Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most beautiful of them all?
The evil queen in Snow White craved constant reassurance of her perfection and could not bear it when the mirror named someone even more lovely. Though this fairy tale was recorded by the Brothers Grimm more than two centuries ago, it resonates strongly today. In a Western culture that celebrates individuality and a narrow vision of beauty, many of us carry a quiet belief that we don’t measure up.
Mirrors are ubiquitous, yet we rarely acknowledge their power or the discomfort they can engender. More than merely reflecting our physical form, they also surface deeper psychological patterns. Mirrors evoke three complexes that shape how we perceive ourselves: inferiority, superiority, and equality.
The inferiority complex arises when we feel inadequate, habitually comparing ourselves unfavorably to others. The superiority complex, like that of the evil queen, masks insecurity with arrogance or dominance. Even the so-called equality complex can be a subtle trap, as it strives to make us “the same” as others, ignoring the reality that each of us is unique.
In his book It’s Up to You, the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dzigar Kongtrul recognizes the difficulty of gazing into a mirror. When we look in the mirror, he writes, “we are simply not content to see an ordinary human being with neuroses, obstacles, and problems. We want to see a happy person, but instead we see someone who is struggling…. The conflict between what we see and what we want to see causes tremendous pain.”
It’s not surprising some of us try to avoid spending time in front of the mirror, managing only a furtive glance and avoiding eye contact, while others spend considerable time focusing only on perceived physical blemishes and take even longer trying to cover them up, wishing to be someone else entirely. But do we ever really see who is behind this mask?
First and foremost, our path is to accept ourselves as we are, to recognize that we are enough. As Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh succinctly put it: “Be beautiful, be yourself.” So, how can the mirror help us face our inner suffering, meet reality as it is, and find self-compassion?
My own journey of transformation began with an understanding that my search for love outside myself was like trying to fill a bottomless pit. Until I learned to love who I was, no amount of external appreciation could truly reach my heart.
I remember one day washing my face and, glancing up, seeing not just a reflection in the mirror but someone looking back at me. Our eyes met, I smiled, and he smiled back. A tenderness passed between us, and my whole relationship with myself shifted.
In that moment of self-understanding and self-acceptance, I recognized that it’s possible to forge a deep, loving connection when we look at ourselves with a genuine smile, allowing a deep inner knowing to gently push away our negative thoughts. I made the decision to cultivate this experience and turn it into a practice of standing before a mirror and connecting to myself for several minutes at a time.
After that first unintended connection, I initially found the practice difficult—it felt exposing, even uncomfortable, to look at myself this way. But gradually it became easier as I learned to focus not on my looks, but on what lay deep in my eyes. When I was finally able to consistently look at myself with genuine love, a transformation occurred. The desire to extract love from others shifted naturally into a desire to give. What once felt like an empty bowl now overflowed.
My own initial struggles with this practice paled beside the suffering of one of my work colleagues who had cancer. When he confided in me his deep self-hatred, I suggested he spend thirty minutes looking at himself in the mirror, as I had learned to do. He shared that his whole life he’d avoided mirrors except when necessary, such as shaving. Even then he would turn away as quickly as possible and not look himself in the eyes.
With gentle encouragement, he summoned the courage after a couple of weeks to face himself. He described the first few minutes as agony. But as he steadied himself, he was able to break through this barrier. He was surprised to discover he could feel compassion for himself, and, by the half-hour mark, even the first spark of self-love. It became a turning point for him.
Over the years, I’ve recommended this mirror practice to many of the clients I coach. I have seen that it can cultivate self-compassion, helping us notice judgments without being consumed by them, and recognize our inner beauty just as we are. There are small ways in which we can remind ourselves of this truth. My wife, Paz, has for decades painted a smile on every mirror in the house in red lipstick as a reminder that whatever she’s facing, she still has the capacity to smile to herself.
It was only recently that I discovered that my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh had also emphasized the transformative power of mirror meditation as a practice for mindfulness and compassion. He encouraged carrying a small mirror as a tool for checking our state of being, inviting moments of self-awareness and gentle presence. He even wrote “Looking in the Mirror Gatha,” a short poem on self-awareness and the impermanence of form, which you can contemplate when you see your reflection. It reads: “Awareness is a mirror reflecting the four elements. Beauty is a heart that generates love and a mind that is open.”
It takes courage to look deeply and be honest about what we dislike in ourselves, where it originates, and then to step out from the shadow into the light. Yet when we manage it, we may look back in disbelief at how estranged we once were from ourselves. We carry all possibilities within us; it is better to make peace with the myriad aspects of ourselves rather than war.I was reminded of this again when I recently reread Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea. In it, she tells the story of Ged, a young mage who, in his pride, accidentally summons a shadowy force that pursues him across the world. For much of the novel, Ged flees from this dark presence until he is badly injured in a battle with it. As he heals, he recognizes that rather than continuing to hide, he must hunt down and confront the shadow. When he does so, he discovers that it’s not an external enemy but a part of himself—his own fear and pride. By acknowledging it with its true name, he’s able to integrate this dark aspect of his being. Le Guin thus turns the fantasy quest inward: The true struggle is not against monsters without, but against what we refuse to recognize and embrace within ourselves.
