Permission to Be You #2: Permission Further Defined

Welcome to this week’s episode of “The Permission to Be You.” Your co-hosts’ goal is to provide you with a setting where you feel comfortable enough to truly reflect about how to uncover the authentic you. Where you feel free to discover what it’s going to take to start living the kind of life you want; one that’s grateful, meaningful and deeply self-fulfilled.

It can be so easy for our minds to become wrapped up in the clutter and “bunkum” of everyday life, and it keeps us from coming face to face with our authentic self. Today we’re discussing the definition of the permission to be you.

The permission to be you is about three things:

• Uncovering your light. The permission to be you you isn’t about creating the light, making the light, or even being good at light shining! It’s about uncovering the light and letting it shine – yup, just like the song, it’s about letting it happen. And allowing something implies it’s already inside: that’s the beauty of it.  
• Accepting the journey. The real you isn’t someplace you’re going to arrive. The point is in accepting your journey and everything you’ve learned about yourself and the world around you along the way. The power is in giving yourself permission to let it be.
• Being intentional and slowing down. The key to slowing your life down is recognizing that you need to do it – it has to begin with a conscious effort. Slowing things down is about being fully present in each moment of time; it’s like a mental time out.  We live in a life, especially when involved in corporate jobs, where we have all of these expectations and we’re rushing around trying to get things done, but there’s not a flow. You need to get into the rhythm; you have to find that flow.

Here’s the thing about being the real you: you need to assume that it has to be beyond ordinary. You’re inevitably going to have a lot of bad days and wonder what you could have possibly gained.

But in stopping, in slowing down, you realize there were some truly extraordinary gifts along the way. When you do that, when you give myself permission to accept that gift, you’re truly fueling the real and authentic you.

Final thoughts:

Terry: When I realize I’m giving myself grief, or that the speed and hurry is taking me past the moment, it’s almost like I make myself do a mental timeout. I stop thinking about the things that take me past the moment, and instead of thinking about what I should be doing, or what I can do the next try around and I give myself a mental time out to just take it all in and enjoy it.

Charlie: In that time out, absorb the beauty of the ordinary. That’s what we miss: we always want to see the spectacular sunrise or sunset. Instead, enjoy the beauty of a cloudy day at two o’clock in the afternoon. And see, that’s what the permission to be you is all about: a conscious choice to pay attention. We’re paying attention to the ordinary, and in doing so, it’s sparking a wonderful creative spirit that is the authentic us and it can only be through that conscious choice that you discover that the ordinary and unique you work in harmony, and there’s no need to compete.

Links and resources:

• Terry’s website
• Terry’s blog
• “Sanctuary” by Terry Hershey
• Charlie’s website
• “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Be sure to check us out at our respective e-homes, www.terryhershey.com and www.rightthings.com.  We look forward to starting this journey with you all. Until next time, thanks for listening.