Yo, yo, yo, welcome back to the Feather Your Lifestyle Podcast conversations on lifestyle, passions, and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 247 today, and we're talking about a conversation which to me I think makes so much sense when you actually understand it, and there's so many times where I feel like we're stopping ourselves from actually getting what we want simply because we haven't been giving ourselves permission. And what if I told you the only person, yes, the only person or the only thing that's stopping you from doing the thing that you want to do is simply you, right? It's it seems so, oh yeah, probably, but it it is that simple. It really is that simple. We tend to sit around waiting for this permission slip to go about and do it, do what it is that we want to do. Uh and we gotta realize that we are our own worst enemies because maybe we don't feel confident, maybe we're insecure, maybe we're shy, maybe because we've had bad experiences, all these different things. But what I want to talk about is once we actually get past that, once we can overcome that, we can actually go ahead and actually just make so much progress. We can actually go ahead and actually live the lives that we're, you know, dreaming of doing or achieving. Um, you know, some would say that we're destined uh to fulfill. But the point is, it's like that's what I want to discuss with you today. Realizing that you are more than capable of actually doing all these things. Sometimes we just don't know it. So we're gonna break it down into a whole bunch of different uh smaller prompts and conversations today that help you uh break it down and understand it in a more, I guess, um small bitten way. Like if we're gonna eat an elephant, you've got to do it one bite at a time. And that's simply the whole, I guess, uh metaphor or similarity to this entire episode. There's a nice parallel to it all. So buckle up, get cozy, and of course, if you do enjoy this episode, make sure you do hit the thumbs up, leave a comment, you can subscribe to the uh to the podcast as well. But most of all, if you think someone else needs to hear this, share it to them, give them a little bit of a challenge and say, hey, have a listen, and hopefully we can help some other people further their lifestyle as well. Let's dive in, we're gonna roll the intro. So I think most of us have mastered this art of waiting for someone else to tell us that it's okay to begin. And a lot of that comes from validation or needing a validation from an external source because we're too scared to trust ourselves, we're too scared to uh think that what we're thinking is actually the right thing to do. Now, some of that comes from so many depths of our upbringing, of how we've experienced life, the people we grew up with, how we've been surrounded in terms of influence, um, and so many different things. Now, some of us might not struggle with this. Maybe, maybe you're all good with being able to just, you know, not giving any two hoots about anyone else, and you just go after it what it is that you want. Good on you. I appreciate you for just going after what you want. And um, maybe you can share some tips and tricks in the comments down below. Uh, but I know um for me there's been a bunch of different, I guess, areas of things which have created confusion or created um, I guess, challenges for myself in order to move forward simply because of you know things that I've experienced in my own life. So this is, you know, obviously might not be 100% exactly the same for you, but I think they're relevant uh experiences or relevant, hopefully, areas or points which are gonna be yeah, make sense to you and hopefully encourage you to get over it and move on and actually go make it happen. So the first one is uh The Myth of the Green Line. And there is a really great book um from oh geez, I actually uh I'm just blanking. Um is it Michael who is it? It is, I'm gonna tell you who it is so I don't butcher it. Uh it is Matthew McConaughey, and he has his book, uh, which is no, I'm just reading it up. I I think it's Green Light, I think it is. Green lights. And in that book, he's talking about basically you don't need the permission from someone else to go ahead and go. You've got the green lights and how to read in your life, what's a green light, what's a red light, etc. etc. But the point is, and he he goes about this as well, is nobody's handing you a golden ticket and telling you to say go. Right now, there's probably a lot of people that if you surround yourself with the right people, they're gonna encourage you, they're gonna support you, they're gonna motivate you, they're going to cheer you on, but they're not gonna do the work for you. So unfortunately, until you realize that, most of us are gonna sit around waiting to be told we're ready, waiting to be told that you should go do this. But that moment never seems to come. You know, a lot of people say, Oh, you know, when I win the lottery, I'm gonna go do this. It's like, well, the chances of you winning the lottery are very low. And if you're not even buying a lottery ticket, you're not gonna win. Um, but the most powerful permission slip is the one that you write yourself when you take back control, when you take ownership. And this is this is one of the highest and