Ep 172: The Five-Way Mirror

What if the world around you — the people in your circle, the environments you spend time in, your subconscious mind, and the face in your bathroom mirror, - was constantly trying to show you something about yourself? In this episode, Marie explores five powerful ways that mirrors show up in our lives, and how we can use each one intentionally to elevate who we're becoming.

The Five Mirrors

1. New Environments as Mirrors Stepping into an unfamiliar room, city, or community shows you things about yourself that your regular environment can't — because your usual environment has you on autopilot. While our everyday life reflects the choices, ways of being and circumstances of the past, we can choose environments that mirror back possibility for the future instead.

2.  Social Circles as a Mirror The people around you reflect back who you are — your beliefs, your habits, your ceiling. Choose to put yourself in circles that reflect back the possibility of the future you’re building, and reflect back your best qualities instead of your worst. Your circle is data.

3. Being a Mirror for Other Women There's a shadow that runs through how women relate to each other in our broader culture: comparison, competition, subtle diminishment. Marie talks about what that shadow looks like, why it persists, and how each of us can consciously become the antidote — the good medicine that calls out something better. When you show up authentically — fierce, honest and playful — you give other women permission to do the same. We have more power to reflect possibility back to each other than we often realize.

4. Your Subconscious Mind as a Mirror Your subconscious is constantly reflecting your deepest beliefs back to you through your results, your patterns, and what you keep creating in your life. Learn to prime your mind to mirror back the future, instead of the past. 

5. The Literal Mirror Your actual reflection. How you relate to it, what you think when you see it, and how to use images of your younger self and the face you see when you look in the mirror to bring out the best in you. 

You'll Love This Episode If...

• You've been thinking about the quality of your relationships and whether they're calling you up or keeping you comfortable
• You want to be a more powerful, positive presence in the lives of the women around you
• You're curious about what your own patterns and results might be trying to tell you
• You're ready to see yourself — all of yourself — more clearly

Ready to Experience This for Yourself?

The Moxie Mastermind is where women come together to do exactly what this episode is about — reflect the best in each other, tell the truth, and make their ideas real, one after another. 

If you're ready to be in a room (or a retreat) with women who will mirror back your highest self and hold you to it, apply to  the Moxie Mastermind and save your spot!

How to connect with Marie:

• On the Web | The Local Bloom
• Instagram: @the.bloom.coach
• All Things Marie on LinkTree

