Finally Learning that I Don’t Need Permission!

“You cannot grow in isolation.”

This is something I share with those I coach and that I’m learning for myself.

It’s easy to stay out of sight, lie for days on end in your cocoon of choice, or if you prefer – with your head comfortably submerged in sand. You can try to run away from your problems, lose yourself in several bottles of beer, watch T.V marathons but you cannot outrun yourself and sooner or later you are going to collide with someone’s words or with them in the flesh. And some thing that they SAY or DO is going to open you up in ways that you may not be prepared for.

Sometimes you have stuff going on inside of you that you can’t put into words. You try but you can’t. You might summarize – “I’m afraid…” or “That’s not me…” but as you mouth the words you know deep inside that the summations do not begin to explain HOW you REALLY  feel.

For years I heard myself mouth “I’m afraid of success. I shy away from my light, my greatness. I play a small game…yada yada”

Coaching tip to self: “You must not let your memory and what you THINK you KNOW keep you closed off from another’s point of view.”

And so with an open mind I read Kristen Kalp’s – My Surprising Spiritual Practice. When she addressed her fears I found a few of mine in there which previously I was perhaps too afraid to put into words…

I am afraid that what matters to me doesn’t matter to anyone else

I am afraid no one will even notice

I am afraid that I won’t get the approval I so deeply desire.

And then I read Illana Burk’s A Love Letter to the Broke and Homeless Who Feel Like They Can’t Afford the Business They Are Made For  and she addressed how INVISIBLE I often feel when she shared…

Every day, I woke up with the thought in my head that I must have built my website with one of those Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks on it or something because I swear to god no one could see it but me.

My third fear is the one carrying TONS of weight. This I know for sure! And so it’s shaped a lot of WHAT I do and HOW I do it. Not always in a bad way…but I realized something earlier this week that hit me hard.

I would always ask myself, before undertaking any task, if it was worth it? And by that I meant (I’m fully realizing this NOW as I write) – “would doing THIS get me the approval I so desperately crave?” In other words I was constantly asking a “they” without a face: Am I OK? Is this OK? Is what I’m doing OK? And the measure for me was “their” approval.

And then I realized that I was asking the wrong question. It’s not “is it worth it?” but “Am I worth it?” and in the context of my talents and gifts that I have to share with the world – the answer is most certainly “YES!”

During my morning quiet time I read this from Mark Nepo that put things into perspective

Though everyone shares this moment we are living in right now, no one experiences this moment more directly than you. No one can say what it feels like for you to be alive but you. No one needs permission to be alive, to stay alive…

On some level I always knew this which is why I never understood English Literature in high school. We were asked “what was the author thinking when he/she wrote this?” How could there be a RIGHT answer? How could my answer be WRONG? No one knows what the author was thinking at the time of writing but THE AUTHOR! Subsequently I got a D! 🙂

I’m realizing more and more that if I don’t BELIEVE in Giselle, if I don’t BELIEVE in what I have to offer, If I don’t HONOR my own view of the now, of the world, and how I see it – it would be a travesty of my truth and I’d much prefer to get a D for sharing my truth than to get an A for sharing a truth that the majority would approve of!