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I suck at just doing without needing permission. Or I used to. Well, maybe I still do from time to time. For instance, today I’ve been waiting to give myself permission to drop everything else and JUST DO some writing.
You know how it goes.
You get up. Go the gym. Can’t find a parking place. Everyone is on the machines you want to use. Instead of a solid 45-minute workout, it’s now 60 minutes and you’ve lost 15 minutes out of your day.
On the way home, the construction guys are holding up your lane of traffic, which you could have avoided had you made that mental note on the way to the gym with indelible ink in your head to not go back home this way. Instead, you forgot because you were frustrated, having lost 15 minutes at the gym and now you’re losing 10 minutes waiting for the other lane of traffic to be put through. Now you’re 25 minutes off schedule.
You get home, ready to make a quick protein shake, only to discover the steaks you’ve marinated have decided to pee all over the refrigerator, which knocks another 10 minutes out of your day cleaning up Korean BBQ marinade. While cleaning up the mess, the spray nozzle on the sink splatters water all over the wood blinds of your kitchen window and water drips down the backsplash, reminding you that you still haven’t heard from the home warranty company about coming repair the now soaked backsplash. While cleaning up the water to prevent further damage to the counters, you realize you’re 5 minutes late to your weekly Mastermind call, and need to add a call to the home warranty to your list of To Do’s for the day as well.
The snowball of a crappy day is growing, and in the back of your mind, that annoying little, squeaky told-you-so voice is walking around like the cock-of-the-walk reminding you, “All you had to do, sunshine, was give yourself permission to not go to the gym!”
Yeah! You’ve received the message loud and clear, but you didn’t give yourself permission to skip the gym, nor did I today. If I had, I believe my day would have gone a lot different. Not that I can predict the future, but my instinct tells me I would have been less rattled and more focused, all because I let the PERMISSION GIVEN slip be cashed in.
But, no, no, no, no. We’re men. We can do it all, even not giving ourselves permission to do the things we most need to do for ourselves. For example, giving ourselves permission to…
- Not take on so much.
- Skip a day at the gym.
- Relax and let go of work worries
- Let someone else figure out their own crap for once instead us saving them
- Turn off our Father’s voice saying, “Man up and do…”
Ironically, we men crave permission from others as a means of validation. Then the moment we dabble with giving ourselves permission, you’d think we’ve committed the ultimate male wounding by castrating ourselves, snipping the approval of others from our lives.
It’s a wicked twist of self-abuse. We don’t ask permission because, “Screw this, I’m a man and I don’t need to ask permission,” and we end up looking like assholes because we shine off everyone else when sometimes their approval is exactly what keeps us on track.
Another tried and true behavior is to seek, seek, seek others approval with no true sense of self-trust and self-worth. This produces misery, self-loathing, and frustration, asking for permission from all the wrong people for all the wrong things.
Then there’s the most avoided permission, the permission we give ourselves, without any other input. It’s scary, we own it, and there’s no one to blame if the permission granted slip screws up our life.
Yes, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. I get it. I’m a full-fledged permission seeker and rebellious permission avoider, which is a blessing and a curse. That was until I realized, I don’t need the wrong approval, I simply need to grant myself the right permissions.
- I started giving myself some scary permissions to…
- Stand up for my own values and beliefs.
- Take risks that I wanted to take.
- Live life on my terms.
- Stop apologizing for being me.
- Quit second guessing myself
What surprised me the most is, I gained respect, started loving myself more, was less stressed, and began enjoying life…and I didn’t die.
Giving ourselves permission isn’t a death sentence, it’s a life sentence. That’s why I quite being an approval seeker, except from myself.
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