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome to the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 172 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. You are gonna get a buzzy vibey, Marie, today, because I am back from the first ever Moxie retreat. The women there named it the OG Moxie Retreat. And I cannot even begin to describe the unbelievable experience that it was. I have told you before, I've led hundreds of retreats, but I was dreaming of this one for over a decade. And it was like 10 times better than I ever could have imagined. It was so beautiful. And the things that all the women said and the connections that they had with each other and the breakthroughs and the things they learned and the fun we had and the dancing and the laughter. It was just so far beyond anything I could have hoped for or imagined. And then the things that they're all texting me and saying and calling me. It's this moment where I am seeing the Moxie mastermind and the Moxie retreat. It is the best thing I've ever built. It's the best thing I've ever created in my professional life. Out of all the podcast and the bloom room and the coaching I've done for everyone, all the things that I've done in my life, I've loved them all so much. And this container of the Moxie mastermind and the sisterhood it is creating for women. And the, oh my gosh, the amount of things that they're they're creating, it is unbelievable. And I am so jazzed. So it was just the most amazing thing. And I will share many pictures uh of it. And there are now gonna be two Moxie retreats every year. The Moxie Mastermind participants get it included in the Moxie Mastermind and they get dibs on all the spots. So when there are spots open, if it doesn't fill up with those participants, then I'll always share those. We're gonna do two a year, one locally in San Diego and one internationally. We're thinking about Oaxaca and uh Italy, Costa Rica, but we're open to ideas and are just like buzzing this entire group of women is shooting ideas back and forth and planning the next one. It's really, really exciting and wonderful and a true honor in my life. So you're getting this buzzy Marie. Um, the connection, you know, I'm I'm very passionate about connecting women to one another. And I'm gonna talk about that in our mirror, one of our stages of the mirror today, which is the content I'm gonna get into in just a moment. But I'm also really passionate about connecting women to what I call their moxie, which is their authenticity, their fierce voice inside them, understanding what their yeses and their no's are, that like courage to take all the beautiful stuff they've created in their life and like reinvent it to make their own rules, to ask says who about what they think they can do and to reinvent it and to do it all in the group of the most badass women who have the most spot-on advice, amazing coaching, and lift each other up through everything. So I am very, very passionate about doing this, and it is the most fun that I could ever imagine having in a career, too. So it's really amazing, and I am just bubbling over, as are all the other women, with what that was like. But I gotta tell you a story that is really kind of magical from the end of it when my kids got there. So the women and I had this retreat that was three days. One with just the mastermind women, and then two days with a bunch of other women that came. And like I said, just like dancing, self-care, yoga, laughter, coaching, sailing, adventures, all the things, private chefs. And at the end of these retreats, I'm always like exhausted because I'm holding space for all the things for all the people, and it is my deepest like joy. I love doing it so much. And then by the time I get to the end of one of these, I've been planning it for like months and in the month leading up to it, planning and building and making and creating agendas and communicating and all the things, getting in the zone, meditating a lot. And by the time I'm done doing that and I'm at the retreat, I'm on my ultimate peak of my energy, just holding a really high frequency, holding space, making myself super clear to hold space for all these women and anything that comes up from, and being as present as I possibly can. So by the time it's over, I'm like tired, girl. So I usually like to go sleep for a day and like stay away from my family for a day just to sleep and integrate and think about what just happened. But this time, we had this giant mansion that we were in, and I was like, damn, my kids are gonna love this if I just invite them over here. So I did. I invite them to this wild, beautiful mansion in La Jolla. The women had gone, and I'm like, kids, you each get to have your own bedroom. You get to choose from all these wild bedrooms. I had my team Moxie, who put on the retreat with me, they got to stay too. My husband came. We had a little boy that is a best friend of my son. It was his birthday. He came with his mom too, who's a good friend of mine, and we all had a blast. The team Moxie and I, we were in the hot tub for like two and a half hours after the retreat, laughing and talking. And then I look up and my daughter, who's 13, comes. I just hear her shriek. She's so excited, and I see her beautiful self just run across the lawn towards the pool with the wildest grin on her face and so much joy in her body. She's just like running and shrieking, like mama. And I'm sure it was a combination of sure wanting to see me because she hadn't seen me in like four days, and we're very close. But also, she was real stoked on the house. Let me tell you what. There's a giant piano there that she got to play. It was so fun. So she's so happy and she runs across. The kids swim, and the whole plan for that night was to watch dirty dancing with my daughter. The boys were gonna go out to watch something else. And then I had asked Team Moxie's partners to dress up, you know, like walk in as Patrick Swayze. I kind of dared them. They kind of did, kind of not. Um, and so the plan was to watch dirty dancing for the first time with my daughter. And so we I had bought watermelons because baby carries a watermelon in that movie. We were like practicing doing the lifts in the pool. My husband was walking along the tile barrier between the hot tub and the pool, like baby does on the log. Like it was funny, it was really delightful. We were really into it. So the whole plan, we had talked about this for the whole week watching Dirty Dancing. We're all cracking up and having fun with it. So my husband grills us up these this beautiful dinner. We all eat dinner together, we talk story. It was delightful. And then we had planned on watching the movie, and all of a sudden, in this giant mansion, the lights start flickering. We all look around us, like, what is happening? And the lights go out, it goes dark. Totally dark in this giant mansion, and we're like, what's happening? I get my phone out, I'm texting