The 4 Types of Permission

Permission happens in layers. Which layer do you need to give yourself permission to move through?

Permission.

Yes, it’s okay to do this.

Yes, I’m allowed to take up space.

Yes, I’m allowed to show up the way I want to.

Yes, I’m allowed to create the life I want.

Yes, I’m allowed to do this my own way.

Yes, I give myself permission to live life on my own terms.

Every single one of those things has probably been shrouded in pain for you, as it was for me. Part of giving myself permission was teaching myself that it was okay to do all those things. I went back and forth and all around until I finally got to a place where I could stand there and stay put.

Permission is the process of healing all the past failures so that you can do your own thing. But how? How do you get okay here? What needs to happen?

That’s the million dollar question that I want to try to answer. Having come from complete powerlessness, permission was pretty much my whole journey. There were four layers or stages to my journey through this idea of permission. I want to share them with you in hopes that they will help you give yourself better permission to move forward.

The first layer is the internal permission we give ourselves that isn’t based on anything outside of us. This is the commitment we make to ourselves and journey. It’s the thing that holds us there when the journey gets tough. It’s the thing we fall back on when we’re questioning why we’re doing this to ourselves. How many times have you asked yourself why you signed up for this journey? Be honest!

I gave myself internal permission at the very beginning of the journey when I first decided to heal. It was kind of like I created a platform for myself within myself to fall back on when the going got difficult, which it did often.

Being able to make this choice for ourselves in a way that isn’t connected to anything or anyone outside of ourselves is the most critical part of the process. If this changes or if you deny yourself this level of permission, you won’t move. You won’t be able to shift the patterns and behaviors that you find along the way if you haven’t first given yourself permission to do the work.

The second piece of permission comes from other people. People intentionally or unintentionally, dig in their heels when we try to make some sort of change. They may not be consciously trying to stop us, but they will offer messages that make us rethink what we’re doing. What’s happening when they tell you not to?

You’ve asked somebody for advice and they’ve told you that you’re nuts. The reason they tell you that you’re crazy is because of their own fear and pain. They probably told you a story about themselves or somebody else and that story was filled with a painful ending. Because of that painful ending they have now decided that it will never work for anybody. Nobody should do that thing because of that one failure they witnessed.

Learning to recognize the pain that people project is one of the keys to interpreting your reality a little better. When we don’t recognize that pain and we take on what other people tell us, we get stuck. Immediately we feel like we don’t have permission from the outside world to do the thing. But is that true or is that just a story the mind wants to make up?

Honestly, it’s a story. The mind found a reason to stop you. The mind wants you to stay where you are because it’s is afraid of anything it doesn’t know. It is particularly afraid of an unknown future, so it will attempt to keep you in familiar patterns and cycles. It’s the mind trying to protect you. It’s not doing anything wrong, it’s actually doing exactly what it’s designed to do. The problem is that it keeps you in the familiar pain. It keeps you stuck. Your job is to recognize that and encourage the mind to shift its’ focus. You are driving the bus, not your mind. That’s why it’s so important that you pay attention to this stuff. If you let the mind drive, then you stay where you are. When you learn to take control by becoming aware from your thoughts, it gives you the opportunity to move forward.

Just getting past the original thoughts you have is only the first step in the process. Your mind is going to continue to throw you challenges, they will just start to look a little different. The first challenge may be your worries about the people around you. What will other people think?

These ideas all come from the mind, but our perceptions of other people and their opinions of us can often keep us stuck. We think people won’t like it and we don’t want to upset the balance or rock the boat, so we keep things as they are even though we’re miserable. We sacrifice ourselves like this all the time and if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s not okay to do this.

We have to shift our thinking around other people. The mind may be absolutely correct about the other person. They may do exactly what your mind told you they were going to do. Now what? Do you sacrifice yourself because of the other person’s fear? That’s usually what happens because we make up really good stories about why upsetting the other person is not okay. At some point, you will have to do things that other people don’t like. You will rock the boat. You will challenge the fear that other people offer you. Your only job is to get okay with that.

