Practicing the skill of giving yourself permission in order to change your life & biz.
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Are you waiting on permission in your business?
Let me explain: perhaps there’s something you want to let go of or stop doing. Or maybe, it’s something NEW you want to try that might not make a lot of sense, but you feel completely lit up by trying it out.
If you really got quiet and listened, you might realize that it’s ok to stop the thing or move forward, but the thing that’s been holding you back is waiting for someone to give you permission.
Well, guess what? You can give it to yourself.
This seems like such a simple concept, but it’s something I see a lot of my clients struggle with. And the minute I tell them things can be done however the heck they want- that it’s 100% A-OK to use their creativity and imagination to build things in a way that aligns with their energy levels, values, and purpose, waves of relief wash over them.
But it’s not my- or anyone else’s- permission that anyone needs. It’s your own. That’s the only way it truly works and empowers you to create something amazing in your own vision.
This is a lesson I learned years ago when I went I decided to leave my marriage and get a divorce. (Something a touch on in this episode.)
After months and months of therapy, books, endless conversations… I realized I wasn’t going to get any new information. I was simply waiting for permission to leave. So I gave it to myself, even though it was one of the hardest decisions I ever made.
And this lesson has stuck with me over a decade later as I apply it to just about every other aspect of my life.
Listen to the episode below:
This episode discusses topics like…
Why it’s such a relief when you finally give yourself permission to do things in a way that’s aligned with your energy and values.
How going through a divorce 14 years ago fast-tracked my personal growth, and how the lessons I learned then continue to inform the decisions I make now- even in places like my business.
How our conditioning, societal expectations, and wanting to follow the rules, lead to “waiting for permission” when we intuitively know it’s time to make a change or go in a different direction.
What it means to recognize when you have all the information to move forward but are hesitating to avoid discomfort.
Why slogging and resenting your way through your to-do list will never lead to the results you’re after.
Links from the episode:
Follow me (Sarah Ehlinger) on Instagram for honest conversations about business, mindset, and my life.
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Thank you SO much for being here, friend. See you in the next episode!
xoxo
Sarah
Episode transcription
You're listening to the brand spanking you podcast, where we dive into what it looks like to show up for those big important, and sometimes kind of scary things in your life because you don't want to just get through it. You want to grow through it and become a bigger, bolder version of yourself. On the other side, I'm Sarah Ellinger, former creative director and strategist for multi-million and billion dollar brands turned entrepreneur.
And this show explores what it looks like to approach life as one big creative project, going beyond the ordinary, finding out what you're really capable of and throwing out the script in order to do things your way when you're ready to get into it. Let's go.
Okay. So today I want to talk to you about permission. So one of the things that comes up seems like it comes up over and over and over with my clients is what they're really waiting for is permission to do something or stop doing something. And then it's like, when I give them that permission and not saying like, I'm, oh, I give you permission to do this.
But when I explained a certain way of doing things or that things, you know, just because of. Things, a lot of people say XYZ thing needs to be one way or the other. Um, and I say, well, actually you really don't have to do it that way. Like, there's a million different ways to approach this and we can do it in a way that fits with your personality and your energy and your time and your resources.
And like a hundred percent of the time, or almost a hundred percent of the time. They're like, oh my God, thank you so much for saying that, oh my God, that's such a relief. And this is something that I do with myself quite a bit. So I give myself permission quite a bit. And the way I learned how to do that, we're gonna, we're gonna get into a little bit of story time here.
So. Um, back in the day and this isn't something I've talked a lot about on this podcast yet. I'm sure I'll get into it more. But, um, at the very beginning of, I mean, let's face, it, we've all been on a personal growth journey for our whole entire lives, but we all have those moments that really. Um, kind of fast track our growth.
And one of those moments for me was, um, I guess it's been about 14 or 15 years ago now, and I was married and I decided to leave my marriage. Now I'm not going to go super deep into what all was happening at that time and everything that went into it, but I'll give you just. The CliffsNotes version that we were really good friends.
And, um, from the outside, looking in, there was nothing like super wrong with our marriage. Like he was a great person. I was a great person. We really loved each other. We were best friends, but we were not, it was, it became increasingly clear to me over the seven years that we were together or 10 years, we were together, seven years, we were married that.
We weren't the best marriage match. What complicated that then is like making that decision, like making the decision, like, okay. Do I stay and we work on this and try to figure it out, or like, do I go? And it was, it was all very confusing and it was a very long process working through that from a personal growth perspective.
The thing that finally flipped something in my brain, because I just was going back and forth, back and forth. I was in therapy. I was in, I was doing all of the things. We were doing all of the things. Uh, the thing that finally flipped it for me though, is that I read this book and it was a book that a friend gave me.
Um, I don't remember the name of it. I'm sorry, but there was all these different things in the book about like, should you stay, should you go? And one of the chapters. Was all about permission and basically said that sometimes people were staying in situations or relationships. Like I realized you could apply this to anything like it wasn't just marriage, right.
It was a job or, um, you know, a friendship or. Um, a relationship with a family member or, you know, all sorts of different things. And the author was talking about like, sometimes people know, like they know deep down in their heart or in their intuition that it is time to go, or it is time to stop doing something.
Or it is time like it's time, but. They're unable to do it because of their background, their upbringing, societal programming, because they're waiting for permission. They're waiting for someone to say, yes, this is okay to do this because the decision that they have to make is maybe, um, feels like it goes against what.
Other people might think is the right decision or other people might think is the way that things should be happening or should be going down. And I remember reading that and it was like the biggest light bulb went off in my head and I realized that I wasn't going to solve my life. I wasn't gonna solve my way out of it.
There wasn't like. Suddenly, I wasn't going to get a new, new piece of information. Right. I already had all the information I needed and then I was sitting there and I was waiting. And what I was waiting for was someone to give me the permission to say like, yes, it is. Okay. It is okay to do this thing.
That's going to be really hard and is probably going to upset a lot of people, but I give you permission to do it. And in that moment, I realized that the only person who was going to give me permission to do that was me. Right. So I had to do that. I had to give myself permission to do the hard thing to do.
The hard thing that I knew was the thing that needed to be done. And that's when I really started building that skillset. And now I'm talking about this and thinking about this a lot more recently, as I have more one-on-one clients, coaching clients, and I see them coming to me for over and over and over, and like the same thing, that same process I went through where I'm like, no, I have to do this.
I have to do this. Or I have to do. I have to be the good girl or I have to do it this way, or it should be like this, or does it, you know, like all of those things that are in our brains about how things are supposed to be the way we're supposed to do things the way we're supposed to show up as like a good human being or a good business owner or a good marketer and what those people need and what my clients need, what they want is just permission to.
Like a lot of times is permission to stop doing the thing is permission to take a break permission to, you know, it's like I got personal stuff going on in my life. Yeah. You have permission to take two weeks to regroup. That's why we start businesses so we can do stuff like that. Let's figure out how we can make that happen for you.
You have permission to not have to do a launch that is three months long and involves 5 billion funnels and email sequences and visited, you know, And let me tell you, I know that there are obviously tips and strategies and things within business, that work. That's why people, that's why people say, like to do them.
They work like funnels, work, sales pages, work, launches, work, but they don't work if you're like slogging your way through them and resenting every single minute of it. Like then it's not going to work. And that's where you come in and you have to give yourself permission to do it differently. You have to give yourself permission to maybe let some things go.
You have to give yourself permission to maybe do things a different way. You have to give yourself permission to do things on a different timeline. Right. Like, yeah. Maybe some people can, um, launch a podcast in 30 days. Well, maybe you want to take a year to launch. Now, all of this, obviously like any decision you make, comes with, you know, quote unquote consequences.
And I don't mean that in a bad way, a negative way. It's like every action has a reaction. So obviously if you want to take longer to do something, um, it's gonna take longer to get results. But if you are. Burning yourself out or doing a bunch of shit that you don't want to do in the first place. You're not going to get the results.
Anyhow. Like that's also a consequence. So if you're doing things the way that people say that you should be doing them and like in your gut and in your body, you're like, ah, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do it like that. Well, what kind of results do you think you're going to get? You're going to get results.
I mean, maybe you'll get some good results to start, but over time they ain't going to work out for you. And that's why generally speaking, by the time someone ends up coaching with me, they're at that point where they're just like, I'm doing all these things, I'm doing all these things. Or there's all these things I want to be doing.
And I start giving them permission to like, wait on things, to do things in a different order, do things in a different way. So, yeah, permission. I just, I wanted to speak to you this week. This'll be a little bit of a shorter one, but I wanted to speak to you this week to just start considering that, just start considering where are the places you'll know it, like really tap in and think about those things.
Like you'll start to energetically feel those things where you're like, I wish someone would just tell me that I didn't have to do this. Where are those places? Where can you give yourself permission? For a lot of people, it's Instagram. I wish someone would tell me, I just don't have to do this, but guess what?
You don't have to do it now. I'm not saying you don't have to do something in its place because you still have to, like, if you're in the business of business and making money, you still have to find a way to find your audience and market yourself and, you know, do all the things. But. I don't care what anybody says.
If anybody says you have to do Instagram, they're wrong because, or any other method, you know, because anybody says you have to do at one certain way. I, you could immediately go out and find examples of people who are doing it in a completely different way. So there's your proof, right? You have proof that doesn't have to be done a certain way.
So if there's someplace in your business where you're waiting for permission to not have to do that thing, give yourself the permission. And then once you give yourself the permission, find a different way. All right. That's all for today. I will see you back here again. Next week. Hey there, if you enjoyed this episode, the best way to support the show is to share it with someone else or post about it on Instagram.
Be sure to tag me at brand spanking use so I can show you some love. That's at brand spanking you with an N not an ING. Go to brandspankingyou podcast.com for show notes and links. And if you're ready to take it to the next level, uncover your brand superpower and leave confusion in the dust. Head on over to brandspankingyoupodcast.com/spark to learn all about my brand spark sessions. In just sixty minutes, They've been known to completely transform the way people think about their brands and let go of what's not serving them and their businesses. That's brandspankingyou podcast.com/spark. All right, that's all for now. This is Sarah Ellinger and I'll see you next time.