Airbnb, we're looking outside to see if the neighbors have their lights on, we're finding the breaker boxes beneath paintings and closets, you know. We're trying to, we're flipping the breakers, nothing's happening. We find out that it's a planned outage that we didn't know about. Thank everything that it happened on this night and not during the retreat, y'all. Can you imagine what a bummer that would be? We were in the middle of all kinds of celebration and dancing and and goodness, so I'm had a like private chef meals. I'm really glad that it didn't happen then. So on this night, it happens. And so what we decide is that we light the candles because there were candles everywhere from the retreat, and we decide to do something that I always do with my family when we go to big vacation rentals and mammoth when we ski and Taus, we always play this game with other families that we go to, which is called hide and go seek in the dark. So all the kids, all the adults, somebody is it, and we decide on a base. And the person who is it guards the base, and the rest of us all run and hide. And then while the person counts and we're hiding, when they get up and they're done counting and they get up and they start looking, they go around looking for people, and the other people can run and get back to the base. And if they do before the person tags them, they're not it. And it is so much fun. I am saying it on the podcast because every time we play it, we have so much fun. I would play it with the Moxie Retreat ladies, but it's too much of a liability. Can't do it. Someone's gonna run into a countertop or something. But with my family, it is a riot. We shrieked with laughter. It's so fun for every age, and it was just the best way to end the retreat. We stayed up way too late playing hide and go seek in the dark, and then we all went to bed and woke up in this beautiful mansion to kind of close out. It was just amazing, and the echoes of this experience, I'm sure, will ripple out across many podcasts and all the stories that I have to tell and examples. But for today, I want to talk about a five-way mirror. I am not talking about a literal mirror, except for I will talk about a literal mirror in number five. But I just want to talk about the ways that we can use the mirror of the world, the mirror of the people around us, and the mirror of our own mind to amplify and elevate our own lives. I saw this this weekend and I see it in my clients all the time. And I want to talk today about why this is the most powerful thing. If you focus on these five ways of using mirroring, you will absolutely elevate your life. Okay. So let's get into the five-way mirror. Way number one for the mirror. I experienced this this weekend at the retreat, but you can do this in many different ways. I'm gonna start by talking about the mirror of our normal life. In our normal everyday life, we are looking at a mirror of the choices we have made up until this point. In the people that are around us, in the environments that we're in, in the habits that we've practiced with our health, with our mental well-being, with meditation, with exercise, with thought management, with how we talk to other people, the relationships we built, how we communicate, with our career, with everything. We're looking at a mirror of all the choices that we've made up until now. All the ways of being that we've been engaged in until now. And so when we're inside our own lives, interacting with the evidence of all of the choices that we've made up until now, it's a mirror of the past. The present is mirroring back the situations, circumstances, and choices of the past. And we can, number one, practice incredible gratitude for all of the elements of the existing world that we're in as we create possibility for the world that we're stepping into next, for the realities we're creating next. And it can be tricky for people sometimes to allow their mind to expand into a realm of possibility when there's still it sitting in the reality that's before that possibility exists. One technique that I talk about is called believe in the after. And there's an episode early on that I released about that, where sometimes we have to believe in what our lives and the world are going to be like after our idea is out and is we've created it, it's made into a real thing. So much, we have to create so much belief in that, that that belief in that after, in the world that is coming and the possibility we're creating will override the evidence that we see all around us because our idea isn't in the world yet, right? If we focus too much on gathering evidence that it's possible for us to make a change, to make an idea into a real thing, to change our habits, to change ourselves. If we look for evidence that it's going to be possible, sometimes that evidence is really tricky to find because the world had hasn't changed yet. Our idea is only in our head. So we have to interact with the vision of our idea being real that's in our head. And we have to believe in that more. We have to interact with the future, be oriented more towards that future vision, than we're believing in the present or the past as being indicative of what's possible for the future. So I've talked about this many, many times. We have to be more loyal to our future than our past because something that our human brains do all the time is we look to our past to define what is possible for us. And that is never a good idea. Because we're always growing and building. We're always learning and stepping up to the next step based on everything we've learned before. So if we define what's possible for our future by what we've done in the past, it's a fallacy. It's literally a logical fallacy. Our past was created with the knowledge and experience we had then, and the future is totally open. So one way we can create a mirror to help us with this is to take little sojourns, little retreats, little times that we step away from the mirror of our own reality and we go into a different space that can mirror back new possibilities. The retreat was that for many people, we stepped into this little snow globe of a space with all of us stepping away from our current relationships and careers and houses and everything into a place of total possibility where we our brains are more open to envisioning what we really want. They're not so confined by the constraints of what we already have and who we already are. And when you step into a space that is full of possibility and people that are really open to reflecting back what you most want and where you're going and who you want to be, that is the first way to use a mirror to expand your life. Practice gratitude for everything that you have right now, and then step away into spaces that allow you to drop all of the constraints of your current reality and imagine what is your vision for the future. Now that can be a retreat space, like I'm talking about. It has completely changed my life to go