Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep 07: How Self-Permission Is the Key to Empowered Living
58 Plays1 year ago
We're exploring the incredible impact of self-permission and how it can redefine your life.
Join me as I share my personal journey of embracing self-permission to live authentically, pursue my dreams, and make decisions without seeking external validation. We’ll dive into actionable steps for balancing rest and relaxation, scheduling those vital vacations, and prioritizing self-care to boost your overall well-being. Plus, we’ll touch on the importance of body acceptance and celebrating your individuality.
Feeling inspired but not sure where to begin? My Boldness Coaching is here to help you unlock your potential, overcome fears, and live your most authentic life. Visit my website to learn more and schedule a consultation... https://hello.dubsado.com/public/form/view/62e32bc50b571daea26eb008.
I’d love to hear from you! Share your experiences and steps in the comments section of this episode. Your story might just be the spark someone else needs.
Tune in, take those BOLD steps, and start living a life you love!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Evolution of Bold Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Evolution of Bold Podcast, where we celebrate the power of women and their journey to greatness. I'm your host, Vinesh Johnson, also known as the Boldness Coach. I'm excited to take you on a journey of self-discovery, empowerment, and transformation. Whether you're just starting out or well into your journey, I'm here to guide you through the challenges, help you find your purpose, and to help you let go of anything that's holding you back.
00:00:26
Speaker
So take a deep breath, relax, and get ready to dive into some juicy topics that will inspire and empower you to find your level of bold and evolve into the best version of yourself.
00:00:40
Speaker
But before we get started, let's take care of a little bit of housekeeping. Make sure that you hit the subscribe button so that you can join a community of bold women who are transforming their lives. Make sure that you hit that notification button so that as new shows are released that you get notified.
00:00:59
Speaker
And also connect with us on social media. We want to hear your journey. We want to celebrate you on the journey. We want to support you on the journey. And also when you share, you inspire other women in the community to share their journey as well. So now that we got the housekeeping out of the way, let's get into the juicy topic of today. Welcome to another episode of the podcast show. I'm so glad you're here.
Understanding Self-Permission in Bold Living
00:01:26
Speaker
the news On today's episode, I am talking about self-permission. me Yep, you heard me talking about self-permission. We're going to break down what is self-permission and the importance that self-permission has in you living a bold life. By the end of this episode, you're going to be clear about that definition. I'm also going to be talking about why self-permission is important.
00:01:55
Speaker
and three areas in your life where giving yourself permission can make the ultimate difference and the level of boldness that you bring to your own life. You know, the drill gets you something to write with. If you are in a place to be able to capture notes, if you're driving, don't be writing and driving, just listen along. You can always go back and catch the replay of this episode. So,
00:02:23
Speaker
Let's go, let's dive in, and let's talk about self-permission.
00:02:30
Speaker
So before we get started into the content, I want to just really share with you, where did this come about? you know Where did self-permission really come from? And it's really one of the philosophies that I live by in my life. And self-permission was the catalyst that really springboarded me into being able to have the life that I am desired for a very long time. I needed to give myself permission to be able to live in my worthiness. I needed to give myself permission to live from a place of self-empowerment.
00:03:14
Speaker
I needed to give myself permission to live from a place of self-care and optimal well-being. I just needed to give myself permission for every area of my life. Because truth be told, the only way that anything was going to change was would would be because of the permission that I gave myself. And the permission had to come from internal versus external.
00:03:43
Speaker
So up until this day and beyond, this is a philosophy that is so important to me. And I feel like at the end of our conversation today that you will start giving yourself permission to live your life at a whole different level of boldness. At least that's my hope for you. So allow me to be the demonstration for you to tell you and to show you what it looks like to live from that place.
00:04:13
Speaker
and how this philosophy can change your life. But first, before we get into you know really talking about areas of self-permission, let's get clear. What the heck is self-permission?
Self-Permission: Definition and Empowerment
00:04:27
Speaker
It really is the conscious act of giving yourself the authority or freedom to take action, pursue desires, or make decisions without waiting for external validation or approval.
