Balance & Beyond Podcast

Struggling to sign off on your own life's decisions without first seeking a nod of approval from others?

It's time we unpack the invisible chains of seeking external permission that so many women, including myself, have felt shackled to. In our eye-opening conversation, we dissect the 'good girl syndrome' and the perfectionism that can smother our true identities and desires. I share my own transformative journey of breaking free from the need for validation and how trusting my intuition led to a more authentic self. If you're ready to reclaim your decision-making power and carve out your own path, this episode promises to be a turning point.

As we venture further, we explore the concept of self-permission and how it can redefine our personal and professional landscapes. The discussion illuminates the stark contrast in self-permission within relationships through real-life scenarios, driving home the importance of proactive self-improvement. Not only do I reflect on the power of making self-affirming choices, but I also delve into how these decisions can leave a lasting, positive impact on our roles as parents and partners. It's about writing your own 'permission slip' for greatness, for the sake of your well-being and for setting an inspiring example for the generations to come. Join us and embrace the empowerment to step boldly into your own light.

If you want to learn how to grant yourself permission, including practical strategies that work in today's world, join us at Burnout to Balance, a free, live event starting on Wednesday 15th May.

Save your seat now at www.balanceinstitute.com/burnouttobalance.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

On today's episode of Balance and Beyond, I am talking about the thing I am seeing hold women back the most at the moment. I am talking about permission, and our incessant need to request it from everybody else in order to move forward in our lives. This is a power leak, it's an energy leak, and it is costing us dearly. I have just wrapped up three days of my free series called Burnout to Balance and, by the way, you'll find the link in the show notes to register, if you want to catch the replays. 

What is most frustrating to me right now is I've had all these amazing women come through the workshop and some of them are like “Jo, I want your help.” “I know I want to fix this problem.” And yet, the one thing stopping them from actually making a change that they say they want, they know they need is that they won't give themselves permission. What is really happening here, is we are taking this childhood conditioning, and we are letting it define us as women. 

So, when we talk about permission, what I mean here as a child, we are conditioned to ask for permission for everything. “Can I have a snack?” We have to put our hand up in class, “Can I go to the bathroom?” “Can I have an apple?” “Can I do this?” “Can I do that?” And at some point in life, what we don't realise is that there's never a graduation ceremony where somebody says, “Hey, you've been asking for permission for everything, because you've been a child.” “You are now an adult, and you no longer have to ask for permission from anybody to do anything.” 

And yet, we are still like, “Can I do this?” “Can I do that?” “Is this possible?” And it drives me crazy, and I'm saying this because this has been a very, very big journey that I have been on. I found myself for a long time asking permission, even saying to my husband “I'm going to go.” He said, “All right.” “If I go have a shower … “ “Like hey, in a second, why am I asking for permission?” 

And there's a difference here, between being considerate, and asking for permission. Because, what happens is, when we are actually asking people for permission, we end up swimming in resentment, because we want others to give us permission. And then, when we need their permission to do something, or to say something, or to be something, they don't actually know what we want, and so we then get resentful, because they can't read our minds. 

But then, in time, we become so lost, because we've outsourced everything to other people, that we don't actually know who we are, or what we want, anymore. This completely dampens our desires, because we only allow ourselves to want what other people say we can have. Do you think other people actually know what we want? Do you think other people, “other people” I put in air quotes here, do “other people” actually know who you want to be? Do they even know what you want to become? 

And the answer is “No.” And this is why we have so many women who are in this self-imposed box. That is the size that they will give themselves permission to hold. As young women, we are completely conditioned to look for that, “Yes, yes, you can do this.” And it comes back to that good girl syndrome where we don't want to rock the boat, and we don't want to get in trouble. And the way to avoid getting in trouble is to ask first. 

If, maybe, you got in trouble as a child for sneaking chocolate out of the cupboard, well, if you ask first, then you're less likely to get in trouble. And also, the other reason that we ask for permission, is those perfectionistic tendencies that so many of us have. “Well, if I ask for permission before I then do something, if I make a mistake, well then I can outsource blame to somebody else, because I've relied on somebody else to tell me that you're ready or now is the right time. 

