By Renée Ambarees
Michael Jackson sang it. Most people heard it as a pop song.
But he was speaking a profound truth: if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.
I have been thinking about him a lot lately. A man of extraordinary gift and extraordinary pain. Misunderstood. Unseen behind the performance. He gave the world magic from a place of deep longing to be truly seen — and the world projected onto him what it could not face in itself.
How much of that do you recognize in your own life?
Here is the question I want to ask you — and I want you to sit with it honestly: how well can you really look at yourself in the mirror and stay there? Not glance. Not criticize and look away. Actually stay, with curiosity and kindness, and meet what is looking back at you?
Because here is what I have learned working with more than 10,000 women across the world: how long you can truly meet yourself in the mirror is exactly how much genuine presence you can offer to everyone else in your life. No more. No less.
The mirror is not about vanity. It is about truth.
Your face tells the full story of your inner relationship. The jaw holding tension is holding back words never spoken. The eyes that look away quickly are avoiding something they don’t want to see. The smile that appears on cue — practiced, polished, automatic — is the smile of a woman who has learned to perform connection instead of feel it.
And that performed connection follows you everywhere. Into your relationships. Into your work. Into every room you enter and every conversation you have. People feel it, even when they cannot name it. They sense the distance between who you are presenting and who you actually are. And that distance — however small — creates a gap in every connection you try to build.
Do you know your longings? Can you name what you truly want — not what you are supposed to want, not what looks good from the outside, but what your body has been quietly asking for, maybe for years? Do you recognize your genius? The particular way you see the world, the gift that is so natural to you that you have probably underestimated it your whole life?
What do you see when you look in the mirror — really look?
Most women I work with have stopped looking. Not because they are vain or shallow, but because the mirror became a place of judgment instead of a place of meeting. They learned early — from family, from culture, from a thousand small moments of being told they were too much or not enough — that looking at themselves too closely was dangerous. That wanting too much was selfish. That shining too brightly would cost them love.
So they looked away. And kept looking away.
Until the woman in the mirror became almost a stranger.
This is where every relationship problem begins. Not with the wrong partner. Not with poor communication skills. Not with a difficult childhood, though that plays a role. It begins with the relationship to yourself — and that relationship lives in the body, in the breath, in the face you bring into every room.
When a woman can meet herself fully — with the same kindness and patience she offers everyone else — something profound shifts. She stops shrinking in rooms. She stops performing warmth she does not feel. She stops giving from empty and then wondering why she feels invisible. She becomes magnetic.
Not because she tried harder or smiled more brightly. Because she finally stopped hiding from herself.
I call this pure magnetic beauty. It cannot be manufactured. It can only be released — the moment you decide to show up for yourself the way you have always shown up for others.
Your smile is the key. Not the social smile. Not the survival smile. The real one — the one that starts deep in the body and rises naturally, that says:
I see myself. I am here. I choose myself today.
That smile opens closed doors. In your closest relationships. In your professional life. In the way strangers respond to you on the street. Not because it is pretty. Because it carries truth. And truth, in a world full of performance, is irresistible.
Michael Jackson wanted to make the world a better place. So do you. So do I.
But it begins here. In the mirror. In the willingness to stay with what you see — and love it anyway. Not perfectly. Not all at once.
But honestly, and with growing devotion.
Because the world does not need more performance.
It needs more women who have come home to themselves.
My book, The Smile Code, launches September 2025. Begin now with my free 4 Magic Moves at reneeambarees.com — four simple practices to bring you back into your body and into genuine connection with yourself. And join me every Sunday on Back2Paradise, Your Smile Is Your Key.
The most important relationship of your life is waiting. It starts with you.
It starts in the mirror. It starts today.
Renée Ambarees is the founder of yoga4face®, international bestselling author, keynote speaker, and creator of the Smile Revolution. Across five decades of lived experience — as an elite athlete, corporate professional, and embodiment guide — she has dedicated her life to understanding the connection between body, mind, and soul. Gifted from an early age with heightened intuition and healing presence, she has worked with more than 10,000 clients worldwide, guiding women back into their bodies, their truth, and their real smile.
Her book, The Smile Code, launches September 2025.
Website: reneeambarees.com
Back2Paradise Show (every Sunday): youtube.com/@reneeisermannyoga4face
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/renée-isermann