00:04:43
Speaker
It's all about recognizing your own power. It's about recognizing your needs, your wants, your desires. And it also is a way to competently move forward in your life based on your own values. It's so easy to go to other people and to ask them what they think you should do. When you do that, you go to other people and ask their permission it really lets you off the hook for being responsible and taking ownership of your actions. That way it's easy to blame on somebody else. What a reason it didn't work out, girl, because you told me to do it this way and you didn't tell me about that stance. But when you come from a place of giving yourself permission, you really have to take a stand. You really have to totalize because if anybody gets let down,
00:05:42
Speaker
It would be you letting yourself down. So you see how how really critical self-permission is. But I want to talk about and go a little bit deeper and why is self-permission so important? And there are several areas that I'm going to hit on why and where this is so important you know to bring self-permission to. One of the first areas is empowerment. Self-permission empowers you to take control of your life.
00:06:12
Speaker
Instead of you relying on others to dictate to you about what you cannot do, you become the decision maker. Just the example that I gave, you become the decision maker of your life. I think that what would be helpful is to create the title for yourself of decision maker. So forget whatever is on the door at your office.
00:06:38
Speaker
Forget whatever is on the name plate on your desk. Forget whatever is on the signature line of your email. I say replace it all and give yourself the title of decision maker. And decision maker for self. This is going to help boost your competence. It's also going to help boost your self-worth. Another area where self-permission is of important is authenticity.
00:07:08
Speaker
You know, you hear this so much in today's conversation, you know, when people say, you know, I really want to be my authentic self. But but how do you get to authenticity? How do you get to be your authentic self? When you're your authentic self, you are making decisions that align with your true self rather than them um coming from an external expectation. You are connecting your wants, needs, and desires with the way that you want to pursue goals, with the way that you want to pursue actions, it's what really resonates with you the most. And the way that you can feel, you know, the resonance is really about what it feels like in your soul. Come on now, you know when something don't feel good and you know when something feels right and being able to speak from that position.
00:08:06
Speaker
about what feels right for you, what doesn't feel right for you is so empowering. And to be able to connect those feelings to something that's aligned with your true self, your belief and your values, that will confirm it for you that you give yourself permission to move forward or not move forward. So self-permission is important to confirming your authenticity.
Overcoming Fear and Embracing Creativity
00:08:35
Speaker
Another area is overcoming fear. Let's face it. A lot of women hold themselves back because of fear of judgment or fear of failure. Self-permission really is a way to encourage you to get out of your comfort zone. It's a way for you to take risks. It's a way for you to move past self-imposed limitations or societal pressures.
00:09:04
Speaker
So I want to tell you that I share with you that as an entrepreneur going into my 29th year, I have really relied on giving myself permission to overcome fears because I didn't start off my entrepreneur journey in a traditional way if there is such a thing in the entrepreneurial space. I didn't go to a four-year college. I didn't get a formal education in entrepreneurship.
00:09:34
Speaker
I didn't work for a small business before. So this was really uncharted territory as it related to my life, my skills, my knowledge, my education, and perhaps my even my understanding at that level of what entrepreneurship was. And there were so many times that I came up on things I didn't know. And there were so many times that I had no one.
00:10:01
Speaker
that I could go to to get those answers. Yes, I picked up a book and I read books. Yes, I read articles. I did as much legwork and research as I could, but sometimes it still didn't give me an answer of yes or no or do it this way or do it that way. So ultimately what had to happen was I had to step through that fear and talk myself through it.
00:10:31
Speaker
because there was a lot at stake, right? there's always ah There was always, if there is always, you know the looming energy of failure. But I had to really learn to embrace that there was something inside of me that felt right to move forward with whatever choice that I was choosing. And even when there were times that I felt that things fell a little off, I had to really ask myself,
00:11:00
Speaker
Is it feeling off to me because it doesn't feel right or true? Or is it feeling off to me because I am afraid of it? And when I truthfully answered the question whether or not I was afraid of something, that within itself gave me the power to give myself permission to move forward. Because here's the reality. The fear isn't really real. We make fear real.
00:11:29
Speaker
We make fear real because we attach it to something that could be a possible outcome. And I found myself very early in my entrepreneur adventure, attaching my fear to the what if. What if this happens? And then if this happens, then that can happen. And then when that happened, that would happen. I literally found myself creating a whole fear-based story because I was afraid to give myself permission. Now ask yourself that question. How many times have you created a fear-based story because you were afraid to give yourself permission because you didn't know how it was gonna turn out? But here's the reality that led me to getting on the other side of fear, was giving myself permission to trust myself.
