and go to a mirror. Then I want you to look in that mirror right in your eyes. The girl in the mirror is you right now. The sad girl. The one who thinks she isn't pretty. The one who hates herself for the things she does. The girl who is bullied every single day of her life. The girl that thinks she is never going to get a boyfriend because she doesn't feel like she is good enough. The girl who is seriously considering ending it all because she thinks no one will ever even notice.

So if you are the girl in the mirror then who is the girl standing on the other side of the mirror? That, my friend, is your future self. The doctor. The amazing wife and mother. The marine biologist. The author. The psycologist. The baker. The successful small business owner. The awesome aunt. The musician. The older, wiser, stronger version of yourself.

Look yourself in the eyes and tell the younger version of yourself that it's going to be okay. It's all going to work out in the end. It may hurt right now, it may be tough to deal with, it may even seem impossible to live with. But how are you going to get THERE if you aren't HERE?

Take that list and tell the girl in the mirror the exact opposite of what you wrote on there. Kind of like this:

You wrote "I'm ugly" but you would tell her "You are absolutely gorgeous."

You wrote " I hate myself because I don't look like the popular girls" but you would say "You don't need to look like the 'popular' girls to be beautiful."

You wrote "I'm fat" but you would tell the girl in the mirror "You are not fat. You are healthy and strong."

You wrote "I will never get a boyfriend" but you tell her "You need to just wait for the right guy who will love you for who you are."

You wrote "I will never amount to anything because I'm dumb" but you would say to her "You are not dumb. You are very bright. Pay attention in school and study hard. You can do it."

Keep going through the whole list. And I want you to repeat each one until you can make yourself believe it. And why wouldn't you believeit? It's all true. If you can make youself believe that you are ugly, you can definitely convince yourself that you are beautiful.

The next step is to write yourself reminders and put them in places where you will actually see them. Don't keep them in a notebook that you will never open again. Write it on Post-it notes and put them in your room, in your locker, in your purse, on your mirror.

The one on your mirror would say, "You are beautiful. Remember that."

The one in your locker would say, "You are very smart. Apply yourself and study hard and you will achieve great things."

The last thing I want you to do is take that list with all those negative things written on it and tear it up. Shred it to little pieces. I want you to relish ever single second of it. They are all LIES, after all, so why would you keep them?

Just remember that all of those lies that you have convinced yourself of believing took a long time to take affect. You didn't just wake up one morning and think to yourself "I'm such a loser and no one likes me." You have been telling yourself that for probably a few years. I know I have and I can't be the only the person in the world who has done that. It's easier to put the put yourself down instead of someone else because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. But you are. You're hurting your own feelings and that 's not a good thing to do. It hurts you probably more than when other people say hurtful things to you. Because you know exactly how to say something that will make believe. You know exactly what gets under you skin.

All that being said, you can learn to convice youself of the truth. It's not going to happen overnight. You need to tell yourself these things everyday.

I'm just going to share with you one illustration. Imagine an artist has just finished a painting that he put so much time into creating. He would work on it for hours at a time. He spent a good deal of money on new paints and a canvas. He took pride in every little detail if his masterpiece. Then he gave it to the person he loves the most-his wife. But instead of admiring the painting, she criticized everything that she didn't like about it. The painter feels absolutely crushed.

Imagine how God feels when you say that you hate yourself, when you say that you are ugly, when you constanly criticize everything about yourself, when you physically harm yourself.

When I put it into perspective like this, it makes me sad to think how I have hurt God when I only thought I was hurting myself.

I know that it's going to be hard trying to get yourself to believe the truth when you have been believing those lies for so long. But I want you to promise me that you won't give up. You're gonna make it. And if we are the only two people in the whole world that believe in you then I think that's pretty awesome. Even if you don't beleive in you, I want you to know that I always will.