Stop Asking For Permission!
This is yet another quote that was inspired by a passage in Seth Godin’s book, “The Icarus Deception.” For those who follow my weekly quotes and videos, you may remember my recommending this work in the past, and when I was looking for something to write/create a video about for this week, I went back and looked at all the pages I had marked.
While this particular sentiment was stated in a slightly different way, I have chosen to rephrase it and focus on the concepts of freedom, permission, courage and meaning because I feel they can provide a key to what has been holding many of us back and potentially unlock a door to the future.
You see, it is my observation that many of us are looking for “permission” of sorts before we are willing to strike out and create the life we want. This is understandable on one level, because most of us grew up needing permission to do (go/be) what we wanted from our parents, teachers, or other authority figures in our life. Unfortunately, it seems that many of us may be still looking for this permission (approval, validation, etc.) before we allow ourselves to do what we want, follow our dreams, or create a life that is meaningful to us.
I’m sure part of this desire for approval/permission comes from our concern about what will happen if we fail. Will others say “I told you so”? Will we lose faith in our ability to make good decisions and/or our ability to trust our judgement in the future? Scary thoughts, to be sure, and yet, I have never been a fan of using fear to create a life we love, so let’s see what we can do instead.
First, I think we need to look at any aspect of our life where we feel we need permission or approval to go for what we want, or what would help us create more meaning in our lives. Chances are that we haven’t set things up this way deliberately or on purpose, nor is it likely we would recommend this perspective to someone we love. Therefore, once we have this awareness, we can shift to a vision of what we would be doing/going for if we no longer needed permission and/or if the fear of failure was no longer an impediment.
And… this is where the courage comes in. It will take courage to declare our freedom from permission and/or approval and follow our passion, because the truth is, we can’t know if we will achieve our goals in advance. It’s possible that we may learn something along the way that may have us changing our initial vision of what we want. Or, we may achieve our goal, only to find out that it does not produce the meaningful experience that we wanted. Regardless, this can also be something to celebrate, because it represents new learning, but most of all, it represents us claiming responsibility for our own lives versus needing other’s permission or approval… becoming the captain of our own ship, so to speak, which allows us to chart our future course based upon the destination of meaning versus being held back by the anchors of fear, permission, and approval.
Here is to you having the courage to claim your freedom and set sail on this more purposeful, meaningful voyage.
~ All the best, Dr. Bill