Let’s be really clear right now, that the goal is not to go around being mean to people. We’re not out to get anybody. The goal is to simply free ourselves to be okay in our own lives. Sometimes to do that, we have to do things that other people won’t like. We can do this gently. We can be kind, caring, and compassionate, and still do what we want to do. At some point, you will have to make this choice for yourself in one relationship or another. These aren’t easy choices, but they are necessary if you want to move forward.

I can say for certain that I’ve upset the balance in some of my own relationships because I’ve challenged the boundaries and I’ve done things anyway. For a long time I didn’t have the confidence to do that. I would never have done that because it would have challenged me too much. By gaining my own confidence, I was then able to stand my ground without being mean about things.

This stuff doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to work through all these things within ourselves and then in the outside world. What you need to do is keep maintaining your relationship with what you want because that’s what will pull you forward. The more confident you are in your dream, the more likely you are to achieve it because you’re more willing to do the hard stuff to get to the dream.

After we deal with other people, then we have to deal with our circumstances, which is the third layer. Most of the time, our circumstances are just an easy excuse. I can’t because I don’t have… and you fill in the blank.

Limiting circumstances are my forte. I created all kinds of limiting circumstances in terms of money and allowing other people to control me. I gave my power up in all the ways it was possible to give up one’s power. Sometimes I did it willingly to keep others happy, and sometimes it wasn’t so willingly; I just didn’t have the confidence to do anything else.

When the circumstances seem to be limiting you, you have to begin to widen your view. If you just focus on what you think you can’t have, you don’t ever allow yourself to see the other options. We get focused on a hole in the drywall and it prevents us from going to the store to get the supplies to fix it. It prevents us from calling the repair person. It prevents us from just sort of putting a painting up and forgetting about it for now because we can’t afford to fix it. It doesn’t allow for all the other possibilities that are available to us. How many other ways can you find to do what you want to do if you’d simply stop focusing on the problem with what you’re looking at right now?

Sometimes making things work and using what we have available to us, gives us the opportunity to explore ourselves and our dreams a little bit more. Sometimes this process, even though it can seem really limiting, is actually really useful. The ability to explore the idea further using the tools you have available to you, can often change your direction entirely. That’s not a bad thing. The Universe is redirecting you but you’re arguing with it. If you just simply focused on moving in the direction you’re being offered, you would find what you need to find.

Humans are stubborn. We get bent on doing things a certain way. That means we feel really limited sometimes by our circumstances or what’s happening around us. If we’d simply stop arguing with the direction we’re being given, we’d find the truth in what’s being shown to us. We don’t see it that way though. We see it as a problem. We see it as something to argue with. We see it as a reason why not. Those things are illusions that aren’t true. Looking past the illusion requires you to widen your field a little bit and be open to possibilities. Your fixation on the illusion is what keeps you stuck.

The final layer is the layer we started with; it’s the idea of permission. Permission can look different in different scenarios. Sometimes permission looks like allowing ourselves to upset the balance in certain relationships. Sometimes permission looks like finding ways around perceived problems. Sometimes permission looks like just trusting ourselves to handle what happens next. All of those things will give us a complete sense of permission that allows us to move freely all the time, not just when we think it’s safe to do so.

Giving ourselves permission creates an intentionality in what we’re doing. It’s not random anymore. We’re actively and consciously deciding to move forward. That sense of intentionality gives the feeling of control even if we don’t really have any control at all. It creates a sense of trust in the process and removes the fear of the unknown. The feeling of being able to trust the process reinforces our original decision to move forward. This is how we’re able to stay in the game long term. We constantly gives ourselves permission to move forward and regularly re-commit to the process. Doing both allows us to hold onto our power at all times. This is the purpose of giving yourself permission. Have you done so yet? If not, do it now.

Love to all.

Della