00:12:27
Speaker
and give so and giving myself permission that, hell, if it didn't work out, I'm just going to try something different. I'm just going to do it again until I do find what works. I think the other thing that helped me to overcome my fear was I stopped telling people what I was doing. I stopped seeking permission and stopped looking for validation that this way was better than that way. Or I stopped looking for validation to confirm that the fear of what I thought was going to happen. So just really let that sink in for you because I want you to think about any, are you doing any of those actions, you know, that are keeping you in a place of being fear-based?
00:13:18
Speaker
But once I got outside of that, it really led me to and an incredible opportunity for learning. It led me to an incredible opportunity to develop my intelligence, to expand my intellect, to be exposed to information and people and environments and scenarios and situations that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to do.
00:13:46
Speaker
So it's important to give yourself permission so that you can overcome fear. And trust me, once you start overcoming fear on a continual basis, you'll never look at fear the same. At this point in my life, I ain't scared of nothing. Because I trust myself, and once I give myself permission that I can overcome this, you may may as well either get on the team or get out of the way. Your choice is yours.
00:14:16
Speaker
A couple of other, a few other areas. um You know, increased creativity and innovation. When you give yourself permission to be curious, it really can put you in the opportunity, in the and the position to explore opportunities for your career and maybe even for other areas in your life. What you want to do is to be in that place for looking for new things. You know, what could it possibly be?
00:14:46
Speaker
What's out there? What could it possibly look like? What could it possibly turn into? And it allows you to play in the space of innovation and creativity because it's like creating free form. It's like, I don't know what this is going to turn into, you know but I'm just going to start working my hands you know to create it, or I'm going to take it you know out of thought, put it into paper so that I can see what it looks like.
00:15:15
Speaker
It just will spark this energy within you where you're like, wow, I didn't know it could look like this, so let's tweak it this way. Or let's move this section to this section, or let's put pictures and colors to it. It's really a way to give yourself the opportunity to be in in full expression. And when you are in full expression, it's kind of like being kid-like, right?
00:15:40
Speaker
It's almost like giving yourself permission to get out of this this rat race of being an adult and really just be in a place of play. Give yourself permission to innovate, create an equally important play. but um Also, self-permission is crucial for personal growth. Oh my gosh.
00:16:06
Speaker
This has probably been one of the most exciting areas in my career is, and even in my life, not even in my career in my life, because my career is part of my life, is to give myself permission to evolve without constantly seeking external evaluation. I have grown in so many enormous ways. It's incredible to me.
00:16:35
Speaker
and giving myself permission to really investigate, to be curious, to play with, to be authentic from, to be empowered by the true essence of who I am. That has led me down a pathway of embodying all of me that really makes me who I am.
00:17:04
Speaker
And I gave my myself permission to explore the different facets of who I am. I gave myself permission to explore in the area of my career. What would my career you know possibly look like if I were to lean into my ambition? What could my financial positioning be like for myself if I were to really spend time understanding my financial desires, you know or my financial areas that hold me back, or the possibilities of what my life could look like if I were to create a whole new financial up-level position for myself.
00:17:55
Speaker
You know, the personal development permission area has given me an opportunity to explore my own health and my wellbeing. What could my life possibly look like if I were to understand the baseline of my health? What's going on, you know, in the physiology of my body? What kind of choices could be available for me to shift myself into optimal health?
00:18:23
Speaker
What could I do to really take ownership of my own health and not lean towards you know the doctors or a lean towards traditional medical practices you know to give myself optimum health? And really just looking at those areas and giving myself permission has changed tremendously for me the way that I live my life out loud. It also has enhanced my lifestyle.
00:18:53
Speaker
And it's just so mind blowing. One of the areas I'll tell you, you know, especially speaking from the health and wellness perspective, I gave myself permission and I i consistently do this every day. I give myself permission to put my health care first and to put self care first. So every day that I am not starting my day off working on a business project, you know, at the top of the morning,
00:19:21
Speaker
I have carved out a few hours in the morning time to allow myself to really be present in self-care for myself. That to me looks like getting up in the morning and taking my walks in nature. That looks like me listening to podcast shows um like this one and others.
