I have decided to stop using a mirror – and I know it will change my life | Polly Hudson

Rats in labs eventually work out which behaviour stops the electric shocks, but I had to be taught by a podcast. Comedian Hannah Berner was a recent guest on Armchair Expert, and revealed she hardly ever looks in the mirror.

“It has information you don’t need about you,” she explained.

Host Dax Shepard immediately leapt on board with the revelatory theory: “I’d say over the course of my life, the amount of times I looked in the mirror and was pumped is certainly under 1%. I’ve never looked and been like: ‘Let’s do this, man!’”

So simple, so true. And yet opting out has never occurred to me. Looking in the mirror – checking, monitoring, surveilling – is just what you do, right?

Not Berner. Instead, she consults the mirror within.

“I am delusional,” she admitted. “I think I know what I look like and it’s the best photo I’ve ever taken. And when you walk into a room like that, even if you have stuff in your teeth, it helps.”

This is a potentially life-changing mindset. Mirrors are foe, not friend, and blissful ignorance is the key to confidence.

Berner is not the first to bring this stance to the mainstream: in 2017, Claudia Winkleman supplied unimaginative people with a punchline about her eyeliner by disclosing that she never looks in the mirror. When she was growing up, her mum banned them from the house – “She wanted to teach us that appearance is a waste of time, it’s not in the least bit important. Read books, be funny, be clever, be chatty, this is how you make an omelette …” – and now she only has one mirror, for teeth-brushing.

That’s it. I’m going cold turkey, which is, coincidentally, not a million miles away from what I resembled the last time I glanced at my reflection. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, turns out you’re the unfairest of them all.

Polly Hudson is a freelance writer