A mirror can show you a tired face. It can’t show you why you kept going anyway.

A reflection reports on surfaces and nothing else. It can tell you that you look tired, and it has no access whatsoever to the double shift, the thing you were worried about all week, or the fact that you turned up to practice anyway. Judging yourself from it is like judging a season from one photograph of the scoreboard.

So keep a record the mirror cannot hold. At the end of a hard week, write down three things you did that nobody saw, especially the ones that took something out of you. On the days you feel you have nothing to show, that list is the honest account.