The “meta-mirror”, a tool from the kitbag of neuro-linguistic programming, is a powerful way to explore a difficult relationship in the privacy of a quiet space. The emphasis is on one’s own learning. After all, as hard as it is, we can’t do other’s learning for them.

I have already been reflecting on a conversation with a colleague at a time when he was feeling anger in response to something I had done. I know that there’s something that I’m needing still before I either go back to my colleague or choose to walk away.

The first step in the meta-mirror is to step firmly into one’s own shoes and to express whatever comes up in relation to another person. I am surprised when the first thing that comes up is a sense of anger that my colleague spoke to me in the way he did, knowing that he has the tools to own his anger and even to transform it. I thought I had left this anger behind.

I am also surprised to learn something else – that just a fraction below the surface I am “beating myself up” about my own contribution to this conversation. It seems I would like to have handled this conversation with a level of grace I didn’t manage to call on at the time. There’s something else, too – I realise I’m not quite ready openly to say “I won’t speak with you as long as you talk to me in this way. Come back when you’re ready to take responsibility for your anger”. Perhaps, in the language of my colleagues these are my own “needs behind the need” – the things I’m hiding from by holding on to my anger.

With this recognition, I can feel my anger slipping away and a sense of compassion – for myself, for my colleague – emerging. I wonder if he, too, has been beating himself up since we spoke.

With this renewed sense of compassion I complete the meta-mirror process, stepping into my colleague’s shoes before stepping back to observe myself from a distance (“How does this you here respond to that you there?”). It seems I have already found the compassion I was missing – for myself, for my colleague.

It’s not that I have changed my mind about the way my colleague spoke to me. I haven’t. Still, I am ready to speak to him to see if he, too, wants to connect so that we can reach a place of mutual understanding.

I am not wedded to any particular outcome – just ready to initiate the conversation.