Love Your Look Self-Help Advice

"You look marvelous!"

With just three words, Bev Bender has turned her enemy, the mirror, into her friend. Over her mirror she has placed a graphic of a man holding a sign with that supportive phrase.

"I would always look in the mirror and see this overweight middle-aged woman and go, `Yuk,' " says the San Francisco humorist and public-speaking instructor. "Now I just laugh."

Many of us have a relationship with our mirrors like the one Bender used to have. When we stand before the mirror, more than our vanity is at stake. We're looking for more than spinach between our teeth or uncombed hair. We search the reflection to find a reason for other people to love and respect us, says cognitive-behavioral therapist Kathleen Burton.

It's not surprising, then, that most of us are more than a little neurotic about mirrors.

Anyone who has unknowingly caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and then shuddered at the realization that the reflection was his own knows that mirrors can be downright cruel. There are mirrors that make you look taller, shorter, fatter and, God love them, thinner. But even when the mirror seems accurate, our own insecurities step in and do the distorting for us.

Want to feel better about the man or woman in the mirror? It's time you stopped looking for trouble and got real about your reflection.

Dress for success.
If you wouldn't go to a party without showering and putting on a favorite outfit, why are you less particular about how you present yourself to the mirror. Don't be a tougher audience than your real audience. Worry about the finished product, not the preliminary stages.

Don't believe everything you see.
Mirrors are the ultimate spin-doctors, and lighting is the perfect co-conspirator.

A tilted ground-based mirror gives you a double chin, but a high-flung mirror removes it. A close mirror makes you look older than one farther away. But we're not thinking about any of this when we look in the mirror.

We're too busy scrutinizing our wrinkles or squeezing our love handles to see what the mirror doesn't reflect: our personality, the very thing that makes us charming, beautiful, alluring, distinguished, fun.