Do you ever get sick of your clothes? Or is that just me?
It's been a while since I added anything new to my wardrobe and as I got dressed yesterday, I was feeling, well...blah. Frumpy. You know those days -- when you leave the house feeling like you don't exactly look your best.
I've been writing about body image long enough to know that how we feel about the way we look has a major impact on how we approach our lives. So I wasn't exactly surprised when yesterday morning turned into a difficult one. I had a couple of major deadlines, but what I felt like doing was curling up with a cup of coffee and digging into the stack of magazines that have been piling up because I haven't had a chance to look through them. I decided to start a load of laundry so I could at least feel productive, but that required opening the door to my 13-year-old's bedroom, where -- as I suspected -- I found the floor strewn with dirty clothes.
Mumbling to myself about how many times I've asked her to just bring her clothes to the hamper (Is that so hard?), I bent over to pick up some clothes and as I stood back up, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror standing in the corner. What I saw took me by surprise: I looked lean and strong. The black jeans and red sweater I was wearing -- the same clothes I'd felt so frumpy in just a half-hour earlier -- suddenly looked good to me.
I felt my mood change immediately. But nothing really changed except my mood...and the mirror I was using.
It's easy to get mired in bad thoughts about our bodies, ourselves and our lives sometimes. But that image in the mirror was a great reminder that a reflection is only that -- a quick glimpse at a brief, singular moment. And that reflection can look different, depending on what tool we use to look at ourselves.
A different mirror allows us to see our appearance from a new angle. The next time you're tempted to focus on the negative, try adjusting your internal mirror. Sometimes, all it takes to see what's right about yourself is a simple shift in perspective.
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