You only get one shot at this thing called life, and in order to live it well, you need to be giving yourself permission to live it YOUR way. Read this article to learn how YOU can give yourself permission to live the life YOU really want.
When my ex and I got divorced, I felt like my life was over. I was in deep victim mode, and it took a while for me to recover and rebuild myself and my life. I was devastated by the end of my marriage, scared of what the future held (or didn’t hold), and I was so angry and resentful toward my ex-husband.
The story I had was that I was a victim of the choices my ex-husband made and that his choices dictated what the rest of my life would look like. He was the villain who had horribly wronged me and it was his fault that my life would never be the same.
If I’m being honest with myself, I hung on to a piece of that story until recently, actually. And while we’re being honest, I still have to work at letting go of it.
Let me explain.
My ex-husband is a lawyer and he makes a lot of money. I don’t make anywhere close to that kind of money, and while I get spousal support, I still can’t afford the things he can. He’s always taking big vacations and he and his partner have a really nice house. This is all really hard for me to stand by and watch because it really and truly feels like he just plucked me out of his life and inserted someone else. Essentially, his partner is living the life I once had.
About six months ago, I realized that I was hanging to a related story. It goes like this:
I gave up my brilliant career as an aerospace engineer to be a mom. I gave up years of raises, promotions and who knew where I’d be or how much money I’d be making if I hadn’t left. We made the decision for me to stay at home with our first child together and I was a martyr of sorts for giving all of that up for the family.
Now, while there is a little bit of truth to that, the story has a pretty victim-ish feel to it, doesn’t it? Look what happened to me, he’s terrible. He ruined my life, it’s not fair… I could go on and on. Even though sometimes I feel that way, it’s not a very helpful story.
One of my coaches asked me what I received from leaving my career. I think deep down I knew that I really did gain so much, but I had just told myself the other story for so long, I had pushed that aside. But she was right. I really wouldn’t have traded having that time with my kids. It was part of my path and this experience allowed me to leave a career I didn’t love and I was able to be there to focus on raising two amazing kids.
While my decision ended up hurting me in some ways later in life, it was a decision we made together, and for a lot of good reasons. And, if I’m honest, I didn’t really love my career anyway, and it felt like a relief to be able to do something different.
After we separated, however, I found myself talking about my career as if I loved it and it was this terrible thing that I had to leave it.
This story is vulnerable for me to share, but sometimes we shift facts to make them fit our story without even realizing it. And that’s what I found myself doing when my coach suggested I look deeper at this.
So why was I hanging on to that story? (I’m getting to how this ties into permission, I promise!)
The story had a hidden benefit for me. The story was also costing me some things like not being able to get out of the place where I was stuck in blaming and victimhood. It also cost me feeling empowered to create my own life, regardless of what my ex-husband was doing, and it also cost me the feeling of freedom.
The hidden benefit? That story allowed me to be right. It made my ex-husband the villain and me the victim. And I could always be right in shifting blame onto him. I could blame him for all of the failures I had and for staying small.
By blaming him, I could avoid responsibility for those things.
Why did I keep the story though? The costs sure seem greater than the benefit, don’t they?
It’s because never really gave myself permission to let the story go.
Unconsciously, I suppose I thought I needed the story. I didn’t give myself permission to acknowledge that my ex-husband and I made the career choice together. I also didn’t give myself permission to make a mistake, and I didn’t give myself permission to fully forgive him, either.
It’s important to give yourself permission to live a life that is true to who you are. It’s harder than you realize, and when you don’t, you’re held back in so many ways. You don’t grow. You don’t get off the proverbial hamster wheel.
We’re conditioned to ask for permission
From the time we’re young, we have to ask to have a snack, ask to get up, and go to the bathroom. We have to ask to go to a friend’s house. We ask for raises, vacation time, and a whole lot more.
The point is we get in a habit of having to ask others for permission.
We forget that we are sovereign human beings and have the ability to decide that for ourselves now that we’re adults.
We’re really just wanting someone to give us the green light to go ahead and get started. But instead, we could be giving ourselves the green light.
You might be wondering what kinds of permission am I talking about?
There is a long list of possibilities – let’s go through some of them – Permission to:
- Be happy – some people have an “I don’t deserve to be happy” belief so they self-sabotage their happiness
- Be wrong
- Be loud, be too much
- Live the life you want, or to dream big
- Be YOURSELF even when it’s hard, or when it’s uncomfortable for others
- Stand up for what you believe in even it goes against what someone else does or says
- Rest, recharge, be lazy, practice self-care, have “me time”
- Take a vacation, take a break, watch TV, binge Netflix, eat dessert
- Walk away from something that’s not serving you
- Let go, accept, surrender
- Do what’s best for you just because it is
- Let go of the way you thought your life should go
- Love who you are
- Love/accept your body
- Your intuition (how often do you get in your head and talk yourself out of what your gut says?)
- Feel joy (ever read the part in one of Brene Brown’s books about “foreboding joy”? It’s when we’re hesitant to let ourselves feel joy because we’re afraid it will go away.)
- Simplify your life
- Give yourself grace (you don’t need to be hard on yourself!)
- Give others grace
- Be vulnerable (this one is scary, so you also might need to give yourself permission to be afraid – be afraid and do it anyway)
- Play, have fun, be silly
- Remove toxic people from your life
- Make mistakes
- Say YES to what you want and NO to what you don’t want
- Ask for what you want
- Be imperfect
- Start over, to pivot when you don’t like the direction you’re going
- Make more money, have a lot of money, or not care how much money you make
- Try something new
- Let go of the past (similar to forgiveness – forgive others and yourself, get out of victim mode, stop blaming)
- Be inadequate
- Enjoy life
- Give yourself time to heal – patience
- Take time to rediscover who you are
- Not have it all figured out before you start – permission to just take the next right step
- Try new things
- Meet new people
- Do something unconventional
- Dance like no one is watching
- Be super confident
- Be unhappy (and want to do something about it),
- Feel crappy sometimes
- Be angry, jealous, unsure but also excited and joyful and peaceful
- Feel all the feels
- Spend money, to be YOU
- Succeed (this one is sneaky!)
