Favvy_Okwans🖤

​ You know the set of people that scare me the most? The ones who can easily withdraw affection. One moment they are warm, attentive and sweet, and the next moment they turn cold or outright mean. Then you start asking yourself if their kindness was ever real. Were they genuinely nice, or did you just imagine it? I understand being upset. I understand taking space to breathe. But a complete 360-degree switch in attitude because of a disagreement? How do people like that sleep at night? I have this friend, Ava, and whenever we had a misunderstanding, she would become so mad and so cold. It was never just a simple argument. It always turned into emotional winter. I would try to lighten the mood, crack small jokes, or ease the tension, but she would not budge. It felt like war for her, and until I apologized or tried to fix things, she would not return to her normal self. Dearest reader, sometimes the emotional distance people create says more about their inner battles than about your wor...

​ There are some habits you don’t really need deliverance from. Lol. My phone has been bad for a week now, totally gone, so I just abandoned it. Fortunately, I was given one of my boss’s phones to use for the meantime. The phone was way out of my league, but okayyyy. Now, I have this habit I’ve been trying to stop for as long as I can remember, but it has just been part of me. Whenever I’m walking, I’m always on my phone. Always. I’ve had several accidents because of this. Is it the time I fell into a gutter? Or the multiple times I’ve almost been knocked down by a vehicle? Or the countless times I’ve bumped into strangers? “Favour, stop pressing your phone on the road” is something I hear all the time. It’s almost as if whatever I’m attending to can’t wait. But here’s what I recently learned: just about anything can wait. With this new phone that isn’t mine and is way out of my league, I haven’t been pressing my phone on the road at all. A neighbour even noticed and pointed out my lat...

​ ⸻ In the words of Augustus Waters, “Pain demands to be felt.” They say time heals all wounds, but how true is that really? Do we heal with time, or do we simply forget with time? The mind never truly forgets. What it often does is push painful or threatening memories out of conscious awareness as a form of protection. The memory is not gone, it is only hidden. In psychology this is known as repression or dissociation. Time does not heal most wounds. If anything, time distracts us long enough to make us forget for a moment. That temporary forgetfulness feels like relief, a brief escape that can become addictive. I know someone who struggled with addiction for years. She lived with a condition that caused constant, overwhelming pain, and this led her to rely heavily on medications. She would often say, “For a few minutes in heaven, I am willing to spend the rest of my life in hell.” No matter how much time passed, she never grew used to the pain. She simply learned to live alongside it...

​ “It takes resources to afford choices.” There’s a kind of ease that comes with having resources; money naturally gives you options. It’s not even about being extravagant, sometimes it’s simply the gift of breathing room. The freedom to choose what you want, instead of settling for whatever is available. That’s the one thing about being a  nepo baby  that I find really amazing. Not the luxury, not the bragging rights, but the options. The ability to choose the softer path when life presents a tough one. The ability to pursue dreams without first calculating the cost. The ability to fall and still have something soft waiting to catch you. I remember a friend I grew up with, let’s call her Ava, She wasn’t necessarily rich, but her parents had enough. When she finished secondary school, she told her dad she wanted to experiment with photography before choosing a course to study. And he simply said, “Okay, take your time.”  She got a camera, enrolled in a creative workshop, ...

It is funny how association can change your entire perspective, yet it happens so subtly. Have you ever noticed how something you once strongly opposed, whether a belief, a lifestyle or a school of thought, suddenly becomes less offensive the moment you know or love someone who practices it? You find yourself trying to justify their actions or acting as if you do not see what they are doing. If it were someone with no connection to you, you might be the first to judge, yet you let it slide because association has opened you up to seeing from the person’s point of view. I have been a victim of this a few times, and one thing I realized is that when we judge or discriminate, we often do so with little or half baked knowledge. We do not consider every side. We view things from a superior angle, as if we are above the very issue we condemn. Because of this, we remain ignorant of the very thing we hate or consider evil. However, when someone close to your heart does the same thing, it tugs ...

​ Chapter two of  Personal Branding  by Kenrick Urhefe explores the foundations of personal branding. Personal branding begins from within. Before marketing strategies or online presence comes the need for deep self understanding. This inner clarity guides how you present yourself and shapes your entire professional identity. With self awareness being one of the key foundations of personal branding, the chapter gives a thorough breakdown of what it truly means. It explains the two dimensions of self awareness, which are internal self awareness and external self awareness. The early pages of the chapter focus on professional identity and what shapes it. I quote from the text: “Understanding and actively shaping your professional identity is crucial for long term career success and personal fulfilment.” Two things that stood out for me in this chapter were the concept of; Unique Value Proposition  And the importance of a brand story. Your Unique Value Proposition(UVP) answe...