Are You Giving Yourself Permission?

COVID kicked my butt...but it taught me a lot.

At the time of this writing I was forced to be still and thanks to my undefined sacral that was super hard for me. 

I felt so lazy and unproductive.

I realized that even though I had loads of content pre-batched and ready to go I was worried how things would change if I was just laying in bed all day.

I had an amazing quantum leap the month before getting COVID and the idea of "losing momentum" scared me sooo much.

I realized it was because I hadn't done the deep work around increasing my level of safety. 

I have to be really honest with you I did not feel safe in my body when it happened. All of my fears and different experiences that have contributed to my fears started to surface, and I stopped feeling safe. I stopped feeling safe with some of the decisions I was making. I stopped trusting myself, and I started to think of all the things that could go wrong.

For example, I began to hire a team recently, and I remember hiring a team, and the first thing that came to my mind was like, oh, you don't work well with other people. 

That's why you're divorced, right? All of these things that I experienced were coming to the surface because I was taking a massive up level because I was moving beyond my comfort zone.

So  I decided to maximize my down time by doing lots of praying, deep reflection, tapping and hypnotherapy - all the tools I have at hand and know the power of.

My intuition led me to start looking  for tools to continue to increase my sense of calm and sense of safety. During my search I found an amazing concept called The Four Permissions and upon learning and implementing I knew immediately I had to share.

We all have 4 permissions we should normalize in our life, but out of people pleasing or fear we often avoid them. Incorporating these things into your life will transform you tremendously so take note... 

Permission to Say “No”

Sometimes we say "yes" to other people because we want to people please, and we want to make sure that people aren't mad at us. But what ends up happening is we get mad at ourselves.

We become resentful, we become overwhelmed. We succumb to the pressure to conform, and we end up becoming resentful to the overall decision. And ultimately it impacts our health. 

Knowing when you're unwilling or unable to do something is about being in alignment with yourself and really knowing yourself and being okay with saying no, because every time you say no, you get to create more room to take care of yourself. The cool thing about it is when you say no, you teach other people that they have permission to create healthy emotional boundaries and healthy emotional space and to also say no when they see fit where they see it's necessary. When we are unable to say “No” in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure, we lose a little of ourselves. It's imperative that we are okay with saying "no". This is not about being selfish, it’s about knowing who you are, what you believe, and what you need.

Permission to Ask for What You Need

Knowing how to take care of yourself means that you can ask for what you need when you need it. The pressure to conform and to come to that pressure can sometimes cause us to withhold this permission from ourselves.

It's so important that we understand that it's safe to ask for what we need. I actually, during these last few months did a lot of work on that safety within myself, I told myself that it's safe for me to have support. I think we, as women a lot of times will put on the superwoman role, and we feel like we have to do it all ourselves. And when I had COVID, I had no choice but to get support. What I realized is it's safe, and it's valuable to get that support that I need. 

Giving myself the freedom to ask encouraged healthy boundaries and healthy relationships. And this has been such an eye opening experience for me.

Knowing how to take care of yourself means you can ask for what you need and being confident you're worthy of it.

Permission to Make Mistakes

Now, this may be one of my favorite because I am a recovering. That's why I've written my book, Progress Over Perfection. I always am that person that wants things to be easy. I want things to be perfect. I want things to be seamless, but I have to keep learning daily that it's okay to make mistakes.

It’s simple to say, but not easy to implement. You can tell yourself it’s OK to make mistakes, but there are voices in your head calling you a failure and the like. Giving yourself this permission will make you more likely to take appropriate risks putting you on the fast track to where you want to be quicker.

The things that you want cannot be achieved when you're playing safe all the time. Think about it... If you played safe, when you learned to walk, you would have never walked right. You would have fell down too much for that. If you played safe, maybe when you learned to swim, you never would have gotten in the water further than dipping your toes in to feel the temperature. It's the same idea with any goal that you're moving towards, you can't play safe if you want to get to where you want to be

Your vision requires you to play big and that means mistakes will happen. But those are the very things that will propel you in the direction you're designed to go!

How can you begin to give yourself permission to make mistakes? It is a gift to those who are watching you, and it is a gift to future you when you give yourself permission to make those mistakes and learn from them.

Permission to Rethink

Let's pretend, for example, you drive to your grandma's house every single Sunday for dinner and you drive the same way, and there's a detour. You don't throw in the towel and go home, you take a detour to get to grandma's house and enjoy that food and family time.

Just because “we’ve always done it this way before,” doesn’t mean we have to keep it up. Sometimes when things aren’t working and it's okay to reflect, reframe and re-do.

If you try to force or put pressure or operate from desperate energy to force it to work one way, it won't work that way. Reflecting and rethinking is a powerful exercise. Reframing or redoing is a powerful technique. It's a great way to get perspective and get emotionally distant from the situation at hand and allow yourself to rethink so that you can act in a way that aligns with where it is that you're trying to go 

Giving yourself these permissions helps you to create healthy emotional space, and trust again in yourself. It also show's others what is available for them as well. 

These four permissions are great guidelines to show you how to get in touch with yourself and how increase your level of self trust especially as you begin to create your very own quantum leap.

How would your life change if you gave yourself permission to implement these permissions?