to retreats twice a year. Absolutely changed everything. I would not have any of the career and intellectual property and all the things that I've built if I didn't do that twice a year. That's why I'm so passionate about it. And if retreats aren't your thing, do that in a different way. Retreat away to a hotel room for a night. Go to a friend's house when they're out of town and sit the house. Go to a space that isn't a part of the city or a place, another city where you want to move, where you want to go. Get into that space and imagine the possibility that matches what you want to create. So use the mirror of something different. The snow globe of possibility by stepping out of your current reality and letting that new possibility, that new space, mirror back that new possibility. All right. The second way is that we can use a mirror. Our brain right now is seeing our current reality and is going to perpetuate that reality, those ways of being, those circumstances, if left to its own devices. We have to allow our mind and our imagination to look into the mirror of that future vision that I've talked about. We have to help it, help it step into that vision, so that then it starts to recognize possibilities that match that vision. Starts to our subconscious helps to drive us toward that vision of the reality we're creating, the habits we want to change, the relationship changes we want to make, whatever it is. So that second way of using a mirror is to do visceral imagining, do visualization with the five senses. I do it every single morning and I teach it in the moxie morning, a five-step process that I teach. So the second mirror is to mirror to your mind the vision of what you're creating, the possibility you're creating, and do it in a way where you are in a very relaxed place and you're letting your brain experience a full day in the life that you're creating. Who do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you touch? What do you feel? What are the emotions that match that reality that you're walking through? Watch yourself being presented with challenges and overcome those obstacles in the way that you most want to. And as you move through that day, feel the emotions that match, ending with gratitude and love. That mirror for your brain will help you to create the reality and amplify your rapid movement towards it in ways that you can see and in ways that just feel like magic. So we've got two ways so far. One is to use the mirror of new and different spaces to expand your brain's loyalty to the future over the past, to expand your brain's ability to think in terms of possibility instead of the constraint of your current reality. The second is to use the mirror of your subconscious through visceral imagining and visualization using the five senses to help your brain, your subconscious brain, carry around that mirror of the future that you're creating. Number three, and this one is for my women, be in spaces of women. And this is for everyone. I'm gonna speak specifically to women about spaces of women. Let me first say number three is for everyone. Put yourself in spaces in communities of people that make you feel amazing. Our communities, our relationships mirror something back to us. They're gonna mirror back a part of ourselves. And that isn't a lot of times, some some of it has to do with us. Some of it, a lot of it has to do with the other people and the other person. So go into places where the mirror that other people hold up shows back the best of you, not the worst of you. Where people are mirroring back your possibility, not your limitations. Because we create reality with our words, and other people create reality for us with their words. We have all the choice about that, and it's a lot easier to do everything we want to do in the world and feel incredible when we are around people that lift us up. So do not put yourself in communities and relationships that mirror back the worst of you. I always call it a fun house mirror when I'm in types of environments like that because I look all wobbly in my own mind and I get out of there right away. I do not like how I feel, so I leave. I'm not down with a fun house mirror. We talked at the retreat how, like, there's the fun house mirror, there's like the skinny mirror in dressing rooms, and at the retreat there was the moxy mirror. And it's all these women who are reflecting back the best of each other. And it feels so good. So that's what we call it, the moxymir. But find your mirror in your people. That's the third way to use mirroring to elevate your life. Find the people in the communities that make you feel amazing and inspired and full of possibility. A fourth way to use a mirror to elevate your life is in how you mirror other people back. Mirror back the strengths and beauty in them. Don't be wanting to impress anyone, but be easy. Impressed when a when a friend walks by you, compliment what they're wearing or their energy or how they stood up for themselves or their vibe, whatever. Just give them a specific immediate compliment. And specifically for women, there is a shadow that lives among women where there is a I I was shocked by it when I was younger because I only grew up around boys and boy cousins, and that was way problematic in its own way. Women are my favorite. And I love men too. I love everybody, but it is my favorite to be in groups of very elevated, strong, amazing women. But I have to say that there is a shadow that lives among women, and there's this sense of competition that comes. There's a shadow that says if another woman is capable and strong and intelligent, someone else is killing it, is successful, if someone else is chosen for something, if someone else is beautiful, is all the things were socialized that we're supposed to be. There's a shadow among women that says there's less for me if she has it. And of course, this shadow exists among all people, but I want to speak to women right now because the world needs our creativity and our joy. The world needs us strong and nurturing. The world needs women in their moxie. And we can help each other every day. Help each other lean into our moxie and wiggle in there and feel more and more comfortable living out of our moxie. So when you see a woman around you that is fierce and strong and joyful, that has some sparkle in there in her eye, or is killing it, or just gained something amazing, is successful, is beautiful, is whatever you like, whatever you value, notice that little part of you that might think there's less for you, or she's something to compete with and love that little part of you, and instead turn it around and say, It's my job to have her back so hard, to tell her how happy I am for her, to feel that happiness for her and to know that that's a little part of me. If she wins, I win. And I'm gonna use all of those women instead of think of them as something to compete with, I'm gonna let them expand what's possible for me. Every woman