Give yourself permission

I listened to Braving the Wilderness, read by Brene Brown

Hey everyone! This past week I read a book. It’s pretty miraculous! I don’t actually read very many books and, to be completely honest, actually I didn’t read this book. I listened to it on Scribd.  It was read by the author – oh my gosh – it was so cool to hear it in her own voice! Brene Brown! And the book was called Braving the Wilderness. It was excellent. I highly recommend it.

But the part that really stood out to me, that I wanted to share with you today is a part where she talks about writing herself a permission slip. She wrote herself a permission slip to do something. To be brave or to let go of something or to put herself first or I can’t remember exactly. There was a whole bunch of things.

I just thought it was a wonderful idea. She said she actually wrote it down on a post-it note. “I give Brené Brown permission to do (whatever it was)”. 

I sometimes give permission to my clients

Quite often, or maybe just sometimes, with my clients I say “and you’re allowed to do that, I give you permission to do that”.  And I tell them “you tell [insert name here] that Dione said you’re allowed to do [insert activity here]”.  

Of course, I really don’t have any power in people’s lives. But there’s something powerful  about giving yourself permission.  Somehow there is a psychological switch that is flicked when you say (or write on paper) I am allowed to do [this thing].  It’s like a shift happens in their thinking, or a door is opened to possibilities.

What permission can you give yourself?

So what is there in your life that you could give yourself permission to do? What do you NEED to give yourself permission to do?  I want you to consider actually writing down that you give yourself permission to do that thing.

• To take care of yourself.
• To take some time for self-care maybe.
• To say no sometimes or all the time.
• To go to bed early or stay up late.
• To spend some money on yourself maybe.

I gave myself permission to spend money

That reminds me of a time I gave myself permission and set up a process to force myself to follow through.  It was a time after many years of being a stay-at-home mom when we did not have a lot of money at all.  I was also strongly influenced by  my mum raising us to be very frugal.  At that time I realized that we had more money coming in and it was being spent on the rest of the family but I didn’t spend any money on myself. And I didn’t think that was right.

It was hard for me to justify and to do.  I had to push myself to spend some money on myself.  In order to make myself do, I joined a book club. I don’t know if they still have them these days, but it was a mail thing.  You signed up, and got some free books and they sent you a catalogue every month.  You committed to buy a certain number of books every month. 

There were a whole bunch of choices and each month there were some that were on sale and there others at full price.   Now I don’t know if you would have guessed this, but I didn’t actually buy any reading books, any novels. All the books I bought were crafting books and art books and I ended up with a beautiful collection of them, which I no longer have, but we won’t talk about that right now.

So I gave myself permission to spend money on myself and I set it up, set up the practice, so that I couldn’t get out of it.  I had to do it.  That was a really good thing for me.  The choice to spend money on myself reinforced the belief that I mattered, that I was worth spending money on.  It taught me to value myself and to put worth in myself

What can you give yourself permission to do?

So coming back to the question again – In what area do you need to give yourself permission. I bet there is one.  You might even have something pop into your mind this very moment.  Don’t second guess it!  Take some time and consider what will happen if you give yourself permission.  What will change?

Now before I finish I need to think what do I need give myself permission to do? Well at the moment I’m travelling. I am at the beginning non-adventurous stages of a year-long travel around the world, if it all works out. I hope it will all work out and I get to do that.  The plan is in place and it is happening and I have given myself permission to do that, even though it’s a stretch for my budget and it’s a little bit scary – for my budget. It’s not really scary for me. I’d happily do it if I had the money. Money is always the hardest part for me! So I’ve given myself permission to spend money on me again, now that my kids are older and they are all independent and taking care of themselves.

How about you? This is Dione from After the Rain encouraging you to write yourself a permission slip for something that you know you need to do or you want to do. That’s it. Have a great day.