Everyone you meet is your mirror. Why is that? We come to
understand ourselves best through our relationships with other
people. We can only be triggered by something we have experienced
ourselves. The traits we tend to dislike in others are usually
the traits we do not like about ourselves. We then tend to judge
and criticize these characteristics. This calls to mind the
analogy of pointing a blaming finger at someone. One finger is
pointing at another person, and three are pointing back to
ourselves. When certain characteristics in someone’s personality
trigger a negative reaction from you, there is something within
you that is coming up because it is ready to be healed. Usually, it
represents issues from your past that have gone unresolved. An
example of this would be constantly attracting people who betray
you in close relationships because you have not dealt with
a parental abandonment issue from your past. What you are seeing is
a manifestation of your belief that you cannot trust anyone with your
feelings. Every person we meet in life is showing up at the perfect
time in our lives to reflect something we need to heal within ourselves.
The people with whom you interact are showing you who you are and
ultimately providing you with an opportunity to love yourself. Since our
mission is to discover what we don’t love and learn to love it, the
people who get on our nerves the most are among our greatest teachers.
Believe it or not, forgiving yourself is the most effective way to
disengage from negative interactions with people. We can only love and
accept others to the degree that we love and accept ourselves. When
you make it a habit to learn from your relationships, eventually you will
discover that you can observe negative traits within others without
judgment and without getting hooked into someone else’s drama. If you
discover that you are in a relationship with someone who habitually abuses
you in some way, it is sometimes healthy to limit your exposure to that
person or to avoid their company completely. This serves you well only
after you have embraced the lessons that you have seen reflected to you
through the relationship, followed by choosing to forgive yourself and
the other person. The good news is that the desirable behaviors we see
in others is also a reflection of ourselves. When we predominantly choose
thoughts of love, we live in a reality of love. In other words, as we
focus on our light within, we bring out the light within others. Everyone
we meet has come into our path to help us to remember this.
Autumn 