Lesson: Have you ever gotten to work in the morning and checked yourself over in the bathroom mirror and noticed something off, something you missed when you took the final look at yourself before you left home? I have!

Those moments are symbolic of instances that we all have when we are examining our attitudes and our ways. We see ourselves through those “rose-colored glasses” we’ve so often heard about. Everything looks good, until we get in a brighter light and we look a little closer. It is in those moments that we can see the details, the small things that may not look so good.

I think unconsciously most of us avoid the bright light. If you think about it, this is the day in age that using filters and photo-shopping ourselves to remove the flaws, is the things to do and we don’t just do it with pictures. We don’t want to look at ourselves closely but we’ll examine others with a magnifying glass, noticing every flaw and every mistake. Even if we don’t say it out loud to a person, we all make judgments about others in our head. The danger in operating like that is, spending thought-time making opinions and judgments about others and what they are doing or aren’t doing with their lives, blinds us to what we should be focused on within ourselves.

Another interesting part in that is, if we really think about it, often times the criticisms and judgments we have about others, we can usually find an element of that within ourselves if we look close enough. I’ll give you a personal example. One particular week I was so bothered with the tone that I was hearing from one of my colleagues. I just felt like every time I was around them, they were being so sarcastic and harsh in their tone. Ironically, that same week my husband made a comment to me about my tone towards him. Of course that irritated me and I didn’t want to believe I was doing anything wrong but in the still quiet moments that I had with myself following his comments I humbly realized he was right and I didn’t even notice it. While I was so focused on the tone of this colleague, I was totally blind to the fact that I was having a unpleasant tone at home with my husband. That’s what those “rose-colored glasses will do to you! The truth is, if we looked at others with “rose-colored glasses” and examined ourselves more with a magnifying glass, we’d all be better off!

So I ask you, what reflection do you see when you examine yourself in the mirror with the bright light? Are you missing details in your reflection because you are distracted by someone else’s details?

Application: The next time you have someone in your life that is really doing something to irritate you, pause, get out your magnifying glass, look in the mirror at yourself and focus on what you need to be working on to make you better.