most common topics that we talk about here on the channel uh in the Feather Your Lifestyle podcast, around going after your own thing, taking responsibility, taking accountability, and you know, building the business or the lifestyle or um whatever it is that you want to pursue for yourself under the basis of what you are dreaming. What are your goals? What are your ambitions? And the the challenge with that is a lot of the time, and we'll get into some of these as well, but we we hesitate in these things is because a lot of people don't see what we see, what we envision, what we dream of. And it can be scary to bring that out into the world because we're scared that maybe, maybe people are gonna think weird of us, or maybe it's not going to work, what if it fails, or you know, we're we're comfortable at the moment. And look, all of those things are like I get it, they're valid. Like, you know, you may fail. It may not work out, you may not not might make make money, people may laugh at you. But we also have to look at the upsides of like, well, what if this works out the way we intend it? And the best person to make it to be what it's meant to be intended is you, the person that's even dreaming it and creating it in the first place. But the next point is why do we tend to get stuck on waiting around for things to happen? And it's kind of like what I just said, where there is this fear of being seen in the starting days, in the early days, because you don't know what you don't know and you're figuring it out. So it doesn't look like you know what you're doing. And that can be scary because when we don't know what we don't know, we naturally tend to, not everyone, but we naturally tend to think of the negatives because we go into that survival mode where we want to be comfortable, we want to be happy, we want to be safe. Our body and brain wants to be like, no, no, no, if you do that, that's not gonna be cool for us. We want to keep doing this because we don't have to worry about anything. But you also don't get the growth without discomfort. That's that's just the way it works. That's the math of the problem. Um, and we also have this fear of being misunderstood. Maybe it's not what people expect. I've been working on a new business with someone, and you know, we've been running some ads and we've been doing some some things, and the amount of negative backlash that people jump in and put on these things because you know we're we're we started a service and we were providing value and it's a free service to someone else on the basis that you know we are going to obviously get something in return. Um, and this is part of a collection uh system. And um someone puts on it, it's like, oh, so you get it for free and then you can make all the money. And I'm saying, well, you know, there's there's a number of different factors in here. It's like everything we get doesn't necessarily mean we make money. Uh, some of it has to be repurposed, some of it gets re donated, some of it gets refurbished, some of it gets reused, some of it gets re-homed, some of it gets donated, some of it has to get recycled, all these different things. And then someone else is like, so you make all the money. And then, you know, it it surprises me how many people think that the intention of a business is not to make money. Um, and I think it's because they get they just feel filthy about it because maybe they didn't think of it, or because we're doing something which is making a success for ourselves and they're not getting that, the only way to kind of be defensive against that is to be sour. Now, I don't know what these people's issues are, but I just find there's a lot of negativity around people going out there and getting after it, doing things that they want to achieve. So I can understand why there's this fear for it. And I guess, I guess we we tend to be wanting this validation from those who don't even matter in our future. So I don't need validation from those people because those people aren't going to be the people I'm serving. The people I'm serving are the people that have seen what we're offering, given us a call, or reached out to us and said, hey, look, yeah, we love this, this is great. How do we get how do we get involved? How do we book a collection? All these different things. And those are the people that we're working towards. And that's gonna be the way life goes for the rest of your life. There's gonna be some positives, there's gonna be some negatives, some good people, some bad people, the people that are going to support you, and the people that are just gonna be not even worth spending time on. So you have to be comfortable with it. You have to get comfortable with that. And I guess one thing you can ask yourself is have you ever caught yourself rehearsing a decision in your head just in case someone asks why you did it? That permission seeking disguised as preparation. You want to work, you want to work, you want to walk, you want to do with intention on the basis that you know why you're doing it. So that when someone asks you, you have no concern of telling them why you did it in the first place. Right? And if you are you're having to prepare, if you're having to, you know, build a narrative around it, maybe there's something there that isn't quite right, that