And once again, I've completely lost touch with my own internal barometer, my own internal radar, my own intuition that tells me, “This is the right move to make”, or “This is the not the right move”, or “Now is the right time”, versus “Now is not the right time.” And this results in such a culture of needing external validation. 

And that's the broad brush term we use. We need this from another human, to tell us either, we're doing a good job, or most of the time, for women, it's that permission. “Should I take the promotion?” “Should I do this?” “Should I do that?” And we're outsourcing our future. We're outsourcing our identity to other people who don't actually know who we are. 

This is what drives me crazy. We have a whole generation of women, women in their sort of late 30s to early 50s, who are on this journey now to rediscover who they actually want to become. Because, when we put down all these people-pleasing tendencies, and this search for validation, and asking for permission, they don't actually know. 

It's this rude awakening of, “Oh my gosh, I don't know what I want!” “I don't even know what I can have!” “And if I'm not asking someone else for permission, oh, you mean I have to trust myself?” “Oh, that's something that I've never been allowed to do since I was a very, very young girl.” And this is the challenge that we have to overcome when we have to make an uncomfortable choice whether that's going against the status quo, maybe it's leaving our comfort zone. 

Usually, that asking for permission is not because we actually want permission. It's because we've lost this trust in ourselves, but also we're too scared, or afraid, to step into action. Because what if our perfectionist makes a mistake? And what if they judge me? And what if they don't like me? Again, all this obsession, all this hyper-focused on the “other”, on those outside of ourselves, instead of this strong knowing of, “I'm terrified, I'm absolutely shitting my pants.” “But I've got to make this move.” “I've got to make this move.” “I've got to make this move for me.” 

And the moment you can start bringing that radar, if you will, that permission slip, and start writing your own, everything starts to shift for the better. I see so many women going out and, you know, asking for advice, “Should I have a third baby?” “Should I take the promotion?” “What should I do about this situation?” And there's a fine line between asking for support, and canvassing different opinions. But usually, we ask for advice when we know the answer, but we wish we didn't, and we're looking for people to reaffirm our opinion, to make us feel better. 

So we know, deep down, what that right course of action is. But we're stalling, because that's an uncomfortable choice. Maybe it breaks with the status quo, maybe it breaks with what we thought we should be doing. And this is where we get stuck. As we start to write our own permission slips, it becomes really uncomfortable, because we don't know how to do this. We have no idea how to write our own permission slips. It becomes really uncomfortable, because we don't know how to do this. 

We have no idea how to write the slip for ourselves that says, “Hey Jo, you can do what you want.” And it's like, “Well, what if it upsets other people?” “And what if this person doesn't like it?” And this is so often. What I find is that we start learning to write our own permission slips, but there's a ginormous asterisk next to it. “I can look after myself, *asterisk*, but only if nobody else is inconvenienced.” “I will take myself for a walk.” “I give myself permission to take care of my body, but only if everybody else is taken care of first.” “I'm going to cook myself a healthy meal, but I also have to unload the dishwasher and cook everything else, and look after everybody else first.” 

Can you see how even this journey, to start giving ourselves permission is full of missteps, is full of trip hazards, because we, as women, don't know how to remove the asterisks of, “I'm going to look after myself, no matter what.” “I'm going to look after myself, even if, oh heaven forbid, I have to put my own needs above someone else's.” 

And that is what this all comes down to. It’s us learning to be selfish, us learning to say, “You know what?” “I've got to fill up my own cup.” “I don't want everybody to have a half-baked version of me.” “I don't want everybody to have the fumes, and there's nothing left at the end of the day.” This exhaustion, this mental exhaustion, this emotional exhaustion that so many women are walking through life with, is tragic, because it doesn't have to be this way. This is what permission is. It's saying, “I'm going to choose something for me, and somebody else might have to wait, or somebody else might have to have a negative consequence.”

I had somebody recently, who didn't come into my Balance and Beyond coaching program because she said to me “Jo”, she said “I need this, something has to change, this is exactly what I need.” “But, I can't pay this money, because we need a new concrete slab for the shed.” And I went “Okay, there's trade-offs in life, I completely get that.” She came back three months later, and she said, “So, I've been feeling exhausted, grumpy, not present, on the verge of burnout, for the last three months, and we put the money that she was going to put towards the program to a slab for the shed.” 

