The Law Of The Mirror: The “magic” Rule For Solving Problems
The Law of the Mirror tells us that the origin of our negative feelings towards a particular person lies in our heart and not in the other. In other words, it teaches us that feelings are born within us, and that is why we are responsible for managing our beliefs, our ideas and the bad thoughts we formulate about others.
Because anger is usually directed towards oneself and not towards the other. In other words, everything has a beginning and an end within oneself; it is this projection that plays in our mind, as if our reality were a mirror that gives us the image we are generating.
Yoshinori Noguci, in his book called The Law of the Mirror , tells a beautiful and exciting story that moves us and gives us the opportunity to integrate this idea into our daily life.
This author places us in front of a mirror to make us face our interiority, that is the origin of everything that happens to us in life. In this regard, Jung would say “what you deny submits you, what you accept transforms you”.
What irritates us about others is what we deny about ourselves
We need to look at the things that bother us in others. Why do our brother’s comments at family lunches irritate us? Why are we no longer able to reason when we are in the company of our sister-in-law? Why can’t we stand not being supported when we want it?
To analyze all this, we need to make a list with all the elements that annoy us about the people around us. We will probably realize that there are values that we are despising and that there are things that we do not even do as we should.
We have to ask ourselves questions like “why don’t I react the same way with everyone in a given situation?” . The answer is simple: we don’t have the same feelings towards all people.
For this reason, the next step is to make a list of what we need to be grateful for to people who are irritating to us: they will surely have done at least one good thing for us or for someone we love.
We will know that we have freed ourselves when the element of the other that was so annoying to us ceases to irritate us and when the experience that made us feel bad will never repeat itself.
There are no time limits for the creation of this list; in other words, we need to take the time to understand how many of the other’s characteristics that make us nervous are also part of us. When we are done, we can make another list in which we set out the issues we would like to apologize for.
It is likely that this exercise is not easy and that, once finished, it will seem to us that we have built a forced list of small, unimportant details. However, this courageous gesture will allow us to understand that sometimes even our gaze has been hostile, our tone harsh and our heavy and unsolicited criticism.
The last and most difficult step is to contact these people through a call, a letter or meet them face to face. We will have to thank them for the reasons noted on the first list and apologize to them for the reasons written on the second.
This step is so difficult that it will probably seem impossible to you, especially since you feel that keeping your distance is beneficial for your mental health. However, you must reflect on the fact that if you want to eliminate pain, you cannot make pride a way of life.
If you want to overcome these situations and work to heal the grudge, the contact must be direct. However, if you exclude this option, a more discreet method is to write a letter not to be sent: this will allow you to free the emotional imbalance that you carry inside.
In any case, knowing the Law of the Mirror will help you to be cautious and not to feed resentment and negative feelings. Don’t forget that you always project what you have inside of you; therefore, everything you see in others probably has more to do with you than with them.
