TRUST YOURSELF

 Many times we find it difficult to trust; to trust others and to trust ourselves. There are many times when I have said that I trust myself but however my actions and behaviors showed otherwise. What is trust? It is a "firm" belief in the reliability, truth or ability of someone or something. I love the word "firm" in the definition because it means without it, that is not trust; it is something else. Do you firmly believe in the reliability of yourself?

Trusting oneself is a process that I believe is rooted in intuition. What then is intuition? It is the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning. This becomes difficult for a person like me because I almost always look for tangible and conscious reasoning.  When I do not find it, doubts starts creeping in thereby loosing trust in my abilities. Discernment and vivid dreams are some of the signs of intuition. What is it that you dream of? Do you take it seriously? I used to not care about my dreams, until I realized that dreams have meaning and they always come to life in the physical world, thus if one wants to have intuition its time to pay attention to dreams. I rarely remember most of my dreams but the ones I do, trust me they also come to life one way or another. Discernment- I love this word because it is soo full of meaning, power and weight. I can define it as the ability to recognize small details accurately, to tell the difference between similar situations. Discernment comes with laser focus or what I like to call tunnel vision, paying full attention on your life. If you are easily distracted and not paying enough attention, how the will you be able to see the small details in a situation. Thus one needs to focus on their life despite the noise around them because this is a requirement in the process of trusting ourselves.

Patience is also a requirement in this process of trusting ourselves. Patience is one of the cornerstone of this trust. Life is made up of different seasons and experiences: and in all this, patience is virtue. One should have the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems or suffering without being anxious. This is not an easy thing to do but its something everyone needs to learn, to be flexible in every situation and know that everything shall come to pass and trust that you can handle everything. I love this song which is titled, "wait on the Lord" by Maverick City Music because it teaches me everyday that in order to have patience sometimes I need to wait and pause: and be able to really pay attention to the situation and then regain momentum when I have really decided which way I want to go. Impatience sometimes can lead us to move fast but in the direction that is opposite to where we want to go thereby making us lose trust in ourselves. 

When it comes to trusting myself, I have learnt that inner peace is of importance. I used to be very anxious about my life but I do not know when I started experiencing this inner peace. Recently I have a seen a change in my life , even when I know for certain that something is about to erupt in my life, I just feel a sense of calmness despite the burdens on the horizon. Inner peace is really hard to explain in words because in every situation I know even if everything burns down to the ground, I am still going to be okay and I have the capacity to start again. I firmly believe that I will be able to deal with whatever is thrown my way. This to me is trusting in myself. Then my questioning is what is your definition of trusting in yourself, because I have wrote about my experience. Do you trust yourself? Do you like yourself when no one is around? Do you have the intuition to trust your decisions?

What then is the importance of trusting oneself? Trusting myself have helped me in building confidence in myself. I know for sure that I have the capacity to make the right decisions when it comes to my life. It has also given me the platform to speak my truth thereby giving me a sense of empowerment. I have also been able to allow other people to trust me as well as learn to trust others. So all in all trusting myself have been beneficial. 

LOVE, LUST, LIFE

 Chapter 2

Love, Yoh whenever I think of it my head starts spinning, when I hear someone mention it, I get goosebumps from head to toe. These goosebumps can either be the good kind or mostly the bad kind followed by shivers and sadness. 

Most of my life I have loved one man in my life. I have loved this man with everything I had. Well, I don't have much, actually I have nothing to my name but still I have loved him to the best of my ability. Given another chance, would I love him again, hell NO, but knowing my stupid heart I would do it again.

When I first met this man, I didn't even notice him, I mean my life was set on other things other than men. A year went by and before I knew it three whole years had passed me by without even taking a second glance at him. Up to today I really do not know how I started noticing him. I think it all started with a simple greeting, then it moved to talking about the weather and all of a sudden a lingering conversation here and there. I started to see and feel excited for his greetings. My eyes would wonder around in places looking for his face or even his back.  What was really exciting about this, is that I knew that he was also noticing me, because whenever our eyes collided they had this deep dark shade calling to me, and all I wanted was to sink in them.

When I started noticing him, all I could see in my mind was red. I knew entertaining him was not an option because I am no fire fighter. Unconsciously I knew that he was the kind of danger I shouldn't play around because he would burn me to ashes and blow me into the ocean until there is no evidence that I once existed. I was right to think this, but knowing me ; I feed, breath, live and thrive in bad decisions. Plus mama, never raised a coward who runs away from a challenge especially if it comes wrapped in a tall, dark, muscular and chiseled fine man. 

This man awakened feelings in me, that I never thought I had. My biggest weakness in life is that, I move at the speed of lightning. Before he even opened his mouth to ask me out, I was already planning on which venue and which cake to buy for our wedding. If only I knew then, I should have looked down when he greeted me, I shouldn't have noticed him when he was passing by and I shouldn't have looked and searched for him in a crowded room.

LIMBO

This is the best word to describe my life at the moment. For those who do not know, Limbo means a situation where one seems to be caught between two stages and its unclear what will happen next. Have you ever been in Limbo?

The question I usually ask myself is am I going to make it to the other side. Well, I cannot go back and neither can I move forward. This state makes me helpless and useless and I feel like I am not in control of my life and that's the only thing I need right now; control.You might be wondering why I said my life is  in Limbo, let me break it down for you.

As a therapist I always talk about frames of reference, thus in order to assess and treat a patient you need an understanding or a framework that guides you. Borrowing  from one of the frames of reference, I believe a person is made up of  four components. Namely mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Among the four components, I define spirituality as the core of a person, thus if there is a problem in the spirit then it manifests in the physical (body), emotional (social) and cognitive  (mental). There is an inter-dependence relationship among the components thus a shift in one component leads to a shift in the other components.

My Limbo started in the spirit about 8 years ago. At first, I told myself that it is growing up, maybe the world is changing and Oh its just a phase it will pass. I did not realize that as the years passed by, I was loosing a piece of myself. Of course when it started it was not showing on the other components, so I was okay with it because it was change in the unseen part so it was all good. As I said before the components are interdependent, so with time it started to show on the outside and being human I did everything I could to cover it up but like pregnancy no-matter how much you try to hide it will show with time.

I tried to move away from this Limbo, but it was like trying to treat cancer with Paracetamol. I did not realize how big the problem was because no-matter how much Panado pills you take if you have cancer it will be there at the end of the day. To treat cancer you would need Chemotherapy and probably Radiotherapy as well as palliative care.

The issue was I did not realize or accept that I had a problem spiritually. Kubler-Ross talks about the stages of grief, which are like to call stages of dying, she says that you start by denial and end with acceptance. She even says that some people can be in denial about a situation for the rest of their lives and never move towards acceptance. For my case I have been in denial for a very long time about my situation. I have been angry about it, bargained to God to help me, have been depressed but I am glad that I have accepted it and that means I can get the help that I need.

D'Apollonio in his book titled, "law of attraction" , talks about how our thoughts affect our realities. This has been one of the best things I have learnt this year and I have been trying to think positively thus changing my outcome. of course thinking is just the tip of the iceberg. The real question is am I willing to work so that I can move from this Limbo, or am I going to turn a blind eye to the situation as I have been doing for years. As we all know, habits are not easy to break because you will be now used to a certain way of life. I am glad that I have realized that there is a problem and I believe I am moving towards the exit door of Limbo.

THE END.

Please leave comments on my writing skills and anything in particular. Thank you for reading.