Stop Asking for Permission

Stop asking for permission to live your life the way you would like to live it. Your family is not in control of you. You do not have to live your life through the vison of another person. We all have dreams. We all have hopes for what we’d like to do or accomplish with our little time on this planet. But far too often, we believe we cannot do things because others wouldn’t approve.

Sometimes these “others” are our friends or family, but they can also be people we don’t know, and maybe even people we don’t like. Why do we care so much about what others are thinking? Why do we think we are so important that others actually care about what we choose to do?

Here’s a little secret that I’ve recently figured out. Other people don’t care about you, or me, or most people for that matter. They don’t think about you nearly as much as you worry about them thinking about you. They are so concerned with what you and other random people think about them.

I guess one could argue that the thoughts of our friends and family are more significant and we should care about what they think, but I think sometimes people who truly care about you don’t always want what is best for you. This can be a hard pill to swallow because it seems a bit contradictory at first, right? I mean, why wouldn’t they want us to be happy and successful?

But if we, just for a moment, look at each person as an individual, we notice that we all differ in tremendous ways. We all have different insecurities and negative voices internalized, different hopes and dreams, and different ways in which we experience life. In each of us, we contain an internal negative voice that limits our scope of what we believe is possible.

And we truly want what is best for the ones we love, so we push our own perspective onto others. But with this comes pushing our own internalized limitations onto others. Because we have convinced ourselves we are limited, it can be threatening when others attempt to surpass these limits. We, in a way, want others to see the world how we see it. I guess I am sort of doing that now by starting this blog. But after reading my thoughts, you can choose to take them or leave them. To me, it doesn’t matter. You can alter your own thoughts based on my perspective, but you don’t have to. The same is true with the perspectives of others. But, in the end, the only perspective that matters is your own. Stop asking, “can I do this?” And start asking yourself, “What makes me happy? What is important to me? How can I make my dreams a reality?”