00:19:45
Speaker
as well as um listening to audio books that promote, you know, different ideas and strategies and tools and techniques that enhance my self-care and my wellness. And when I got, gave myself permission to put my health first, I have been um rewarded, you know, with weight release in excess of 30 plus pounds. Because as I started getting into it,
00:20:13
Speaker
um and making it a priority, it then triggered other aspects of my health and wellness. I started looking at um things that I was putting in my mouth. I started looking at why was I putting those things in my mouth? And I discovered that I am an emotional eater. And so being able to discover that helped me to really realize and look at the actions that I was doing that were causing me harm.
00:20:42
Speaker
But I really needed to give myself permission to dig deep into, you know, my own way of being, you know, around personal development and personal growth. And this also led me to, as I mentioned a few moments ago about other tools, techniques and strategies and ideas. And here's why this became important because The community around me, you heard me say this in other podcast episodes is that they were just at different levels.
The Role of Aloneness and Mental Freedom
00:21:13
Speaker
And I really have this vision for myself and my health and wellness and my lifestyle and my wellbeing that I needed to give myself permission to pursue on a journey of aloneness. Now that's different than being lonely, but the aloneness is really where I
00:21:35
Speaker
felt empowered with you know giving myself permission for personal growth. And ta-da. I really have embodied you know a deeper level of confidence about how I navigate and move through the world. And giving myself permission to grow also has allowed me to be a demonstration for other women to give themselves permission to grow. So as you can see so far, I am talking about you, me, the individual giving ourselves self-permission, but I'm also talking about the ripple effect of what life could look like when you give yourself permission to do that thing.
00:22:26
Speaker
Another area that's important um for self-permission is mental freedom. When you give yourself permission to have mental freedom, it really removes you from the burden of worry. That was another huge kind of turning point for me is giving myself permission to know that everything is going to work out and be okay. Not because I am hoping and wishing it would be okay. But because of the previous topic about personal growth, because I know that I had given myself permission to show up and be my best self possible.
00:23:10
Speaker
I know that I am giving myself permission to be innovative and creative in my life, which will you know attract opportunities to come into my life, which could be filled with tools, resources, and strategies and possibilities. Those allowed me to really release the burden of worry so that I could learn how to be.
00:23:38
Speaker
and that I could step into my becoming. So that self-promission has really been a game changer for me. And I'm hoping that something that I've said so far is really hitting home for you in terms of, hmm, what could be possible for me? So I want to move into three areas that I think are really primary areas where you can start.
00:24:07
Speaker
you know, to really exercise with this, right? Play around with this and adjust it as you go along. One area is in the the state of your career and your ambition. There are so many women that I've come across that are not giving themselves permission to pursue their dreams.
00:24:31
Speaker
Just today, and even over the past couple of weeks, I'm teaching a 10-week program um for emerging aspiring women entrepreneurs. And they are in the phase of writing their business plan.
00:24:47
Speaker
Now, this really sounds exciting that I'm doing this class and that these women get to put time, effort, and energy and focus on pursuing a dream of theirs, which is starting a business. And their businesses range from service to product-based businesses. However, the brick wall that I noticed that they are they are all running into is they are limiting giving themselves permission to really pursue the dream fully and to pursue the dream out loud. So we are having you know conversations outside of the curriculum about giving yourself permission to chase your career goals, even if you don't have a prior example, even if it' it's out of traditional you know if it's out of the typical tradition,
00:25:40
Speaker
You know, this is also about them really taking risks, giving themselves the okay that in their dreams is going to require you to, um, you know, to for you to, to step into taking risks, but it's okay to give yourself, you know, opportunities, or should I say permission to pursue risks because it's going to open up so much more for you.
00:26:07
Speaker
So you really do get to discuss how self-permission can lead to personal fulfillment and professional success. Give yourself cis permission to pursue your dreams. You don't want to um have a moment in life where you are in deep reflection about the things that you shoulda, coulda, woulda done. So we call those bold regrets.
00:26:38
Speaker
You don't want to be in a position where you're having bold regrets at a crossroads in your life. Now is the time to really give yourself permission to lean into ah your career and your ambition. What's the worst thing that could happen? You could start a business that actually changes your life. You could finally get that promotion or you could increase your income well beyond your imagination.