And her husband went out and bought a motorbike and she said, “Oh my God, this is nuts.” “He didn't ask me, he didn't request my permission.” And I know, relationships are all different, everyone has different agreements and whatnot, but she said he didn't feel the need to ask permission. “He came to me and said, ‘I'm buying a bike.’” But, she did not have the courage to give herself permission, to say, “I'm going to get some help that's actually going to benefit you.” 

She's like, “I get no benefit from him having a new bike.” “Okay, he might go out and give me some alone time,” but she's like, “That is not a benefit to me.” Whereas, if I'm going to be calm, if I'm going to be more content, if I'm going to be better emotionally regulated, he gets a massive benefit from that, and yet, I still won't give myself permission. 

So, another nuance that we tend to see around giving ourselves permission is also this perfectionism, that we seem to want to wait until the conditions are perfect. And again, we're seeing this play out right now. In this workshop I've just had, I've had conversations with women that have said, “Jo, I need this, I want this, I want to invest in myself, but it's not the right time.” 

And I've asked a few of them, I said, “Well, what has to happen in order for it to be the right time?” And when they rattle off this list, “It should end with when the unicorn and the mermaid jump over the rainbow, and enjoy a trip on a flying pig.” because they've put so many conditions in place that have to be met, in order for them to give themselves permission to do something, that it's never going to happen. 

And this is the great tragedy. It’s this continual putting of our own needs last. What's magic, though, is the moment you start to write a permission slip. and you get some support to do that, so that you don't put asterisks everywhere, and then you beat yourself up because you didn't do it, and women get stuck in the cycle. I had a beautiful, sparkly client recently, who said to me, you know, she wanted to come into one of our programs. She's wanted to for years, and it never felt like the right time, and eventually she made a declaration, “This was going to be my time.” “I need this for me right now.” The moment she ground in that choice, and she gave herself permission to even want something. 

What that then did is opened up a conversation with her husband about, “This is what I need for me.” “It's going to make me a better me.” “It's going to make me a better mom.” “It's going to make me a better wife.” One has to shift, so that we can make this happen. I'm not suggesting you stand there like a spoiled child and say I'm going to do this to hell with everybody else. You're still a grownup. I get that. There are still. We all have time scarcity. We all have money scarcity. There's agreements that can be made, but magic happens when you ground in, “I give myself permission to want this.” “I give myself permission to look after myself.”

I've had women who come into our world, and finally give themselves permission to go and see a doctor, about a niggling injury that they've had for three years, because they never had the time and I'll get this sorted. And then, something happens with their child, and they drop everything and they're researching their health. But, “Oh no, I'll wait.” “It's okay, it's not that bad.” 

We seem to need to wait for things to be burning down, before we then go, “Oh.” When we're almost backed into a corner, and then we don't actually have to give ourselves permission. Circumstances then intervene to say, “Oh, I've just lost my job.” Or “I've just completely burnt out, and found myself in hospital.” “I guess now I need to do something about it.”

I heard a statistic recently that spoke about change. And this is where this permission comes in, and that something like 90% of change comes from one of the three Ds in our lives, and that's either divorce, it's death, or it's disease. And that these three Ds are the things that usually force the bulk of our change, and it could be death of a partner, death of a loved one, death of someone close to us, that actually gives us that reality check to say, “Hey, I have to do something now.” 

Only 10% of change is, you could say, “self-inflicted” or “self-initiated”, and so this begs the question, “Self-inflicted or self-initiated?” Giving ourselves permission is so hard, that we wait until something happens that we then seem to have justifiable reason to now give ourselves permission to do the thing that we could have done beforehand if only we'd said “yes” to ourselves. This is the challenge for you today, how do you give yourself permission? How do you write that slip? 

There's a beautiful quote from the famous philosopher Carl Jung, who said,
“Nothing has a stronger influence on their children, than the unlived life of the parent.” I'm going to say that again. “Nothing has a stronger influence on children, than the unlived life of the parent.” So, if you're a parent, where in life are you not living? And what if, by not living, you're not giving yourself permission to do something, have something, want something that is actually one of the greatest pieces of harm you could be doing to those around you? 

And I'm sure that is not your intention. You're not intending, by neglecting your health, to actually damage your children. I'm sure by playing it safe, and playing small, and not stepping up, you're not intending to put a cap on your children's success, but ironically, that's what we are doing. 

So many women come to me and say, “Jo, I want my kids to reach their potential.” “I want them to be, you know, to live their best lives, and to do whatever it is in the world that they want.” And then I find out in a very, very short conversation, that this woman has put herself in a box, and will not give herself permission to be any bigger. In this case, this client had a daughter. “How would you feel if your daughter only let herself live to 50% of her potential?” And she said, “Oh, that would be such a tragedy.” “I'd feel like such a failure as a mother.” I said, “Well, where do you think she's going to learn what that 50% box is?” “It's going to come from you.” That's where it comes from, one of my favourite quotes. 

Recently I've been talking a lot about breaking out of the box with my clients, and shining bright, and that can be really tricky, because that's something we have to give ourselves permission for. and that when you think about shining bright, you can think of that in two ways. If you want to shine bright, if you want to go big, whatever you want to call it, you either cast a very long shadow or you light the way, or you light the way. It's up to your perspective, it's your mindset, it's your permission slip that decides which of those it is going to be. 

I've struggled for a long time with giving myself permission to step into the fullness of who I am, because a lot of my childhood conditioning was around, “Don't get too big for your boots, you might make somebody else upset.” “You don't want to get a big head.” And so, that kept me small for a really long time, because I was always worried about hurting somebody else. 

It wasn't until I did this work, and when I had to write myself the biggest permission slip to say, “I am doing the world a disservice.” “I'm doing my girls a disservice, I'm doing my family a disservice, if I don't write myself a slip that says, ‘You can be whoever you want.’” No asterisks, no permission required. No, “But only if you're still considered nice”, or “Only if you don't upset anybody”, or whatever. These asterisks that we put under it, and when we ask permission to step into our greatness, or we ask permission to be our best selves, we ask permission to say, “No.” All we're doing then, is basically saying, we will only step into the box, that others are comfortable with us being, and you know what?

Why would you ever want to live determined by the expectations of others who don't know you, who don't know your vision, your values, anything about you, even if they're family? By stepping into your best self, by giving yourself permission to manage your own energy, your own money, your own time, it is always going to trigger someone, and it's always going to make someone uncomfortable. 

And there'll be people listening to this podcast who say, “Yes, Jo, but that makes you selfish.” “You can't do that.” “What about blah, blah, blah?” Or, “Oh, you're going to upset somebody.” “That's not my problem.” “That's their wound.” “That is their challenge.” 

And so, my question to you today is: Where in life, right now, if you were to take a really deep breath and pause, where are you outsourcing a decision, an investment, or a choice to someone else, and have not yet given yourself permission to have something, to want something, to do something, or even to be something? What could shift in your life right now if I said to you, “Take out a permission slip and say, ‘I give myself permission to do the thing, to say the thing, to become the thing, to spend the thing, to save for … whatever it is?’” 

Imagine the freedom that is going to unlock for you, the power that you are going to unleash and unlock is going to blow your mind. And whether that permission slip you need is to invest in yourself, by the way, I happen to know a fabulous coaching program currently open, called Balance and Beyond, that I highly recommend you come and join. 

But, that aside, investing in yourself financially, taking your time, investing your energy, investing in yourself, what is it that you need to give yourself permission for, right now, to make your life infinitely better and that of everyone around you? Grab that pen, write that slip, and let's see what you can do. 

OUTRO: Before we go, in case you missed it, I wanted to make sure you had that link to grab your free, must-have guide the Art of Saying no Without Guilt. You can visit https://www.balanceinstitute.com/sayingno Lots of practical tips, beautiful information on conditioning, and I want you to be able to embrace the freedom of saying no. Let's help you reclaim your time, boost your energy and create a life with true balance. That's https://www.balanceinstitute.com/sayingno Enjoy the guide, and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond podcast.