around me can be an expander for me. I don't like the idea of like myself of having one person that's your mentor and your role model. I mean, I love mentors and role models, but having like an idea of one person who you want to be like, I don't like that. I like a pantheon. I have this pantheon of like eight women in my head, and I take a little bit from each one of them. One of them expands my idea for uh what how powerful I can be. There's like a lion inside me, and she she helps me connect to that. Fierce, unstoppable, strong, capable. There's another one that's so graceful as she moves through the world. She takes such good care of herself. She moves like poetry. She's so present. There's another one that just is an amazing, powerful, humble, grateful, strong presence that I pull from all the time. There's this pantheon, there's my mom in all the wonder that she is. And I have this set of women in my head, and each one of them expands what's possible for who I can be, and they inspire me when I most need them. They're always right behind me, like backup dancers. And I'm there as one of their backup dancers, right? Always. So this is the fourth way that we can use a mirror is to mirror back at other women how amazing they are, and to see ourselves in the mirror of their success. Never does their success belittle us. Never is it there to compete with. If I win, you win. If you win, I win. The more women are creating ideas that make the world better, the better off we will all be. And that is a choice we can all add to. All right. I want to say a couple things about this community of people that lift you up and the women being elevated by one another. In the Moxie mastermind, the women in there have communicated back. One of them got up on a stage in this really like nerve-wracking environment with a whole bunch of people there, really spotlighted in a very, very, very high-stakes environment. She was feeling nervous before she presented the startup that she's working on to these investors and all these people. She was like almost sick to her stomach before. She was so nervous. She used all the tools we talked about, all the coaching we talked about. She got up on that stage, she nailed it. And when she walked off the stage, she said, My Moxie crew was the first. You were the first ones I thought of. As I was literally stepping off that stage, I thought of my Moxie mastermind ladies. And I was, you were like there with me. Right? So when we're in these moments that are scary, when we put ourselves in groups of women that really have our back in groups of people that mirror back our best selves. Women, men, or any other gender identity, right? Like whoever you are, put yourself in groups that mirror back your best. You can carry us with you. Another person in the Moxie Mastermind just said, like, you know, she has gone through all of this stuff as a co-founder of a startup and has just like been through all these ups and downs. And she was talking to us and said, I never would have done any of it without you. I couldn't have handled it. I wouldn't have known what to do. So in these communities of people that have your back, you can lean on them for counsel, lean on them for strength. These mirrors can literally change your life. And then the last thing, number five, the literal mirror. Hey, it's true. I used to be super anti-like look in the mirror and look in my own eyes. And I gotta say, I don't do it every day. But there's a lot of data and research behind this. And here's what I love. There's a couple ways to use the mirror of yourself to generate more and more love for yourself. One way is to get a picture of yourself as a little kid. I have this picture of myself. I wish I could make this face for you right now as I'm talking about it. I have this picture of myself as like a six-year-old girl with freckles all over my face and these bangs like across my forehead, this round face. It wasn't a bowl cut, but it wasn't not a bowl cut, you know? It was given bowl cut, even if it wasn't a literal one. And I'm holding these flowers from this ranch that we were visiting against my chest, and I have like a flirty, happy, like, look, I'm a flower too expression on my face. And I just over the past few years have fallen head over heels in love with that girl. I've done a lot of work on myself over the years, and some of the last work that I did and have done is like really falling in love with the inner child of me. And now I have her back so hard. And I love her. So every time I picture that little freckly face, I'm like, I love you. I like love her like I love my own kids. And that gives me so much strength and resilience, so much power, so much grace, so much flexibility, so much love because I keep myself safe. I protect myself, I empower myself. It makes me impervious to other people's words and vibes because I got me. So do that. Find a picture of yourself as a little one. Fall in love with that little creature, have their back so hard. And then if you want to look in the mirror and see your face now. See if you can look in your eyes and say, I see you in there. Like even just in your mind, I see you in there. That animating presence, that sparkle, that divinity, that wild mystery, that possibility that lives in your eyes. Look at your face and your body and just feel so grateful for what it is, for who you are in this one precious, precious life. That's the five-way mirror, my loves. Use it, elevate your life. That's what I've got for you this week. If you want to get into the Moxie Mastermind, get in. People are saving their spots right now, and we have an amazing bonus right now. If you sign up by within this week, there's this bonus that is a two-hour event with myself and one of my favorite people on the planet who is a stylist and a branding specialist. And we will come in and do a two-hour makeover of anything related to you finding your Moxie. So that can be your wardrobe, that can be your daily habits, that can be your eating habits in your fridge. It can be your self-care and your facial routine. It can be the way that you talk to yourself, the way you think about your future. Together, she and I are doing a collaborative two-hour bonus for anybody that signs up for the Moxie retreat right now. And the reason we're incentivizing this is because we want to rent our next house. We want to know how many people are coming to the next retreat six months from now. So we can put down a deposit on the best, most baller house that you have ever seen. Depending on, we have a few different options depending on how many people are coming. So reach out to me if you want to put down your deposit today. Get in the Moxie Mastermind. Get into this group of people that are the most incredible mirror of women that you could even imagine. All right, my loves. That's what I've got for you this week. And I will see you next week. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real. One idea at a time.