00:27:09
Speaker
just by giving you permission, giving yourself permission to pursue it at the highest level. Another area is to give yourself permission ah around self-care and well-being.
Pursuing Dreams and Prioritizing Self-Care
00:27:21
Speaker
Taking time for self-care she really is a highlight of significance in giving yourself permission to take breaks, to prioritize mental health, and to engage in activities that give you rest and relaxation.
00:27:38
Speaker
One of the things that I'm learning to do in my career is to give myself permission to take time off once a quarter. And that looks different. Sometimes I have the opportunity to do international travel where I can be gone for weeks at a time. um Sometimes I give myself permission to take off one or two days in the middle of the week.
00:28:05
Speaker
Sometimes I give myself permission to do four-day holidays, you know, when we have like a three-day weekend, right? And these all are so important to me because they nurture my creativeness. They nurture my soul.
00:28:21
Speaker
When I start spinning the block on my creativity, it looks like nothing's getting done. It looks like I can't come up with any new ideas. It looks like I'm exhausted and I crash and burn when I hit the bed. It looks like I'm just slow engaging in my day. And it feels like I'm not having fun. All of those are signs to me that I need to put some time you know on the books for self-care. Sometimes I forget. you know But when that experience starts showing up for me and I start trying to put you know my finger on what is going on, I realize, oh, I haven't given myself time to play. I haven't given myself time to really play in the the essence of joy.
00:29:17
Speaker
and I haven't given much myself time for relaxation. Now, there are two things I want to point out here. Rest and relaxation are two different things. Rest is what you give yourself physically. That means when you are you know in your bed and you're not doing anything, that means when you're giving yourself good sleep, like not interrupted sleep, um not um stressful sleep,
00:29:46
Speaker
but you're giving your body good rest where you are sitting in a place for a period of time, sitting online in a place for a period of time. Relaxation has to do with mental, emotional release where are you sit down and you breathe, you know, into the moment that you're in. Relaxation can be journaling where you're emptying out, you know, your head.
00:30:15
Speaker
It could be writing letters to yourself. Relaxation could be you out in nature, disconnecting from electronics and social media. Relaxation could be you feeding your body, you know, something nourishing that satiates you. That satiates you from a place of you feeling good about what you're ingesting.
00:30:45
Speaker
So give yourself permission to take time for self-care. Schedule to your freaking vacations. Too many of my women clients, there are two areas that really can help with giving yourself permission around self-care and well-being. One is to schedule your vacation.
00:31:04
Speaker
Make it a priority on your calendar. I tell all of my private clients when we start off at the beginning of the year, the first order of business or one of the first orders of business is to print out a 12 month calendar and schedule all your vacations. That could be again week to week. It could be a four day holiday weekends. It could be a middle, you know, health and wellness day in the week, but they have to schedule for the whole year.
00:31:31
Speaker
and they have to do a scheduled time at least one quarter once a quarter. So I want you to stop accumulating vacation time and stop thinking that that's something you're adding to the bank. You may be adding it financially, but the cost of it is depleting you emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually. Take your vacation. The other area um to give yourself permission and self-care Schedule your doctor's appointment, sis. Get your annuals. You need to know what baseline are you operating from physiologically. Get your eyes checked. Go to the dentist. Get a full panel of your blood work. I don't care if you feel good and feel springy and you're like, nothing's wrong with me. You don't know what's going on on the inside of you.
00:32:31
Speaker
It ain't a problem till it's a problem. So be bold enough to give yourself permission to schedule your vacation so that you can have some rest and relaxation time. And so that you can make sure that you are taking care of your physical whole body. And embrace the imperfections about your body. And I don't know if I would call them imperfections. I think I'm going to say embrace what's different about your body.
00:32:59
Speaker
And really, you know, stop putting pressure on yourself to be perfect. Stop spending time comparing the body that you have now to what an Instagram model is looking like. We don't know what that person is doing that has given them the physique that they have. That ain't none of your business. And because they may be doing it that way doesn't mean that it's the best way for you. So really go from head to toe.
