The Only Person You Need Permission from Is Yourself
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → Quietly Disruptive Podcast
Are you waiting for permission to build what you want? I believe that waiting for permission is one of the biggest things that holds founders back from going after the version of the business they have always wanted. And the question I would like to explore today is who exactly are you waiting for to give that permission to you? Because when you start to pull apart that question, you realise that the thing standing in the way does not have to be there at all.
You Used to Just Go and Do It
When we are younger, permission feels so easy. We have something we want to do and we just go and do it. When I started my first business, there was no business plan, no support, no permission from anyone. It was a crazy idea to turn a hobby into a business and I just did it. The thought of needing somebody else to say I could do it did not cross my mind. When you are younger you tend to reach for things, you apply for the job you are not quite sure you are qualified for, you try the thing and sometimes it works. There is a natural boldness to it that does not ask for approval first.
But then life appears. People start to say things, you start to listen, and that confidence that felt so natural in the beginning starts to waver. It makes you retreat. The image in my head is a snail curling itself back into its shell, waiting for the right moment to come back out again. And I think that is what happens to many founders. They start off enthused by their idea and then they hear somebody say are you sure you should be doing that, or I know somebody who tried that and it did not work out, and slowly, piece by piece, they retreat back into the shell and wait for somebody to knock on the outside and tell them it is all right to come out now.
The Endless Search for One More Thing Before You Can Start
What this looks like in practice is a founder sitting on an idea for months, tweaking it, refining it, never sharing it. It is a website tucked in the draft folder that is just not quite ready. It is the offer written in the back of a notebook that nobody has ever seen. And the story running underneath all of it is that you need more of something before you can begin. More experience, more money, more proof, more credentials, just this one more thing and then you can do the thing. But it does not work like that because once you get the one thing, another appears, and so the cycle continues. I am sharing this from experience because there are things I sat on for five, even ten years because I always believed I needed one more thing before I could start. That shell, that comfortable waiting place, becomes very safe. But the hidden cost is that it keeps you stuck.
You Have Been Asking the Wrong Person
The reframe is not that you do not need permission. It is that you do not need permission from anyone who is not you. You have been asking the wrong person. The only person who can give you permission to do whatever you want to do is yourself. Waiting for something external, whether that is somebody to say yes, conditions to be right, the wind to blow in the right direction, is waiting for something that might never come. The permission is yours to give, and it has always been yours to give.
So here is the stretch question. What would giving yourself permission actually look like? What would change tomorrow if you gave yourself permission today? Would you start your day differently? Would you take that small action step? Would you share the thing you have been sitting on? Because when you start to think about what is on the other side of that permission, you begin to see that it is more possible than you believed. It was never a bigger thing you were waiting for. It was always there. You were just looking for it in the wrong places.
About the Author: Becky Benfield Humberstone partners with Quietly Disruptive founders to build businesses that change their corner of the world, on their terms. If you started your business because you believed things could be done differently, and you're ready to make that vision real, she gets it. Based in the UK and working globally via Zoom and in person, she's done this work herself, more than once.
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