Give Yourself Permission to Live Your Life

Remember permission slips? The ones we’d get from our parents when we were in grade school, or to get out of school early when we were in high school? Almost like magic, those little pieces of paper (plus our parents’ signatures) enabled us to embark on many journeys.

Confession: I once forged my Mother’s signature on an emergency form at the beginning of the school year. I then wrote myself dozens of permission slips, one time getting out of school early so I could go enjoy a banana split at Dairy Queen. Shameful, I know, but you gotta test boundaries somehow, amiright?! (Sorry Ma!)

Over the last couple of months, I’ve averaged a self-help book a week, while missing out on my favorite fiction novels or love of quilting, all in the pursuit to create my first FREE COURSE by the end of this year, and I have come across the concept of the modern-day-all-grown-up permission slip that I think is worth sharing.

Oftentimes when we start on our career paths and begin to settle down in our lives, we begin to hold ourselves back.

From dreaming big.

From being different and true to ourselves.

From going off the charted (or socially acceptable) path.

Telling ourselves “no” starts to feel effortless, while saying yes to others becomes more important.

Here’s the problem with this:

When we say yes to everyone BUT ourselves, we feel drained, frustrated, unhappy, unfulfilled, or worse - unsatisfied with our lives, just so that people like us.

What if you gave yourself permission to make decisions JUST FOR YOU? What kind of difference would that make in your life? What is the permission you would give?

I’ve been doing some introspective and spiritual work on myself lately (I hired my own coach!), and recently drafted a permission slip for myself:

I give myself permission to make decisions that feel the best for me, even if others would prefer me to have made a different decision (so long as I am not hurting myself or others).

WOW. The second I wrote those words, I realized how much the guilt and the shame had been holding me back. Those negative feelings had a weight that I had been carrying with me, and I realized how incredible that really is, the capacity that people have for carrying around such dark emotions.

I have always had the tendency to say an emphatic YES.

To giving away my time.

To prioritizing someone else’s goals over mine.

To spending my free time on things that don’t get me closer to my goals.

Lately I am learning to set boundaries and to say NO when it doesn’t line up with the priorities I have in my life, for myself.