1 - Why You Don’t See Yourself Clearly

Toye Oyelese

Hello there, and welcome to Navigational Mind. I’m Dr. Toye Oyelese, coming to you from not-so-sunny Kelowna today—seriously, it’s one of those days that makes you wonder if British Columbia is just trying to keep you on your toes. Now, let’s start right off with a gentle poke: when was the last time you sat back and thought, “Oh, I know myself completely”? I think we all do it, don’t we? We assume—deep down—that we’re these reliable narrators of our own lives, but if you look a bit closer… well, the seams start to show.

Toye Oyelese

I’ve worked as a doctor for, what, over four decades now? From Lagos to Kelowna, and one very snowy little town in Alberta that—I’m not kidding—the first time I got there, I thought I’d landed on the moon. In all those years I kept noticing something funny. Textbooks told me one thing about patients, but when I watched them move about in their own world it was different. It was their actions, not their words or their self-descriptions, that really revealed what was going on. We believe our stories about ourselves—oh, I’m logical, I’m patient, I always eat healthy! But then you watch someone, or yourself, and there’s always that moment—like, “Wait, I just ate half the box of doughnuts and only realized at doughnut number five.” That’s the human mind for you—fragments of intuition, bits of old memories, feelings that shift like clouds. We piece together these fragments and call it a full picture, but most of the time, we’re just working with what’s drifting by in the moment.

Toye Oyelese

There’s this old idea, I think from one philosopher or another, that understanding actually follows action—not the other way around. And that always stuck with me. I’ve learned more about myself from my missteps than from any grand plan. So if you feel like you’re kind of groping along in the dark sometimes, guessing your own motives—well, congratulations, you’re doing just fine. That’s not chaos—that’s what I call normal, sometimes even intelligent.

Toye Oyelese

Now, I want to try out an image with you—one I use with my patients sometimes. People like to say the mind is a mirror, or maybe a camera, cleanly recording what’s there. But if there’s one thing life—especially medical practice—taught me, it’s that, ah, the mind is a terrible camera! It’s more like, well… okay, imagine you’re driving on one of those long stretches of northern highway at night. The road bends, the forest sort of leans in, and all you get to see is what’s caught in your headlights. Everything beyond that? Complete mystery.

Toye Oyelese

Let’s be honest: most of us walk around feeling like we missed the orientation session for life. We believe that somewhere, somehow, a Map of Certainty exists, and if we were just smarter, more organized, or more enlightened, we’d finally find it. This map would show us the perfect career path, the right partner, the solution to our internal conflicts, and the exact destination we should aim for. But the truth is far simpler, and much kinder: No such map exists, and it was never supposed to.

Toye Oyelese

What you feel—the doubt, the conflicting desires, the moments of utter uncertainty—is not a sign of personal failure. It is simply the human condition. You were never meant to see the whole path; you were meant to navigate it.

Toye Oyelese

Which leads right into the next question—the one so many of us quietly ask: “Why do I feel lost?” We spend so much time treating our mind like a calculator, desperately trying to punch in all the variables and get a final, guaranteed answer for the future. If I choose A, then B will happen. If I feel X, I should do Y. This causes deep exhaustion and overwhelm.But your mind is not a calculator. It is a compass.

Toye Oyelese

The challenge is when we demand the compass to act like a calculator. We stop moving, stand still, and wait for a detailed itinerary to appear, all while the compass is quietly saying, Just start walking that way.

Toye Oyelese

This is the central paradox of navigation: Clarity does not appear while you are standing still. It only emerges after you move.Think of it like driving on a dark, foggy night. You can’t see the turn one mile ahead. If you pull over and wait for the fog to lift, you'll be there all night. Your only choice is to put the car in drive and proceed slowly. As you move, your headlights illuminate the next ten feet of road, and then the next, and the next. Movement reveals truth; stillness preserves confusion

Toye Oyelese

If movement is the answer, what about fear? It's the most common excuse for staying still. We wait to feel unafraid before taking the leap. But in a Navigational Mind, fear is a feature, not a fault.Fear is simply the mind’s way of saying: "Warning: The road ahead is not yet visible". Those who learn to move with fear discover that clarity—and often confidence—lives on the other side of motion. Fear is not the enemy of direction; it is simply the shadow cast by the possibility you are leaning toward.

Toye Oyelese

Next episode, we’re meeting those inner residents properly—some cheerful, some tricky. If you enjoyed this, take a moment to ask yourself: where are you navigating without a map? I hope you’ll join me for more exploring, one headlight beam at a time. Thanks for listening.