Permission
Image from Kim Eastburn
Give Yourself Permission to Live
I’ve been asked a lot lately about what possessed me to make the radical changes to my life I’ve made this past year and the even more radical ones I am embarking on in the next couple of months. What made me leave the comforts of the life I knew is a question I get from people (particularly women) excited to see me designing a whole new life but seemingly resigned to not daring to dream themselves.
I have distilled my answer down to one word: permission.
I’ve talked many times about the authentic self vs. the curated mask or facades we show the world. Carl Jung called it the 'persona” and understood that it was a by-product of learning to survive, conform, suppress, and adapt. We see in nature how members of a species learn conformity, lest they become vulnerable, prey, or worse, extinct. We humans learn the same thing, lest we become vulnerable to being ridiculed or ostracized for being the unique beings we are. From a very early age, we learn to mask who we are inside, and we spend our whole lives living out the consequences of this denial. Jung said the persona is nothing real. It is a compromise between our authentic souls and the way we think we need to appear to the outside world.
It’s that word, compromise, that gets me. How sad that we compromise so much of ourselves, that we mask so much of our beautiful, unique lights to be safe, conformist sheep. To have homes, jobs, families, and beliefs that don’t stray too far from the collective. How sad that we agree to conform to societal, familial, religious, cultural, etc. norms just to feel as if we belong. How sad that so many lives are lived in turmoil, believing the crap that was assigned by parents or caregivers who worked their own crap out on impressionable children. Most people don’t even realize how attached they are to these personas or question their origins until the scale between real and artificial begins to tip. The greater the difference between who we are authentically and the fake facade we carry around, the greater the imbalance and unhappiness in our lives.
So this is where that word, permission, comes into play.
Take the Mask Off
It’s a huge turning point to realize that we are the only ones who can give permission to change our lives. These short, precious lives are ours and no one else’s. Permission. I am shocked that it took me so long to realize that giving myself permission to drop what wasn’t working was the way I did the deepest act of self-love - I gave myself permission to really live, to finally be Kim. If we don’t give ourselves that permission, who will?
Who are we carrying these heavy masks for?? What are we carrying them for??
Image from Unsplash
When a person starts to look at the authentic vs the curated mask, they’re faced with making some tough decisions. The consequences of giving themselves permission to change their lives are often too much for most people, so they re-invest heavily back into carrying the facade. Making the decision to give yourself permission and live authentically is not for the fearful, as your whole world encounters seismic shifts. When you decide you no longer want to be a certain way, think a certain way, or act a certain way, there is pushback. I’ve heard it said that people don’t necessarily want you to be the best version of yourself; they want you to remain the version that best serves them. For those of us who have given ourselves permission, we find this out quickly. It’s where we stand in that storm of being battered by criticism, pelted by ostracism, and deluged with misunderstanding. It is where the fear of becoming vulnerable, prey, or extinct can make us question our own sanity. But when we give permission to jump, the net appears. Life renews, and the sun always shines, even after the worst of storms.
This is when we give ourselves permission to truly live.
Many of us are in gilded cages of our own making, and we don’t even realize (or worse, we don’t want to acknowledge) that we alone are holding the key. Permission is that key. Permission is the path to true freedom and happiness. We always have the ability to give ourselves permission, even when others can’t begin to understand why we are doing so. Giving permission to challenge our self-defeating thoughts, to get rid of toxic people and situations in our lives, or even change course in the middle of one's life is always an option we can take as long as we have a breath remaining in our bodies. It is the difference between walking around like a walking dead zombie pretending to be living and a shining, vibrant, joyous, authentically living being.
Authenticity Isn’t Easy
What I have personally learned about permission and dropping the inauthentic is that it is not easy, but so what?!. Nothing worth doing is usually easy, but it’s so worth it in the end to have the final piece of one's own puzzle, the piece that makes it all make sense - finally. It’s the only way to have birthed a version of oneself that knows happiness, which was impossible before. I now realize the damage I did to myself for decades, carrying a heavy, inauthentic facade because I simply never gave myself permission to drop it all. And for whom did I do it? I’ve given myself permission to realize it wasn’t for me. I’ve given myself permission to be free. I’ve given myself permission to be exactly what I was always meant to be.
And now that I am not carrying those heavy bags anymore, my hands (and my mind, body, and soul) are free. And I am giving the universe permission to shower me with all the blessings I never dreamt possible.
Get Aligned in Your Space and Life
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