How often should you look in the mirror?
Remember when there were only a few ways to actually see yourself ? If you’re old enough to remember the days before digital cameras, social media, and the internet, you’ll know what we’re talking about.
If you’re young enough to wonder how those days ever existed, let’s paint this scenario for you.
If you wanted to see yourself in the 90’s, you had to..
Catch a glimpse of yourself in a well-polished spoon (or look in an actual mirror)
Wait for your film to be developed and hope that shot of you at your birthday party actually turned out
Be rich enough to own a camcorder so you could make your own home movies
Be famous enough that other people took pictures of you.
There may be a few additions to this list, but not too many. The reality is it used to be so much harder to actually see yourself than it is now. For better and worse.
Staring at our own reflection has a downside. We obsess over it. We criticize it. We focus on the flaws. We compare our own reflection with our perception of everybody else. And reflection and perception are not always great lovers. One is true and one is a subjective interpretation, skewed heavily by headspace.
If you’re an artist who says ‘staring at my own reflection is bad for my mental health’, we hear you. Your own headspace is precious. It should be guarded and protected. Nothing we’re about to say is meant to devalue the idea that everyone has a different capacity for reflection. Artists are forced to look at themselves more often than the average person, but that doesn’t mean you can’t look away when you need to.
Here’s the thing though. If you can figure out how to navigate the negative side effects of taking a long, hard look at your own reflection, you just might see an opportunity for growth. That’s a significant upside.
It’s really hard to progress when you don’t process. Studying what you do, how you present it to the world, and how it all fits together is how you understand where the tweaks need to happen. If you’re too afraid to look, you might miss the tweaks. Or worse yet, someone else might come along and tweak it for you based on their own perception.
Instagram. TikTok. YouTube. Your camera roll. The camera roll on the phone of every fan that comes to a show. Your image is everywhere. You’ve become content. The things you say, the songs you play, the clothes you wear, the captions you write, the GRWM and the BTS and even the IDGAF stuff — it all sits there waiting for you to watch it back.
You could spend an entire day just watching yourself. We don’t advise it, but we do suggest there’s value in finding a healthy way to take a look.
If you can replace ‘obsess, criticize and compare’ with ‘digest, process, and tweak’ there is a benefit to digging in on who you’ve been up to this point — heck, under those conditions, we even recommend it. There are things to learn about who we’ve been that will help us get closer to who we want to be.
If you can’t replace the negative with the positive, we get it. This isn’t a push, it’s a nudge. Or maybe a nudge, then a gentle push. Do what you gotta do to feel good more than you feel bad. If that means you can’t look yet, then you can’t look yet. Maybe get a trusted friend to do it and listen to what they have to say. Consider staring at your own reflection a bit like eating at a buffet. Despite the overwhelming amount on offer, starting off with what you can handle, is a lot better than consuming so much you make yourself sick.
Honestly, we’re glad it’s not the 90’s anymore. The view is pretty damn interesting when everyone can afford a camcorder. But with so much to look at, so much to compare to, so much to criticize, it can be hard to wanna look in the mirror. Learning to do it constructively is the key to understanding yourself better.
The better you understand you, the more other people will too.
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