I was talking to a friend recently about our favourite Christmas films and she described one of them as her guilty pleasure. It’s a phrase I hate. If something makes you happy but doesn’t cause harm to others why would you feel guilty for liking it?  It was a silly and mundane conversation but it made me think how giving ourselves permission to spend our time, money and energy doing the things we enjoy, with people who makes us happy is so important.

Giving Ourselves Permission

Giving Ourselves Permission to Like What We Want

If something makes you happy, why would you describe it as a guilty pleasure? Why would you be ashamed of liking something or wanting to do something just because your friends or family don’t share that same level of enjoyment.

Think about your favourite film, the one that makes you want to wrap yourselves in the comfiest pyjamas and a duvet, grab a drink and settle down. How about your favourite singer or band, would you still want to sing along out loud if your friends and family could hear you?

Admittedly nobody would want to hear me sing at any time but the point is that my love for a 1980’s power ballad knows no bounds and I have no shame in telling you that my favourite film is ET.

Giving Ourselves Permission to Spend Money and Time

There are a number of things I want to do over the course of 2020: another photography workshop, European weekend trips, build my audience for this blog and work with more brands to provide content that I’m proud of. However, as many people around me would consider these as unimportant I could be tempted to downplay and even hide some of the things I am doing by not really talking about them.

This is why giving ourselves permission becomes so important. Only I am responsible for how I spend my free time and money. To allow the negative opinions of others to influence my decisions could simply cause me to abandon my plans and objectives.

Giving Ourselves Permission to Fail

I’ve given myself the challenge of publishing a blog post every day this month. There are bloggers who post daily as standard but for me it has taken a lot of planning and preparation. It also came with the knowledge that I may not manage 100% but I should not think of it as an act of failing.

This is where permission comes into play.

We create rules for ourselves but then don’t provide the space and opportunity to miss deadlines without the feeling that we have somehow failed and ultimately let people down. The truth is that there could be a multitude of reasons why we might miss a deadline or not be able to complete a task – instead, write yourself a permission slip, take the time to reclaim your energy, get motivated, and produce work that you are proud of.

We all have our own ideas of what success means, so we all have different methods for achieving this success. This means giving ourselves permission to forget about society’s definition, setting our own goals, and taking those steps to achieve what we want. It also means allowing ourselves the opportunity to change those goals, take different routes and recognise that our priorities may also have changed along the way.

The most important thing to remember is that failure isn’t a bad thing. It’s all part of the learning process. To fail gives us the opportunity to rethink how we can accomplish something, to look at alternative methods and ultimately appreciate the success when it is finally achieved. Making mistakes allows for the opportunity to change our mindsets, and to embrace the amount of effort put in.

Giving Ourselves Permission to Be Honest

We live in a world where perceptions appear to mean more than acceptance and honesty. You only need to look at Instagram to realise that the majority of people only post the pretty and impressive aspects of their lives, the things that will cause others to be envious. The problem is that the more we look at other people’s lives the more likely we are to be dismissive of our own and so we try to create a fake version that we can show the rest of the world.

It’s incredibly stressful to live up to people’s expectations of who they think you are. The important thing to do is to give ourselves permission to surround ourselves with the people who will appreciate who you are so you don’t have to put additional energy into showing a fake version of yourself.

Giving Ourselves Permission to Be Happy

Everyone deserves to be happy.

We often tell ourselves that we will be happier in the future once we make changes to our lives, when we earn more money, move house, or take a holiday. The truth is that if you aren’t happy today, there’s no guarantee that you’ll be happy tomorrow. 

The next time you have a free day, do some of the things that you find fun or relaxing, don’t pretend to do things just because other’s might like it.

Giving Ourselves Permission to Be Unhappy

Regardless of how hard we try to be happy and to ignore the negative emotions the fact is that we all feel them at some point in our lives.

This is ok. You don’t have to feel bad about feeling bad.

Acknowledging negative emotions, accepting them and then working on overcoming them allows us to learn and grow as people.

Giving ourselves permission to live the lives we want will ultimately allow us all to be happier and healthier. 

How do you give yourself permission?

Let me know in the comments.