Tuesday Thought

                                              

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.