A Dose of Soul Check A Day.

Holla!

Guys, soooo, many of us as adults may have experienced a child using the defence mechanism we call lies.
When they do something and they are queried, most times, for kids who are brought up in fear, they first shield themselves with a lie, they deny the act or shift blames...
Sometimes we punish these children if they are in our care for telling lies, as we would call it that anyway and some other times we might just scold them and correct them mildly.
Let's talk about lies as defence mechanism in adults...

Earlier I stated that it is mostly kids who are brought up in fear of punishment meted beyond their pain threshold who would tell a lie, it is a defense mechanism, sometimes, they save themselves from that punishment and if this continues, if they keep the habit up...when they grow up, lies become a normal thing.
Having established this background I will love for us to look at lies not told to others but lies told to one's self.
Say for instance, you do something bad and a part of you tells you that act is bad, either morally, or socially, but you try to cook up excuses in your head to make it not so bad or bad at all.
Sometimes we succeed in doing this, in convincing ourselves that a wrong doing is not so wrong after all and so we owe no one an apology...and therefore we don't give any.
Most people don't know this is another form of defense mechanism.
It is your mind trying to save itself from the burden of guilt....
Well, it succeeds most times, it succeeds in making you feel temporarily better, just the way a smoker or an alcoholic would feel when he tries to douse facts with highness, but like that smoker or alcoholic, in the long run, those guilts come rushing right back into our minds and this time with the weight of a pack of demons so we are unable to conquer it with more lies.

So here's what I propose, it is something I do myself... I call it SOUL CHECKS.
Whether I have offended anyone or not, I make up scenarios that are offensive and run them through my mind, suffice mine to be my soul, I check for what is wrong in those scenarios and call them wrong, call them by their names.
Note that I don't use societal yardsticks to do this... My Soul has its ways to pick through, yours does too.
I did this a dozen times a day when I first started and it helped me to not live in denial of wrong, so when I wronged anyone I duly apologised and took it off my soul and conscience...

These days, long run, it has become easy for me to call "sin" by its name with so much ease and duly apologise.

You can't imagine how much peace this gives me.

So instead of piling guilt while thinking you are excusing or being the strong unapologetic person, I propose you take a dose of Soul Check a day till you become accustomed to giving an apology with ease.

Trust me, guilt hurts more when piled and this doesn't hurt at all.