isn't true to yourself. The other thing that we struggle with is this whole idea around permission. Well, it becomes a distraction. You think you're being cautious, but really you're stalling. This um collection system, and look, there's no, I'm not gonna get in context about that business. I've been having this idea with, you know, and now that it's live and happening with other, you know, with this partner, it makes my life so much easier. But I had this idea about um this about a year and a half ago, and I sat on it all year last year, and I'm like, nah, this year we're gonna do it. I'm gonna make it happen. And it's scary, you have to figure it out. How are we gonna do this? What are the logistics? But we started, and we're seeing success already. We're getting wins, we're getting leads, we're getting customers, and that's that's the that's the beauty of it. Yeah, sure, there was things that didn't work, we didn't get a customer for two weeks, we didn't see the results we were expecting, but that doesn't mean what you don't give it a go. Action equals proof, even if it's messy. So if you take action, you get a result. That outcome can then be redefined of okay, this didn't work, this did work, we need to fix this, right? And by doing that, you go ahead, make more action again, and you get more progress, and then you reiterate, do it all over again. No one remembers the person who waited, right? They remember the person who started, took action, and has the tangible results. At the start, no one really cares. No one thinks, you know, oh yeah, this person's gonna be a millionaire or this person's gonna be successful. They kind of think, oh, he's doing his own thing. But I guarantee you, once you get to a certain point where you are seeing that success and they look back and think, oh, how did you do this? Oh, I want to get involved. Or you know, at first people will laugh at you. And that's not a reason, you know, to stop or not start what you're doing. People are gonna laugh at you always, even when you're at the top, people are still gonna laugh at you because it's not worth it for them. Or in their minds, they've justified it that what you're doing doesn't align to what they're doing or they want, so therefore you will never ever meet their I guess validation. And that's okay because you're not seeking their validation, right? You're going after whatever it is that you want. The only thing that you need to do is get the result that you want, and happy days, right? So, um, yeah, we we need to be very mindful of that. And no one remembers anyone that waited, as I said. So stop waiting around, take action and see what you can achieve today. The other thing is there is this huge power when we start when we start to self-back ourselves. Self-back back to action. When we choose yourself, it's an act of leadership. You're taking control of your life, even if no one notices, and it's not about other people noticing, but when people realize that, oh, you did that, oh, you've done, oh, you built this from zero, oh you've oh, you've gone to the oh, you've been, you know, all these different things. When you've been consistent, when you've taken action, when you've put in the discipline, and then you've showing results and you show up, whether it's a glow-up or whether it's a change in, you know, what you're working towards, or maybe you've started a business, um, or maybe you've been working on a, you know, a little side project, and then all of a sudden it gets some traction. People are going to be like, oh, they're going to be shocked, right? Again, because they're going to be surprised that you did this without having to get other people involved. And people get weirded by that because they think that we need to be validating ourselves from everyone else. That's just, it seems to just be the way that society suggests it needs to be. But it's not. It is not. So the other thing you need to tell yourself and remind yourself is that self-permission does not need to be allowed. You don't need to make an Instagram post and say, day one, I'm going to be doing this. Some people do that to help themselves stay motivated, accountable, and all these different things, but your journey is your journey. You do you, bro, right? You just have to decide to get out there and make it happen. And it kind of leads to my final point or areas of conversation, which is around about making micro moves of self-permission, right? So I want to challenge you on a couple of things. What's something you've been wanting to do? Huh? You answer that question. I can't answer it for you. What's something that you've been wanting to do? And now, what's something that you've been waiting to do? Is it the same thing? So that one thing that you've been wanting to do, why have you been waiting to do it? What's stopping you? And the other question I'll ask you is whose opinion are you giving too much weight to? Who are you worried about the most? Why does it even matter why you're worried about them? Why does it even matter why their opinion matters? If they have no in no relation to you, no worry to you, I can understand maybe sometimes you know there is some family pressures, you know, um, people wanting it family wanting you to go study something else and you want to go do something else, and that