- Be creative even when you’re in a place that doesn’t necessarily reward creativity – corporate comes to mind
- Say no, or set boundaries
- Not know the answer
- Love
- Trust others and have your own back
That’s a big list!
Not giving yourself permission will keep you from moving forward in life and from growing. You’ll stay stuck in your comfort zone and you’ll never learn to expand what’s possible for you.
If you don’t give yourself permission to be wrong, for example, or to be creative, you won’t speak what’s on your mind or try new things. You’ll miss out on sharing what you have to offer, and others miss out on that too.
If you’ve been told you’re “too much” or too loud and you don’t give yourself permission to be who you are, you’re going to live your life dimming your authentic self and that comes with a huge cost. Hiding who you are doesn’t feel good and it prevents you from cultivating true connection in your life.
If you don’t give yourself permission to dream, you’re going to play small for your whole life and always wonder what if I had gone for it?
If you don’t give yourself permission to stand up for what you believe in, you’re out of integrity with yourself. You also rob yourself of the opportunity to help facilitate real change in the world.
If you don’t give yourself permission to rest, recharge or relax, you’ll run yourself ragged and suffer from stress, burnout, and exhaustion.
Giving yourself permission to do something opens up space for a new possibility to exist. It opens up room for you to grow into something bigger. It allows you to stretch. It’s how you get off the hamster wheel and feel excited about life.
You’re here to be YOU and you can’t do that if you’re always asking permission for everything. You need to learn to give yourself the green light to live for the things that you LOVE. It’s shifting your energy from waiting for the go-ahead to empowering yourself to live life.
Learning to go against your conditioning doesn’t happen overnight. It’s something you have to learn and practice.
And as with any process, you’ll need to be compassionate and understanding with yourself the same way you give others compassion, understanding, and encouragement when they’re asking for their own green light.
Start to build your “permission muscle” with the small things
Since you’re learning, you have to build the muscle of giving yourself permission, which means you start with lighter weight and more reps. Start small, start easy, and practice the small, easy things frequently.
You might start by giving yourself permission to watch a TV show even though your mind is telling you how lazy or unproductive that is. Or, you could start with giving yourself permission to have dessert when you’d normally avoid it because you’re worried about gaining weight.
When you practice with the small things, you’ll build trust with yourself that it’s harmless to give yourself permission. The world won’t end and you won’t die – even though that’s what your brain wants you to think.
Let Go
The next thing is going to involve a little bit of letting go, which can feel hard. SO you decide to let go, and you choose to practice letting go and accepting what is at every opportunity you have. Build that muscle.
You’ll need to let go of needing approval from others (give yourself permission for this!). You’ll also need to let go of the way you think things are “supposed to be” for you. You want to carve your OWN path.
Feel your feelings
Give yourself permission to FEEL your FEELINGS. You’re going to have feelings come up in the process of allowing yourself things you haven’t allowed yourself before – like guilt, worry, anxiety and it’s way easier if you just let yourself feel those feelings rather than resist them. The feelings just feel worse and last longer the more you resist them.
Do things to boost your self-worth
Pay attention to your self-worth. Your ability to give yourself permission is linked to your self-worth and self-concept. Work on loving yourself and affirming to yourself that you ARE enough exactly as you are. (permission to love yourself)
Things you can do to tap into your self-worth are to journal or meditate – you deserve to have permission to live the life you are here to live. You deserve it. Tap into that self-worth however you can.
Watch the “shoulds” and “have to-s”
Other things on a more practical level are to watch it when you say “I have to” or “I should”. You get to choose, so you give yourself permission to do or not do.
Another thing that can help you practice is to give yourself permission to celebrate your small wins. Found a great parking spot at Costco? Celebrate! Gave yourself permission to not count calories when you’re normally obsessed? Celebrate!
What would your life be like if you didn’t have to ask?
I briefly mentioned this before, but what would your life be like if you gave yourself permission to be fully YOU in life? What if you gave yourself permission to be wrong, happy, or sad? Permission to stand up for what you believe in even when it’s hard, and all the things on the list I covered at the beginning of this article?
What would you do if you didn’t have to ask for permission for anything? What would be possible for you? Just ponder that.
Write yourself a permission slip
And finally, one thing that can be fun:
Many years ago, my mom and I took a course that Oprah and Brene Brown jointly offered related to her book The Gifts of Imperfection. The course had a creative aspect to it, where each chapter had an art journaling assignment.
At the beginning of the course, the assignment was to create actual permission slips for ourselves because creativity can bring up a lot of fear and perfectionism and we were asked to acknowledge that. I can’t remember exactly, but my permission slips were something like, the permission to be creative, to mess up, or to try doing the art stuff even if I didn’t think I’d be good at it.
You can create a permission slip for yourself for the things you need permission for. Have fun with it and keep it somewhere you can see it.
Giving yourself permission is a gift
Giving yourself permission is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Doing so is going to help you move forward in your life rather than stay stuck. You’ll stop playing small and swing for the fences.
So spend some time looking at places in your life where you aren’t giving yourself permission. What do you think you’re afraid of in these cases? And what are some ways YOU can work on giving yourself permission?
