Slapped Into Self-Awareness
By Lisa Solis DeLong, RN
Spiritual wisdom, comes in surprising ways. You’ve heard the phrase, “Slapped silly” or “Slapped to my senses.” I can relate. I experienced a slap like no other when, Jacob, my eighteen-month-old son unexpectedly provided the whack which woke me up to my self-awareness.
Baby Jacob was toddling around the floor as I sat staring at a portrait of his teenage brother, Justin, who had passed away several months prior. Deep in fresh grief, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Justin’s photo because I didn’t want to forget what he looked like. Lost in the throes of sorrow, I had this thought, ‘I’m not going to love this baby. I’ll take care of him, I’ll make it look good on the outside, but I’m never going to love this big again.’ In that moment, little Jacob crawled onto my lap and slapped me across the face as hard as he could! Stunned, I sat motionless as he grabbed my cheeks and made me look into his eyes. He was too young to talk but I knew in that moment he was saying, “I’m here mommy! Love me!”
This was the first time that I became acutely aware of my thoughts and realized I had a choice. I could choose fear and close my heart or I could choose love and love all-out. This is what self-awareness looks like. It is the ability to observe your thoughts as though you are looking from the outside in. Nothing cracks us open to this ability more than grief and loss. This can begin with minor losses like not getting the job you want or the boyfriend or girlfriend you’d hoped for or a chosen parking spot. Anytime we don’t get what we want our mind, body and spirit go into action to guide us to higher self-awareness opportunities.
In his book, The Calling, in the chapter titled Leadership Is An Inside Job, Quint Studer writes, “If a person doesn’t have self-awareness, it’s over…once aware, we are more coachable. This means being willing to listen and implement the lessons.” While his book is about leading others, this statement strikes me, pun intended, as very relevant. We must learn to lead ourselves before we can lead others. This is true whether you are a stay at home parent or the CEO of a major corporation.
Being self-aware allows us to respond to thoughts we are receiving with more wisdom and clarity. In her book, The Words We Choose: Your Guide to How and Why Words Matter, author Terre Short shares how quickly self-awareness can provide a moment of clarity, “How do we reconcile the impact of our words and our intent, and confirm that they align with our values? All of this typically occurs in the nano- second between a thought and the expression of that thought — verbally, texted or written.”
We attend to our spirit through self-awareness. I am so grateful to have learned this lesson when I did because six years later, Jacob was diagnosed with the same kind of leukemia that had ended his brother’s life. Thankfully, he is now a healthy adult. Can you imagine how much more complicated my grief would have been had I withheld my love for him?
The words we tell ourselves are food for our spirit. Being aware of the words funneling into our minds restores our power to navigate our lives with more joy. It takes practice, like all spiritual practices, it’s a muscle. The more you use it the stronger you become and the easier it becomes to change those unexpected wallops into transformational wisdom.