00:33:29
Speaker
and really look at accepting your body and give yourself permission to embrace the different aspects of your body. Learn how to dress your body. Learn how to care for this body that you have in this moment. And when you give yourself permission to say, listen, this is the body that I'm rocking with in this moment, and I give myself permission to dress it in the best way possible,
00:33:56
Speaker
to demonstrate the confidence that I have about myself, the self-assuredness that I have about myself. When you give yourself permission to embody an only who you are, let me tell you something. It changes the way that you show up in the world. And it changes how people interact with you. All from you giving yourself permission to embrace what you feel may be your uniqueness versus your imperfections.
00:34:23
Speaker
I do it all the time. I've got some areas in you know with my body that I'm still working on, but guess what? The body that I have right now, it is so magical for me because it's allowing me to enjoy life at this level in a way that I hadn't enjoyed it before because of the weight release. Yes, there's more to do, but that will come later. But right now is where I am and giving myself permission to embrace and receive all of who I am in this moment.
00:34:53
Speaker
Do that for yourself. And last and certainly not least, one of the other areas is personal growth and self-expression. I want to talk about self-expression for a moment. I recently completed a three-day certificate program um of that was on the topic of AI for executives at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. It was a phenomenal program.
00:35:22
Speaker
And the dress code was business casual. And I certainly understand what business casual you know is in the traditional sense. But what how I wanted to show up was business casual that relates to me and the energy of who I am. And so um every day of the program, I dressed in the energy of boldness and what boldness is for me. I gave myself permission to enhance business casual in the way in a way that goes with my personality personality. So on day two, I wore this beautiful red blazer and I had some black and white print joggers on. And these are more kind of dressier joggers, you know, as opposed to the casual joggers.
00:36:12
Speaker
And um I remember several women coming up to me and saying to me how they really admired that I wore this brightly colored red jacket. And the jacket, the red is more of a blue tone red, right? Just so you kind of get an idea of what scale of red this was on. And um they just really gave me some great compliments and I received those and I said, thank you.
00:36:37
Speaker
Um, because when I chose to put that jacket on, you know, I gave myself permission to be who I am authentically and to show up, you know, in the, in the way of self-expression as the boldness coach. So yesterday, which was the last day of the program, you know, I had a different jacket on, but one of the ladies stopped by me, um, during the break and she tapped me on my shoulder and she said to me, I got the memo.
00:37:04
Speaker
And I looked up at her and I smiled and she said, I wore my red jacket today. And she had on her red jacket, she had on the white wows and some black slacks, and she had on some red and white sneakers. And I stepped, I just kind of rared back and I looked at her and I said, absolutely gorgeous. And she says, yeah, I feel good. She said, you really inspired me yesterday you know to bring some color.
00:37:32
Speaker
you know, to the wardrobe that I was showing up with every day. When you are in your expression, your self-expression, you're owning your being, you're owning your voice, right? The voice of who you are based on the visual of how you show up. But giving myself permission to show up as I am my authentic self, it really created space for another woman in the room to show up as her authentic self. And that's one of the aspects I love about self-permission. When you give your own self-permission to be, you also are becoming a demonstration to other women to be. Yes, self-expression is about you um having your own self-expression, and it's also
00:38:29
Speaker
about other women seeing that expression in real life time, right? And they get to thinking, hmm, if this woman can do it, let me try for myself. So that self-expression and giving yourself permission to do that as is really
The Power of Self-Expression and Passion
00:38:50
Speaker
important. And that was a visual aspect of it. I also want to talk about owning your voice and your opinion.
00:38:58
Speaker
Here's the deal. Speaking up and expressing your personal opinions and beliefs, even in the face of potential criticism, is powerful. I want to go back to that class for a moment, because in that class, there was 60 of us in that class, a very diverse background of participants. And some of the participants were self-employed and were worked for corporations.
00:39:26
Speaker
And they were at different levels of intelligence around AI. Some of them were developers, they were engineers. Some of them were responsible for policies you know and ethics and so on and so forth. And here I am, this solopreneur, not sure who I could connect with in this room because the diverse backgrounds were so varied.
00:39:54
Speaker
But what I came to realize was that I'm in the room for a reason. Number one, I gave myself permission to be a participant in the room on the topic and in the conversations. And I spoke up. I contributed to discussions. I expressed my thoughts, my opinions um about the content that we were discussing at certain points you know throughout those three days.
