Wash Your Face, Not the Mirror

A reflection by Dr Shiam Chuttoo, with my WASH Model.

Tere chehre pe dhool hai, aaina kyun saaf kar rahe ho? The dust is on your face, so why are you cleaning the mirror?

Polishing the wrong glass

This line echoes a much-loved couplet: Umar bhar Ghalib yahi bhool karta raha, dhool chehre pe thi aur aaina saaf karta raha. All his life he made the same mistake: the dust was on his face, and he kept wiping the mirror. It is widely credited to Mirza Ghalib, though it does not appear in his collected poems, so its true author remains uncertain. Whoever wrote it understood people very well.

When life looks wrong, most of us reach for the cloth and start on the mirror. The boss is unfair. The family does not understand. The times are against us. We polish and polish, and the face in the glass still looks smudged, because the dust was never on the glass.

What I learned on the wards and in the classroom

Nursing and social work taught me reflective practice: after every shift, every visit, every difficult conversation, you ask what happened and what your part in it was. As a lecturer and sign-off mentor I asked my students the same question for years. The ones who grew fastest were rarely the cleverest. They were the ones brave enough to look at their own face first.

The same truth in many traditions

Kabir, the 15th-century poet-saint: Bura jo dekhan main chala, bura na milya koye; jo dil khoja aapna, mujhsa bura na koye. I went looking for the bad in others and found none. When I searched my own heart, I found none worse than me.
The Bible: why look at the speck in your brother’s eye and ignore the plank in your own? (Matthew 7:3)
Psychology: the Johari Window calls it the blind pane, the part of us others can see and we cannot. Honest feedback is the water that washes it off.

My WASH Model

© Dr Shiam Chuttoo 2026. Four steps for cleaning the face before the mirror.

W, Wait before you blame: when something goes wrong, pause before you point. Count to ten, or sleep on it.
A, Ask for honest feedback: invite one trusted person to tell you what they see. Thank them, even when it stings.
S, See your own part: ask yourself what you did, said or avoided that played a part, however small.
H, Handle what is yours: apologise, change a habit or make one repair. Then look in the mirror again.

In fairness, sometimes the mirror really is dirty. Unfair treatment, injustice and harm caused by others are real, and the WASH Model does not ask anyone to carry blame that is not theirs. It simply asks us to check our own face first, so that when we do speak up about the mirror, we speak with clean hands.

Questions to sit with

What am I blaming right now that might be partly my own dust?
Who could I ask for honest feedback this week?
When did someone else’s feedback last change me for the better?
What one thing could I wash off today?

Wash your face. Then look again.

A word of caution. This piece is for education and personal reflection. It is not medical, psychological or legal advice, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional. Please understand any technique before you use it. Anyone who uses these ideas does so by their own choice and is responsible for their own actions. If you are being treated unfairly or harmed, seek support from someone you trust or a professional. If worry or low mood stays with you, talk to your GP or another health professional.

© Dr Shiam Chuttoo 2026. The WASH Model is the original work of Dr Shiam Chuttoo. The couplet is widely attributed to Mirza Ghalib (author uncertain); the doha is by Kabir; the Johari Window is credited to Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham (1955). Credit: WASH Model, created by Dr Shiam Chuttoo. You may share or use this model only with my permission, or with clear credit to me as its author. Contact: shiamduth@outlook.com. Work record: Ref DSC-2026-WASH-01. Title: Wash Your Face, Not the Mirror. Author: Dr Shiam Chuttoo. Created 15 October 2026. All rights reserved.

How I prepare my work

I write as a life coach, lecturer, nurse and social worker, and as a Mauritian who has made his home in Britain since 1988, carrying Kreol, French, English, Bhojpuri and Hindi with me. My aim is to inspire, to transform and to get you thinking actively. I think divergently: I take an idea from one world, merge it with another, and see what new shape it takes. Every piece begins in my own notebook, with my own sayings, my own models and the lessons of my own life.

Why do I turn ideas into models? People learn in different ways and at different speeds, so I teach eclectically, drawing on many fields of knowledge. I then shape what I find into a short model with an acronym, such as SPRING, STORM, QUEST or HOME, because a few letters are easy to remember and easy to carry into daily life. Over the years my students have told me this is what stays with them. As the old saying goes, give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Each of my models is my way of teaching you to fish.

To research, check and shape each piece, I use every tool I can put my hands on: books, libraries, my training notes, Google, Microsoft Word, and AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT. I name them openly because honesty matters to me. Some people will say a piece is copied, or that a machine wrote it. Few see the hours behind it: reading, researching, checking sources, testing each idea against my own experience, and rewriting until the message is clear. The tools help me search, sort and polish. The ideas, the models, the stories and the final word are mine, every source I draw on is credited, and I take full responsibility for what I publish.

If you spot an error, please tell me and I will put it right. And if this is not for you, that is perfectly fine. I have no wish to force anyone to read it. The door stays open for anyone who wants to come in.

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