Permission Was Never the Missing Piece

From Shared Moments with Michelle · 9:11

Show by Michelle L. Potter

Welcome back. This is Day 8 of our ten days on purpose and meaning. If you’re just joining us, you can start with Day 1, The Frustration That Keeps Returning. If you listened to the audio, thank you. This post is the written side of the conversation.Yesterday we talked about the cost of keeping everything together. Today I want to talk about what keeps us waiting, even after we know exactly what we want.What we’re waiting forWe can all name something we’re waiting for. It might be the book we haven’t written, the conversation we haven’t had, the direction we haven’t taken, or the decision other people won’t understand. We’ve thought about it, researched it, and talked about it. We’ve told ourselves more than once that the timing isn’t right.Taking time to make a thoughtful decision is wise. Life involves real responsibilities, and our choices affect other people. I’m talking about something different. I’m talking about looking for someone else to validate a choice that is genuinely ours to make. There’s a difference between considering someone’s perspective and giving them authority over our own life.Permission arrives, and the doubt staysHere’s what I’ve noticed about waiting for permission. Picture someone who finally gets it. A friend says, “Go for it.” A family member agrees. A mentor gives their blessing. There’s relief for a day, maybe two. Then, in the middle of an ordinary afternoon, the doubt comes back. Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe it’s going to fall apart. So they ask someone else, and then someone else, because the first yes didn’t settle anything.That’s the part that surprises people. Permission arrives, and the doubt stays. It stays because what was missing was never permission. The person already had their answer. What they didn’t have was trust in it, and the permission they were waiting for couldn’t give them that.Two stories from From Hell to RebirthI know what it’s like to learn the difference. I want to share a story from my book, From Hell to Rebirth. This was the moment I felt drawn to yoga. My perception was that it wasn’t Christian, and a lot of that came from other people’s opinions. I wrote that it didn’t feel true to me, so I persisted. I researched, I prayed, and I kept looking until I found a path that fit my faith. I became a certified instructor. When the old thought, “I am not good enough,” tried to win again, I shut that door really quickly, because I would not hear of it.I also wrote about a time I went to the emergency room to have a tick removed when I was re-bit. A nurse told me I shouldn’t even be there. My first response was to walk out. Then I stopped and spoke up for myself. What mattered wasn’t what was discovered afterward. It was that I stood up for what I knew I needed, and I wrote that I was proud I didn’t take people’s judgments as I had done so much in the past.Self-trust is built in moments like those. It doesn’t come from one grand decision. It comes from the ordinary times when our familiar response would have been to question ourselves and back away.Where my work comes inThis is where my work comes in, because trusting yourself on the day someone questions you takes more than deciding to. Take someone who is about to make a choice their family won’t understand. They can promise themselves they won’t need anyone’s approval, and then the first raised eyebrow arrives. There are several layers underneath that reaction. One is the story they’re carrying, something like, “If someone disagrees with me, it means I’m selfish.” There’s a physical response: a tight chest, an unsettled stomach, an urge to explain until everyone in the room is comfortable. There’s also a lack of practice, because this person has spent years doing the opposite.The work I do addresses all three. We rewrite the story, looking at where that belief came from and what meaning someone attached to it. We rewire the response, working with the body’s reaction so they can feel the discomfort without automatically returning to the old behavior. Then we retrain, which means practicing the new response in real situations until it becomes familiar. Rewrite, rewire, and retrain are how we move from understanding to living differently.That is the work inside Awakening to R.I.S.E., my three-month private coaching experience. R.I.S.E. stands for Reclaim, Inspire, Strengthen, and Empower. We reclaim the parts of ourselves we lost sight of beneath old stories and expectations. We inspire a different possibility by reconnecting with what we genuinely want. We strengthen our self-trust by practicing new responses and making conscious choices. Then we empower ourselves to carry those changes into the way we live. The experience is shaped around the person, not an identical set of lessons. I’m not there to decide what’s right for you. I bring the guidance, tools, and deeper work to help you develop greater trust in your own judgment and begin making choices that reflect it.If you recognize how often you look…

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