00:40:23
Speaker
and What was really interesting was at the end of the day, we were in this breakout group and some of the colleagues that were, it was four of us in this group. And I was talking about my background as a solopreneur and a couple of people were like, I i had no idea that you were a solopreneur because of the way that you were contributing and expressing yourself. I thought for sure that you had some formal capacity you know, with doing AI work in your organization. Well, that part's true because I am, you know, the the operating officer in my business, right? So the the chief marketer, right? So I am all the things in my business. However, you know, what I really gave myself permission to do was to speak up in the room and to make sure that my expression is is part of the discussion.
00:41:18
Speaker
without worrying about what is somebody gonna think about me? Because if I you know had said something that was incorrect or improper, you know and someone says, well, here is you know the way that you could look at that, or here's what you probably meant, Denise, then I would have said thank you for clarifying that, thank you for crystallizing that, and giving myself permission to learn along the way. But owning my voice and my opinion you know, really emphasizes that my voice matter and being true to myself is a form of self permission that leads to authentic living. So guess what? I am not afraid to stand up and to voice my opinions and express, you know, myself, you know, um, in environments that I may not necessarily have full representation in and that's okay.
00:42:16
Speaker
The last area of personal growth that I want to talk about is you exploring your interest and your passions. Give yourself permission to explore interests and hobbies and passions, things that foster and support your creativity, which I spoke about earlier. Give yourself permission to take that class and learn a different language. If you are a wine enthusiast, buy the class to better understand why the grapes and how they're grown and, you know, the aromas that they produce. Give yourself permission to take a painting class, a pottery class. um Give yourself permission. If you say, Vanessa, I really want, I really love yoga and what could it be like to be a yoga instructor? Go take a class. Give yourself permission to explore.
00:43:10
Speaker
what could be possible for you from a place of interest and passions. And when you do that, it just unleashes the childlike energy within you so that you could be like, oh wow, this is interesting. Let me play a little bit more with that. And you might ultimately find that the career that you've been doing to pay the bills, yeah, you did that. You checked that box.
00:43:38
Speaker
And now at this level in the journey of your life, you really want to do and embrace what you love, what you're passionate about, what just makes your heart sing. But self-permission is the gateway for you to step into the joy and the fulfillment that you so desire in your life.
Living Boldly and Feedback Call
00:44:03
Speaker
Listen, I know we talked about a lot in this episode.
00:44:07
Speaker
And I hope that it really rang your bell. So I want you to give yourself permission to live boldly. I want you to thrive in your independence. I want you to build your confidence. And I want you to evolve in your boldness in a way that you had never imagined that you could evolve into this amazing woman. And of course, I want to know you know, how are you evolving? I want you to share, you know, in the episode comments around what resonated with you from this episode. What's the one thing that you have been holding off on giving yourself permission to do? And I also want to know what action will you take to execute the permission that you give yourself around the one thing?
00:45:05
Speaker
Listen, it's a great way for you to have accountability. Not accountability from the sense of somebody is going to read it and reach out to you, you know, weeks, months, later and say, hey, did you do that thing? But it's something, it's something to be said when you say out loud, whether that's in writing, whether that's with your voice, there's something to be said, you know, when you Proclaim accountability from what it is that you say you're going to do and you say it in a way That you don't know who hears you But the universe heard you So I want to just hear from you um About that one thing and what actions are you going to take and also this will you know, hopefully be a demonstration of
00:45:53
Speaker
to other women and give and give them permission to be able to write it out or say it out loud about how they are leveraging self-permission to move their life forward. This has been so much fun. So I just want to thank you for your time in being here.
00:46:30
Speaker
Thank you for joining me on today's episode of the Evolution of Bold podcast. I hope you found the conversation as inspiring and empowering as I did. It's always a pleasure to share the stories of my journey, along with those of other remarkable women who have shown us what it means to live life boldly. I'd love to know what stood out to you the most. Your feedback is really important to me. So please leave a comment in the feed or on one of our social media channels.
00:46:59
Speaker
And don't forget to hit the subscribe and notification button before you go. Stay connected with us for more insights and exclusive content. Keep evolving, stay bold, and always live your truth. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for our next show. Until next time, I'm Venice Johnson, the boldness coach, cheering you on in your journey towards your level of bold.