11/28/2025
The Mirror That Lies
By James Boehm
There's a peculiar magic trick we all fall for, over and over again. We hold up the world like a mirror, searching its surface for proof that we matter. A promotion becomes our worth. A like becomes our lovability. A number on a scale becomes our beauty. We've outsourced the most important question of our lives—Am I enough?—to things that were never designed to answer it.
Think of it like this: You wouldn't ask a thermometer to tell you the time, would you? Yet we ask our bank accounts to measure our significance. We ask other people's opinions to determine our value. We ask our achievements—those golden stars we collect and pin to our chests—to tell us if we deserve to take up space on this earth.
But here's the truth that keeps getting buried under all that noise: You are not a stock whose value fluctuates with market conditions.
Your worth isn't a variable in some cosmic equation, rising and falling based on your productivity, your appearance, your relationship status, or how many people showed up to your birthday party. It's a constant. It was there before you accomplished anything, and it remains untouched when things fall apart.
Consider a tree in winter. Bare branches, no leaves, no fruit—nothing to "show" for itself. Does it have less value than it did in summer? Of course not. It's still a tree, still rooted, still alive, still essential to the forest. Its worth isn't determined by its current display of productivity. The tree doesn't panic about its barrenness or compete with the pine that stays green year-round. It simply is.
We, somehow, have forgotten how to simply be.
We've become expert collectors—of credentials, compliments, possessions, status markers. We stack them up like sandbags against a flood of unworthiness we're terrified might drown us if we stop building. But the flood isn't real. It's the frantic collecting itself that exhausts us, that makes us feel perpetually insufficient.
The cruelest part? The external things we chase are moving targets. There's always a higher rung on the ladder, always someone doing it better, always a newer version of success being marketed to us. When our value depends on keeping up, we never arrive. We just keep running, breathless and bewildered, wondering why we still feel empty despite all we've accumulated.
But what if you stopped running? What if you sat down right where you are—messy life, unfinished projects, imperfect body, complicated relationships and all—and declared yourself valuable anyway?
This isn't about arrogance or delusion. It's about coming home to a fundamental truth: Your value is intrinsic, not earned. You don't become worthy through achievement; you achieve from a place of already being worthy. You were born with your value certificate stamped and sealed. No one can revoke it. Not your boss, not your ex, not the people who didn't pick you, not even yourself on your worst day.
When you anchor your worth internally, everything shifts. Failure becomes feedback instead of identity. Rejection becomes redirection instead of verdict. Success becomes celebration instead of validation. You stop performing your life and start living it.
Moment for Reflection
Think of a time when something outside of you—a rejection, a comparison, a criticism, a loss—dictated how you saw your value or worth.
Sit with that memory for a moment. Don't rush past it.
Now, get curious: Why did you give that external thing so much power? What made you believe it could measure something as immeasurable as your worth? Was it because you'd been taught that your value was conditional? Because everyone around you seemed to be playing the same game? Because it felt safer to let someone or something else decide your worthiness than to claim it for yourself?
Here's the gentle truth you might need to hear: You were looking for permission to value yourself. But the only permission you ever needed was your own.
That promotion, that relationship, that achievement—they were never your value. They were experiences. Moments in time. Data points in a much larger story. They might have reflected your effort, your skill, your circumstance—but they never, ever, reflected your essence.
Now ask yourself: What would change if you decided, right now, that your value comes from within? Not from what you do, but from the fact that you are. Not from being perfect, but from being human. Not from proving yourself, but from simply being yourself.
The adaptation isn't easy—we've been training for the opposite our whole lives. But it starts small: noticing when you're seeking external validation, then pausing to offer yourself internal acknowledgment instead. Catching the moments when you equate your worth with your productivity, then gently reminding yourself that you matter on your rest days too.
Your value doesn't need to be earned, defended, or proven.
It just needs to be remembered.
The Mirror That Lies
There's a peculiar magic trick we all fall for, over and over again. We hold up the world like a mirror, searching its surface for proof that we matter. A promotion becomes our worth. A like becomes our lovability. A number on a scale becomes our beauty. We've outsourced the most important question of our lives—Am I enough?—to things that were never designed to answer it.
Think of it like this: You wouldn't ask a thermometer to tell you the time, would you? Yet we ask our bank accounts to measure our significance. We ask other people's opinions to determine our value. We ask our achievements—those golden stars we collect and pin to our chests—to tell us if we deserve to take up space on this earth.
But here's the truth that keeps getting buried under all that noise: You are not a stock whose value fluctuates with market conditions.
Your worth isn't a variable in some cosmic equation, rising and falling based on your productivity, your appearance, your relationship status, or how many people showed up to your birthday party. It's a constant. It was there before you accomplished anything, and it remains untouched when things fall apart.
Consider a tree in winter. Bare branches, no leaves, no fruit—nothing to "show" for itself. Does it have less value than it did in summer? Of course not. It's still a tree, still rooted, still alive, still essential to the forest. Its worth isn't determined by its current display of productivity. The tree doesn't panic about its barrenness or compete with the pine that stays green year-round. It simply is.
We, somehow, have forgotten how to simply be.
We've become expert collectors—of credentials, compliments, possessions, status markers. We stack them up like sandbags against a flood of unworthiness we're terrified might drown us if we stop building. But the flood isn't real. It's the frantic collecting itself that exhausts us, that makes us feel perpetually insufficient.
The cruelest part? The external things we chase are moving targets. There's always a higher rung on the ladder, always someone doing it better, always a newer version of success being marketed to us. When our value depends on keeping up, we never arrive. We just keep running, breathless and bewildered, wondering why we still feel empty despite all we've accumulated.
But what if you stopped running? What if you sat down right where you are—messy life, unfinished projects, imperfect body, complicated relationships and all—and declared yourself valuable anyway?
This isn't about arrogance or delusion. It's about coming home to a fundamental truth: Your value is intrinsic, not earned. You don't become worthy through achievement; you achieve from a place of already being worthy. You were born with your value certificate stamped and sealed. No one can revoke it. Not your boss, not your ex, not the people who didn't pick you, not even yourself on your worst day.
When you anchor your worth internally, everything shifts. Failure becomes feedback instead of identity. Rejection becomes redirection instead of verdict. Success becomes celebration instead of validation. You stop performing your life and start living it.
Moment for Reflection
Think of a time when something outside of you—a rejection, a comparison, a criticism, a loss—dictated how you saw your value or worth.
Sit with that memory for a moment. Don't rush past it.
Now, get curious: Why did you give that external thing so much power? What made you believe it could measure something as immeasurable as your worth? Was it because you'd been taught that your value was conditional? Because everyone around you seemed to be playing the same game? Because it felt safer to let someone or something else decide your worthiness than to claim it for yourself?
Here's the gentle truth you might need to hear: You were looking for permission to value yourself. But the only permission you ever needed was your own.
That promotion, that relationship, that achievement—they were never your value. They were experiences. Moments in time. Data points in a much larger story. They might have reflected your effort, your skill, your circumstance—but they never, ever, reflected your essence.
Now ask yourself: What would change if you decided, right now, that your value comes from within? Not from what you do, but from the fact that you are. Not from being perfect, but from being human. Not from proving yourself, but from simply being yourself.
The adaptation isn't easy—we've been training for the opposite our whole lives. But it starts small: noticing when you're seeking external validation, then pausing to offer yourself internal acknowledgment instead. Catching the moments when you equate your worth with your productivity, then gently reminding yourself that you matter on your rest days too.
Your value doesn't need to be earned, defended, or proven.
It just needs to be remembered.
