When you’re a kid, the mirror is no big thing to you. It’s an object that allows you to see what you look like, but you could probably live without it. Generally speaking, kids tend to not care about how they look. They throw on whatever clothes they find at the top of the drawer or in the front of their closets. They get dirt on their faces and they don’t think twice about it. They get stains on their shirts and their lives go on. It is that indifferent attitude towards their outward appearance that allows them to care very little about mirrors. However, as you get older that object that allows you to see yourself becomes more and more important to you. Something that once played a vey small role in your life all of sudden becomes one of the more important things to you. You care about the way that you look. Suddenly you care if your top matches your bottoms. It matters if you have some dirt on your face. If your hair is out of place you feel a huge desire to fix it so as not to appear unkempt. We need our outward appearance to be perfect so we eat right, work out, keep ourselves healthy, get the best looking clothes and the nicest shoes and we spend money on our hair so that it can look flawless. Looking good on the outside and liking what we see on the outside when we look at ourselves in the mirror is important, but something that’s even more important than that is liking what you see when you look inside of yourself.

If there was a mirror that allowed you to look at yourself on the inside would you like what you saw? Sometimes we put so much into our outward appearance and our outward world that we forget that what’s on the inside is just as important (If not more important) as what we see when we look on the outside. We become so concerned with what’s on the outside because it’s easy to see. What’s on the inside becomes easy to neglect because it’s not as apparent as the things that we can see when we look at the mirror. Have you ever heard the phrase “out of sight of mind.”? This saying can definitely be applied here. Because we can’t readily see what goes on with us on the inside, it becomes easier to ignore or push aside.

So, many of us don’t spend much time reflecting on how we feel on the inside. On any given day I look at my reflection dozens of times. I can’t say the same for the amount of time that I spend looking at myself on the inside. I’m constantly bombarded with things I can actually feel and touch. Work and school and family and friends keep my life busy and sometimes I neglect to pay attention to things inside of me that I can’t touch. Many times these outward things that I cherish become a distraction. They become a distraction, but I shouldn’t allow these things to consume so much of my time that I forget to make sure that I am okay with how I feel about myself and my life on the inside.

Your outward appearance will fade one day. You’re not as young right now as you were when you started reading this post, and as the days continue to go by you will become less youthful. You won’t have your looks to get by on and when they start to fail you you may realize just how important it is for you to make peace with the person that you are on the inside.

Positive thinker, don’t wait until you no longer have your outward appearance to rely on to figure out that your inward appearance is just as important. Start working on building that peace with your inner self now. Make sure that you feel good about yourself now. You shouldn’t have to walk around this world feeling anything less than happiness with who you are as a person.

Make sure that you would be just as pleased with a mirror that showed your inner self as you do when you see a mirror that shows your outer self.

And always remember, it is important to love yourself not only on the outside, but on the inside as well.