What Happens After You Give Yourself Permission — And What Pops Up to Stop You
Prefer to listen rather than read? Listen to the podcast episode covering this same topic here → Quietly Disruptive Podcast
In the last post we explored how the permission you have been waiting for is yours to give, and we asked what would change tomorrow if you gave yourself permission today. But here is what I have found, both from my own experience and from sitting with founders who are ready to build the thing they have always wanted. Giving yourself permission is often the easier part. You say yes, I am going to do it, Monday morning, let us go. And then you go to do it and that is when everything bubbles up. I cannot do it, I have not got the time, I do not know how, I am not ready, I need more experience. So today we are getting practical about what pops up after the permission and how to figure out which of those things are real and which are fears wearing a costume.
Getting Curious About What Is Driving It
When you start digging into why you have been waiting for somebody else to give you the green light, or for some external circumstance to change, something interesting happens. You start to see what has been underneath it all along. A founder who has been carrying an idea around for two years, asking everyone what they think, hearing yes it is a great idea over and over again, and still not doing it, is not lacking confidence in the idea. They are lacking self trust. There is a history of doubting their own instincts, often because those instincts have been dismissed or overridden before, and they are repeating the pattern.
A founder who sets a price, feels good about it, and then halves it in their head before even saying it out loud is not making a commercial decision. They are being driven by a fear of rejection, of not being liked, of getting it wrong. A founder who keeps their dream as a side hustle because they need to hold on to the safety net is not being cautious. They are being driven by a fear of it all going wrong, the what if it does not work question wearing the costume of sensible planning. Every time you look closely at what is driving the waiting, you find something specific underneath, and naming it is where the work begins.
The Exercise: Is It a Wall or Is It a Door?
Here is a practical exercise that will help you see what is going on under the surface. Grab a piece of paper and list out every single thing you can think of that is holding you back or that you are waiting for. Do not filter it, do not judge it, just get it all down. I do not have the money. I do not have the experience. I am not ready. I need more credentials. I need to get this one thing right first. Whatever it is, write it down.
Then for each one, ask yourself this: is it real, or is it a fear hiding behind something else? And here is the way to think about it. Is it a door or is it a wall? A door is something you can push on and walk through to somewhere else. A wall is something standing in your way that you need to figure out how to get around. And the follow up question for every wall is whether it is permanent or temporary, because most walls can be made smaller, worked around, or dissolved entirely if you ask the same question again in a month.
Most of What You List Will Be Doors, Not Walls
Take the classic I do not have the experience. That is almost always a door. A lack of experience is often the thing that lets you see an industry or a niche differently because you come at it from the client’s point of view. You can ask the questions nobody else is asking, see the gaps nobody else can see, approach the whole thing with a beginner’s curiosity that finds things an expert would walk straight past.
Or take I am not ready. That one is almost always fear wearing the costume of logic. It sounds responsible. It sounds considered. But underneath it is the fear of not knowing all the answers, of not having the plan in place, of not being able to see every moment on the journey before taking the first step. The solution to this one, as always, is to start small. One step, then the next. It is not about getting to step ten before you have done step one.
When you sit with your list and explore each item, I think you will find that there are more doors than walls. More things that are openings than obstacles. And the walls that do exist are rarely as permanent or as solid as they seemed before you wrote them down and looked at them in black and white.
The permission is always yours to give. But looking at what pops up the moment you give it, naming each thing, asking whether it is real or a fear, deciding whether it is a door or a wall, that is where the work lives. Once you give yourself permission, the only question left is how you decide to use it.
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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