Waiting for Permission.
It’s a strange thing, permission. When we are young, it controls almost our entire existence. As we age, it still dominates our pathway through life. Be it from a parent, a spouse, an employer, a friend or even whatever you believe in as a supreme being in the universe, we always seem to be looking for someone to give us permission to do the things we want to do.
We are conditioned to ask, even when we don’t have to.
And I’ve been wondering recently why we are so fearful to act without permission in so many avenues of our lives. Because while there are some things that do require someone in authority to give us the go ahead, there are so many experiences waiting for us if we just seek permission from the one person who should really control our existence.
Ourselves.
Yet we struggle to do this. Maybe it’s impostor syndrome, where we don’t feel like we are ‘good enough’ to step into the role that we secretly crave in life. Maybe it’s fear of the reaction of those around us, which suffocates both our creativity and compassion. Or maybe it’s the belief that we will judge ourselves harshly if we allow ourselves to become who we want to be.
Permission is a dangerous jailer.
Please understand, I’m not asking you to go out and act in a way that defies authority, far from it. Instead, I’m asking you open your mind to the possibility that you could be happier, healthier, more at peace and more integrated in yourself if you just stopped waiting for the permissions that you never needed to ask for in the first place. If you want to know how that might feel, ask yourself this simple question…
What would I do if I only had permission from ‘whomever’ (God, your family, yourself etc) to do it?
A friend of mine took this to heart recently after I wrote a piece of this work asking you to decide who you were, and to be that person now in the way that you act and show up in the world. As she followed through on this invitation, her whole persona was changed as she tried to act in the way that she felt was her truest self.
As we discussed her experience, she realized that she could have always been this way, but she was “waiting for permission” to become who it was she really wanted to be.
And the question I would ask her now is this… “From whom did you require permission” :)
If you have never sat quietly with yourself, and decided what you ‘can’ and ‘can’t’ do with your life, I invite you now to have that discussion in the quiet solitude of your soul.
Because I truly believe that there are so many people who are not sharing their gifts and their nobility with the world because they still believe they need someone to tell them that it’s ok.
If that’s you, then I implore you to give yourself permission to make the world a better place.
Who knows the lives you’ll touch, and the blessing you could be to another.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings