You’ve chosen your direction, you’ve decided where you want to go, you’ve even decided when you want to go. And yet, you still stall and stay put.

What’s stopping you? Whose permission are you waiting on? 

Mom and Dad? Your boss? Your significant other? Who?

If you are sitting around waiting for someone to give you permission, I’ve got news for you.

You’ll be waiting a long time before that permission is granted. If ever.

What if the permission you’ve been waiting around for is only available from you? What would happen if you gave yourself permission to do whatever it is that you want to do? What would happen?

Do you think you would be able to go on with your life and do the things you want? Do you think you would be able to say the things you want? Do you think you just might have the relationships, both intimate and platonic, that you want?

Sitting around waiting for permission. Do you realize that you could sit around your entire life waiting for that permission? And it never comes?

Stop waiting around for someone else’s permission. If you have to ask someone else, the answer is usually going to be NO.

When I started this blog back in late 2016, I didn’t really give myself permission to do what I’m doing now. I didn’t take the blog seriously. I didn’t know for sure what direction that I was going to go. I hid behind an avatar and tried to stay as anonymous as possible about it.

I hid it from my friends, family, co-workers, everybody. Even myself at some times.

All through 2017 I was sporadic with posting on this blog. I would go months and months without posting a single thing, and then I would have a flurry of activity for a month or so, only to go back to nothing on end for a longer time period.

It wasn’t until late January of this year, 2018, that I decided to get serious about my blog. I decided I was going to post at least once a week. So I started doing that. I gave myself permission. I soon realized that I enjoyed what I was doing and that it was starting to create a response, so I upped it to twice a week. I gave myself permission to do that.

I then decided to change things up on Twitter. When I first started my Twitter account, it was an anonymous account with an anonymous avatar. Mostly I just trolled people and surfed nonsense. Most of the people I followed at that time had nothing of value to offer to me, and the same could be said of me to them.

I changed that up in February of this year and decided to go with my own name and changed my avatar to an actual picture of me. I dumped almost my entire list of who I was following and started over. Best decision I could have made. I gave myself permission.

The blog started getting some decent traffic on its own, I started following some really interesting and influential people on Twitter and things started to get clearer for me.

I gave myself permission to be me and start saying the things that I needed to say. And people started responding.

My Twitter feed is full of value now. I enjoy getting on and seeing what is going on there. I’m having conversations of impact with men and women that I respect. I’m learning things about myself, about them, and about life in general. I gave myself permission to have all of this.

I decided at the end of March of this year to start an e-mail list. I wanted to be able to interact with more people on a more personal level. To be able to share even more intimately than I do on this blog. Best decision I’ve made to date on that one. When I first started the e-mail list, I figured I would have it be a weekly or bi-weekly thing. That lasted a whole two weeks. Then I decided to make it a daily thing. From that time forward, I haven’t missed a single day of sending out something to my list.

That list continues to grow. My subscribers have become even more engaged with me. Man, it’s been awesome.

I was worried initially that doing a daily e-mail would be too annoying and spammy. Then I decided to hell with it, gave myself permission to do it anyway, and now I’m doing it.

Then I decided to resurrect my YouTube channel. I decided to start creating content there as well as here on my blog and on my e-mail list. I gave myself permission to do that as well.

My subscriber count there is nothing to brag about, but it’s starting to grow there as well. And I’m grateful for those that have subscribed, it tells me that they are finding something of value there as well.

I wondered and worried for a minute that I would run out of time, or worse that I would run out of things to say on all my different platforms. So far that hasn’t happened. I make the time to say the things I want to say for each platform that I want to say it on and I give myself permission to not worry so much about what I’m going to say.

Giving myself permission to not worry about what I’m going to say next has been huge. Now things show up. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking out my ass, not sure where I’m going to go with it, and that’s okay. It ends up going where it needs to go. I gave myself permission to let it go where ever it needs to go and let it end up being what it needs to be.

If I can do all of this while holding down a full time job with 50 hour workweeks sometimes, a part time side gig, a full time live-in relationship that just keeps getting better and better, and still find time to do stuff just for me, as well as doing a decent amount of self care and getting enough sleep, what do you think would be possible for you if you just gave yourself permission to do it?

 

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