5 Magic words that can change your life

“Permission says that you are open to the possibility of positive things happening. Without permission, there is no growth.” – Nedra Tawwab

How good are we at giving encouragement and advice to our family and friends? How often do we find ourselves saying “Go for it” or “You deserve it” etc., but when it comes to us, we skip over that bit and wonder why we don’t grow or things don’t manifest in our lives.

Well today may be the first day of the rest of your life, because today we’re going to talk about 5 little words that are both empowering and have the ability to flip any situation you’re experiencing in your life, on its head…

and those words are “I give myself permission to…”

1. But why don’t we grant permission to ourselves?
2. Hiding behind the green light
3. How can you start allowing yourself permission
4. My top tips

But why don’t we grant permission to ourselves?

This inability to allow ourselves permission is most often deeply seated in self-belief or lack there of.

If you think about it, as we go about our daily lives, we are constantly seeking permission from others. This is conditioning that started at a very early age, to go outside of ourselves . As a child our parents were the first custodians of our ability to do what we pleased; we would ask for something to eat or to go out to play. Then at school we had to ask the teacher if we could move from our desk or go to the loo. At work we ask our boss for holiday – and for the brave amongst us – we ask for a pay rise! To advance our career we ask for promotion. In the dating game, we seeking permission for someone to love us.

Hiding behind the green light

We often let outside influences, such as lack of experience or funds, hold us back from making lifechanging decisions in our lives, but really they are barriers that we construct ourselves. These barriers can be overcome relatively easily, compared to the REAL construct we hide behind, and that is the green light to go ahead with out plans. Giving ourselves permission to do whatever it is our heart desires.

As therapist and author Nedra Tawwab says, “Permission says that you are open to the possibility of positive things happening. Without permission, there is no growth.”

How can you start allowing yourself permission

I appreciate that this concept of allowing permission, for some, might mean that the brakes are off and your concerns might be where you’re going to stop. But for others of you it might be exactly the push that you need in order to grow and develop.

Use the magic 5 words as much as you can in your everyday life. Say them out loud as often as you can in an affirmation or mantra-like style. And if you can’t say them out loud, hear yourself saying them in your head.

“I give myself permission to…”

• be healthy
• be successful in my career
• be wealthy
• be generous and others
• be compassionate to myself and others
• love myself unconditionally
• live my life to the fullest
• be who and have what I want in my life…

You can use your journal to write more down. At the top of the page write the 5 magic words and then finish the sentence with the things that you give yourself permission to do, be or want. This is a really liberating and positive activity, as it starts to create new ways of thinking. If you want to go a stage further and to bed them into your subconscious so they become a way of life (and I highly recommend this) record them using your phones’ voice note facility and listen to them before you go to sleep at night. Be sure you speak slowly and clearly, with a calm voice, as if you’re creating a hypnosis recording, otherwise you’ll never get to sleep!

My top tips

So, whatever it is that you have been holding back on, give yourself permission to buy yourself those flowers, book that massage, compliment yourself.

Don’t get caught up in how things are going to happen, just believe in yourself and that the universe will deliver them, that’s where you need to focus. By giving yourself permission to believe, together with self-trust, you are opening yourself to doors where once there were once walls!

Celebrate and reward the wins along the way, because the journey is just as important as the destination. And by doing this you’re acknowledging that YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Until next time…