I Don't Need Permission

I don’t need permission, and I sure as hell don’t need anyone’s approval.

This has been my motto for the past year, and it’s been working more than I thought it would.

All through my 20s and even 30s, I had needed permission to be me. Somewhere down the line, I stopped taking responsibility for my own actions. So many times I’ve held back and not done the things I have always wanted to do because: what if I failed? I just needed someone to tell me that it was a bad idea and I would stop, agree, and move away from doing the things I had always wanted to do. It’s been these past few years that my view on the person I wanted to become had started changing. I woke up and just thought, "No one is going to create the life you want, the dreams you have, no one is going to make them come true." Only you have the power to do that, and it just dawned on me that for years, I had been giving other people permission to hold power over me. Why? so I could avoid failing. Failing wasn’t something I’m very good at; if I fall, I couldn’t just stand up and brush myself down like normal people could, I would suffer for weeks! Because if I wasn’t perfect at something, then what?

That was until I joined a youth group as an adult volunteer and gained a massive circle of friends. Then, I ultimately started to learn that it doesn’t matter how many times a person falls in life, it’s the people around you that help you back up again.

Have you ever heard that saying, someone falls in a hole, and another person jumps in and sits with you? Well, that’s kind of where I found myself a year ago. Sitting in a deep hole, alone, trying to climb out of; it took someone else to climb in the hole with me because they have been in there before and they knew the way out.

It took other people who I barely knew along with my girls, who had suddenly become women, to tell me that I didn’t need permission to be who I wanted to become, the person I always knew I should of been, that I was going to fail many, many times. It’s not about how many times you fall down, it’s about how many times you pick yourself up and carry on.

Throughout the year I came to realise that other people’s opinion of me didn’t matter, I just needed to trust myself. So when I signed up for the gym, I trusted myself that I would go, that I would take advice from other gym members, that I wouldn’t be embarrassed because I couldn’t lift the 25 pound weights, that everyone started somewhere. I was weak, half the person I used to be, but that was the very reason why I wanted to join the gym in the first place, so instead of lifting the weights, I lifted the bar, and the bar was heavy.

When I started jogging, I trusted myself that I wouldn’t have a breakdown because I couldn’t run to the post office, that I would do a walk, jog, walk, and I wouldn’t get upset if I saw anyone was watching me as I sweated and puffed my way up the road. I had faith in other people, that they had their own lives, and just because they are looking my way, doesn’t mean that they are watching me or judging me, it just means that they are lost in their own little worlds, and most people don’t even see me sweating my way to the post office.

I didn’t need anyone’s approval when I went shopping, and I finally started shopping for myself and not the person others wanted me to be. I trusted myself to know what I looked good in, so when I picked out the white jeans, I knew that when I wore them to the pub that evening, I would own them, because I looked amazing in white jeans. Confidence is key, and I have started to carry my own bags of confidence.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and think, whose life are you living, anyway? And while I had to remind myself that this was my life, that the only person I needed any kind of permission from was myself, the biggest challenge came when I bought the red bikini. It's a part of the challenge that I had set myself the year before, however, I had still to complete that one challenge. I love the colour red, I look good in red, red's my colour, but red was never the colour I felt I was ever allowed to wear. Red is for tall woman, young blond woman, single woman, everyone else but me, so my red was only the lipstick that I had worn since my teens. So the colour red was something I had always stayed away from, until I gave myself permission to just go for it.

So shopping on my own, I picked out the bikini I have always wanted to wear, paid for it, then put it in my draw but never wore it. You see, I needed permission, and I couldn’t give myself permission to wear something I never thought I was allowed to wear, so this is where it stayed. All last year I opened my draws, saw the bikini and closed it again, and every time I thought, what a waste of money. That was until the following May, almost a year after buying this bikini, I was getting my gym things ready and couldn’t find my swim suit. I opened the draw and thought, "Oh well, that will have to do," and packed it into my gym bag and didn’t even think about the colour.

After sweating it out in the gym, I showered and put on the bikini, and everything was going okay until I caught a glimpse in the changing room mirror and saw that for the first time, I was wearing a red bikini. "Holy shit," I thought, and suddenly, a thousand thoughts flashed through my mind. It's red! It’s too sexy! You're too old! It’s too young! What the hell are you wearing? But the longer I looked, the more I started noticing other things. Going to the gym had been paying off: by bum was looking nice, not perfect, but better than it had been in years; my thighs were more shapely and no longer touched each other as I stood, and where had the tummy gone? The mummy lines around my hips and tummy were still there, reminding me of my beautiful babies and the strong woman they had become, but for the first time, these lines didn’t look angry. I looked good, I felt good, and I never thought about the colour again. At that moment, I had given myself permission to wear what the hell I wanted. I left the changing room, holding my towel in my hands. No, I wasn’t going to the pool wrapped in a towel, hiding myself, this was my gym, my pool and I was going to own it.

Since then I have been giving myself permission for all sorts of things; the white jeans and the bikini was only just the start. I give myself permission to wear sexy underwear whenever I want too, the big mamma pants have gone out of the window, and the sexy little numbers I wear are for me and me alone. Each morning I smile when I get dressed, and for the first time in years, I actually feel like me.

I don’t know when or how, but I ended up giving away the power of choice. When I stopped giving myself permission, I stopped choosing, and I did it without even realising it.

Giving myself permission for this small act has started to give me permission for so many other things. It is the most enlightening thing you can give yourself. Give yourself permission to do one thing every single day and don’t feel guilty about it! And don’t wait for someone else to give you approval for who you are. YOU are the only approval you need! Take your goddamn power back.