Why Painful Patterns Repeat in Your Life & How to End the Cycle

How I quit being a puppet (and how you can too).

When you look into a mirror and don’t like something about your reflection, what do you do?

Easy. You change your shirt or brush your hair.

But when it comes to life, most people reflexively manipulate the reflection they see in the mirror rather than changing the image they cast into it.

In the realm of business, this often looks like taking frantic “MASSIVE” action, assuming if we just work hard enough, we can change anything, all the while feeling tense, self-critical, and frustrated.

Suspended in the land of massive action, we overlook the way our attitudes and interpretations mold our circumstances.

This response is like taking lipstick and drawing over the reflection of your face in the mirror, expecting it to change your appearance.

The Cycle that Locks You within Debasing Patterns (or Liberates You Entirely)

In the book, Reality Transurfing, Vadim Zeland describes what he calls the mirror principle: Reality reflects your attitudes with a delay.

When you feel excited about a new opportunity, that excitement bounces back with more opportunities, more encouraging words from friends, and more reasons to feel fulfilled. Those positive circumstances feed your attitude, you feel inspired and powerful, and your happiness intensifies.

But the same cycle occurs with negativity: When people ignore your work, when your partner suddenly ends your relationship, you become sad, judgmental, doubtful, anxious, and so on.

Then, your circumstances reflect those attitudes with more reasons to worry, fewer opportunities, and other obstacles.

To escape cycles of negativity, we have to change our attitudes before we see any changes in our outer circumstances.

To return to the mirror analogy, the mirror can’t smile before you do. to change our lives, we need to turn away from the reflection (the lack of money; the unfulfilling work, etc.) and change the image we’re reflecting into the mirror (the thoughts and perceptions we’re entertaining about our situation).

Of course, this requires overcoming our social programming: since the first day of our lives, our secular materialist culture conditioned us to use our circumstances as guides to how we should think and feel.

Low bank account? Bad mood. No friends? Loneliness. Unfulfilling job? Frustration.

But if we always let our circumstances inform our attitudes, we’ll lack the motivation to change anything. And we’ll stay stuck.

The Only Perspective Shift You Need to Reverse Downward Spirals

To prevent failure, disappointment, or sadness from intensifying, do this. Look for the advantages in whatever situation you’re in. If you can’t see any, trust they’ll become obvious with time.

This can seem like spiritual bypassing (“Just look for the good in everything!”). But when you find the right angle, it can bring a quiet yet powerful source of relief.

Whenever something doesn’t go your way, experiment with the question, “In what ways is this actually perfect for me?”

This question doesn’t require you to repress the genuine difficulty of whatever you’re facing. Instead, it settles the tides of negativity. It can open your mind to the ways your circumstances might be advantageous for some smaller, less demanding part of yourself.

For example, sometimes I feel disenchanted by the lack of traction with my work.

But I can choose to see my time in obscurity as an opportunity to share brash and controversial views. A massive audience might dissuade me from being bold and experimental. In this sense, my obscurity becomes a gift.

You Weren’t Born to Observe Reality: You Were Born to Author It

The mirror principle stops the weight of failure, disappointment, and other forms of negativity from crushing you. But the very concept of the mirror principle can become its own source of relief.

When “bad” things happen, you’re no longer a slave to them.

Instead, you realize you have a choice. You’re not a puppet who necessarily needs to feel bad when your clients insult your work or your bank account hits $77.

You can recognize there’s always a gap between your circumstances and the stories you tell about them. You can use the gap to write a story about your failures. Or you can spin redemptive arcs out of them.

The mirror principle can also be an insurance policy against imposter syndrome. If you’re learning a new skill and feel shaky at it, you could allow that shakiness to contribute to anxiety. Or it could encourage you to give up.

But if you remember the mirror can’t smile before you, you’ll know that by simply acting as if you knew what you were doing (and moving forward no matter how you feel or what feedback you get), reality will eventually reflect your efforts.

Then, something delightful happens: the compound effect kicks in. It takes less effort to stay optimistic because your circumstances begin reflecting your actions.

From there, you can use the human tendency to let circumstances mold your attitudes to your advantage.