can be hard. I can't I can't speak on that because I've never gone through that experience. But what I can speak on is you want to be true to yourself. Um, and you want to live your life, not live the life on what someone else wished they lived. And the other question that I'll get you to ask yourself is if you didn't ask for permission, what would you do differently this week? Alright. And that one might be a bit hard because what we want to be doing is you don't want to be going out and asking permission from people. What you want to be doing is, okay, I didn't ask permission, I just went and did it anyway, and what was the result from that? You want to see the tangible results. And a lot of the time is if you, you know, if if you didn't ask for permission in the first place, why does it matter? Like if you had asked for permission and someone tells you no, don't do it, or it's not worth it, or uh, you know, if you're trying to validate an idea or validate your decision, you're gonna be then diluted with someone else's opinion, someone else's understanding when it's not even their context to understand in the first place. Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't seek help and seek, you know, the guidance of others, but what I am saying is like do not go out and seek permission. Because if you go out and seek permission and then you don't get the answer you want, you're gonna go back to waiting and you're going going to go back to trying to achieve um getting someone else's opinion or weight in terms of making them happy. It's just gonna be a really bad idea because you're gonna get stuck in this continuous loop of never being able to escape. So you don't want to go out and ask permission. You want to go out there, take action, and let the action enable the permission for yourself. Because once you start getting the reps in, once you start getting the experience, once you start seeing the results, you'll realize that why didn't you start this earlier? So, permission is a myth. Uh, the door is always open for you to go do what you want to do. Obviously, there is a a right and wrong situation around this. I'm not talking about go break the law, I'm talking about, you know, people say, I can't, I can't leave my job. Well, you you you can, but there's risks, there's challenges with that. So you have to weigh up all those risks, all those challenges. Um, there's a lot of people saying, You don't want this, or I want to start a brand, or I want to build a business. And then they say, Yeah, but I want the money today, right? It doesn't work that way. You can't, you can't just expect that you're going to go create something overnight and it's going to blow up. You're going to have to build brand awareness, you're going to have to build brand equity, you're going to have to build connections and partnerships and networks with people. You have to actually understand what the brand stands for, build purpose around it, build value around it. Why do people want to be part of that purpose and value? These things take time, but the only way to do that is to take action and do. Actually do. Are you willing to walk through it before someone else tells you it's safe? That's the question you've got to ask yourself. Are you willing to give this a go, even if everyone else says it's not going to be worth it, or for someone else to tell you that it's safe? If I had listened to what everyone else had said, I would not be where I not be where I am today. And it scares me because there's still a lot of things that I don't know how to achieve yet to get me closer to where I want to be. But you don't always need to know how to get there. You need to then get into the moment, see what you're dealing with, what are your options, what are your decisions, what are the things that you're working towards on the day. And you ask yourself the simple question is like, is this going to get me closer to where I want to be? And if it is, well then you know you're on the right path. It is a simple, simple question to be asking yourself. And you don't have to then give yourself permission for it because you already know it's aligning to where you want to be going. So you can just move forward confidently knowing that this is going to get me closer to where I want to be. So my final challenge to you is if this challenge, I mean sorry, if this episode has uh kind of nudged you and you know it's challenged you, I want you to take action on something that you've been feeling curious about, already feeling maybe a little bit ready for, and actually do it. Actually just take the first step. And it might be as simple as going out there doing a walk, it might be hitting the gym, starting a YouTube channel, getting into the business world, um, talking to someone, saying hello, making a new friend, all these different things. It doesn't have to be big and glorious, it can be big and glorious in the smallest ways possible that is relevant to you. And that's why it's so important. And I would love to hear it. Let me know down in the comments. That's it for me today, folks. Episode 247. Really appreciate you being here. If you did enjoy it, hit the like button, subscribe, you can leave a comment, you can continue the conversation, and we'll be back here again next week doing it all again. Ciao