BY PRIYA ALI
When’s the last time you felt annoyed or angry with someone, in a way that just kept lingering on. Maybe it’s someone you just met, but there’s just that something about them that irritates you. You can’t seem to put a finger on it or explain it, and it nags you each time you see them.
Here is an effective strategy to figuring it out. Find the closest mirror and take a look. Can’t see anything? Look more closely. See it now? The thing that is bothering you is something that you yourself do, or bothers you about yourself. “That can’t be” you say? I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it most certainly can be.
You see, on a spiritual level, we have soul contracts with people who come in to our lives to create learning opportunities for personal development, growth and expansion. Yes, that’s right, they are actually behaving this way to show us our own behaviour by mirroring it to us, or by showing us that there is definitely room for us to enhance the behaviours we are engaging in.
Just the other day, a personal friend of mine and I found ourselves in the presence of a mutual acquaintance. After interacting with this person, my friend said that he didn’t like the guy, and began to follow up with a list of things he didn’t like about him. To myself, I began to chuckle, because as an outsider, I could see into the situation.
A few days later, the three of us came together for a business meeting. As we discussed a potential collaboration on an upcoming project, my friend began to see what I was seeing before. After the meeting, he came to me and said, “I could see so much of myself in him, the way that I react without thinking, get upset and belligerent and become hotheaded, he’s like a younger version of me.”
What irked my friend was seeing a part of himself that he did not approve of or like, in someone else. He could see it from an outside perspective, from someone else’s point of view, the way he, himself, often appears to others he comes into contact with. He saw how brash, aggressive and out of control he became, and he did not like it. In fact, when my friend was contributing to the meeting, he got very much into the same place as the gentleman he was judging, by demonstrating the very behaviour he was upset about.
This happens to many of us, as we attract people into our lives to show us through a mirror where we have room for change and to choose greater for ourselves. Sometimes we are shown through a clear, direct mirror reflection, meaning somebody is doing the exact same thing we are doing. Other times, we are being shown by someone who is acting a certain way in order to prompt us to choose greater for ourselves or be greater. For example, there are times when someone may treat you poorly in order to create an opportunity for you to stand up for yourself, and exhibit some clear boundaries.
So remember, the next time you are feeling irked, irritated or annoyed with someone, stand in front of your mirror and say, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, show me the greatest lesson of all.”
