BeAware (SS1)

Nah, not beware! Although sometimes you should beware, but not every time. But for this post and some of the ones coming after it, I mean Be Aware. Be very aware! Not sure what I am talking about? Then you may need to go here and read my last (related) post to get some context, then come back to this.

In that post, I introduced you to how I was introduced to becoming more aware of my thoughts and feelings and knowing how best to deal with them. I promised to share some of my experiences in a series of posts and hopefully get you to become more self aware. By the way, SS means Self Surgery, in honour of the ‘leader’ of this post.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog (and I appreciate you!), you may have picked on that I don’t like driving, or shall we say that driving is not for the faint-hearted . . . lol. I’ll share a bit of myself here. When I moved to Manchester, I sorta developed some serious panic attacks and anxieties that led to diarrhoea when leaving home! This became worse when I started driving. I actually lost quite a bit of weight a few months in.

But it led me to dedicate a side of the wardrobe wall near my bed to a bed of post-it notes filled with Bible verses on peace, joy and the love of GOD. And my recovery journey started slowly but surely. I even received prayers almost every church service I went for!

Fast forward a few more months into driving and after Healed for Life, I became ACUTELY SELF AWARE of the crazy conversations I was having in my mind with other drivers sharing the road with me. It was a play-by-play take of how they were negatively judging my driving as not being great and the reasons I gave replied for my ‘bad’ driving. Given that I don’t really think about the driver in front of me, it was bizarre for me to be entertaining the thought that those behind me were thinking about me: a great example of the foolishness of self-consciousness.

As soon as I became aware of these insane convos, it was like scales fell off my eyes. And once I had noticed what was going on in my mind while driving, I gave myself targets of either praying in tongues or singing a song non-stop with or without a backing track. During this time and till now, I keep using my ‘pinterest’ wall of Scriptures to declare over myself.

And them conversations have greatly reduced which means I can now actually have conversations with physical people in my car, enjoy the music playing through the stereo and even bob my head and hand to them, and even notice things in the areas I regularly drive through that I hadn’t really seen all this time. It also means the auto-pilot part of driving is finally kicking in, such that I only notice I’ve made a driving decision after I’ve carried out the decision.

More importantly, it also means a more normal number of number 2’s. Haha . . .

In typical naija debate style, I hope I have been able to convince you with this first example of mine that being self-aware does positive things for your peace of mind and bowel movements! Watch out for my next post on another even more beautiful experience.

To your growth and development, . . .

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