Permission: Finding your "YES"

*Each blog post is interactive and includes a free playsheet to download at the end.

How to find your “yes”

Many of us have spent a lot of time thinking and learning about setting boundaries in our lives with a great emphasis on learning to feel and honor our “no.” This is a great skill and practice, but there is more to boundary setting — learning to feel and honor your “yes”.

Finding your “yes” or Permission is the practice of learning to feel okay with yourself exactly as you are. Permission is also the process of coming to know what is good for you, what you long for, and what you wish to actively allow into your life.

Somewhere along the way, most of us internalized the idea that we are not okay just as we are. Often, being “broken” has been a story that provides some kind of protection. Being wounded and being broken are not the same at all. Being wounded means you are human, and have been harmed by some impact you experienced. It means healing is possible. Being broken means there is something wrong with you for being how you are.

Back to permission. Giving yourself permission for the fullness of your humanity is an act of tremendous kindness. It is an investment of faith in yourself, your body and your process. It is giving yourself the acceptance that you need. Permission is about developing capacity to experience the full range of your emotions and sensations, while remaining connected with your own dignity.

Have you ever had a fantasy that you feel ashamed of? Even if it is really hot and works like a charm? The shame arises from the conflict between your arousal, and the cognitive dissonance you experience about why that particular fantasy is arousing. You probably don’t want this fantasy to actually occur in your real life, but in the privacy of your mind it’s exciting. What happens if you give yourself permission for that fantasy?

Many people, when asked to give themselves permission for something they have been withholding, feel fear. What will happen if I let go of the control I am exerting over myself? Will I fall into depravity, lay on the couch all day eating bon bons, or somehow fail to show up for my life in the way I want? The thing is though, you already have that fantasy. And there is nothing wrong with fantasy.

It becomes easier to give yourself permission to want what you want, feel what you feel, be who you are, if you investigate WHY you have not been giving yourself permission. The attitude to cultivate here is curiosity, not blame. Getting CURIOUS about your own experience is a more effective pathway to understanding and shifting some of the repression you experience.

For many, denial of pleasure is a cultural norm and pleasure is dangerous. Pleasure means forgetting the most important mandate: work! Feeling good cannot coexist with getting shit done. Of course, this is untrue, but this kind of thinking is very present for many of us, therefore we do not permit much pleasure in our lives.

Pleasure is what feels good now AND feels good later, and is deeply aligned with your values and integrity. When you feel this kind of pleasure, including right livelihood, functional community, embodied presence and honest, heartfelt connection, it becomes impossible to act in a way that is out of alignment with these principles. Feeling good BECOMES your guiding principle, and feeling good with, not at the expense of, others.

Permission for this kind of pleasure is a deeply radical act of revolution. It is the energy that can fuel our movements, and wreak havoc with power/economic structures. We sense this. We know this truth in our bones. Feeling good is natural. Remembering how to feel good, and how to feel safe feeling good, and giving yourself permission for safe-enough but not too-safe pleasure is justice.

Question to ask yourself:

Where is it easy to give yourself permission?

Where do you struggle to give yourself permission?

Practice

Explore which of the two options you find easier to permit in your daily life and consider why:

• Eating or drinking
• Movement or stillness
• Laughing or crying
• Sexy clothes or pajamas
• Talking about sex or not talking about sex
• Doing something because you are supposed to or not doing the thing because you are supposed to
• Arriving early or arriving late