EP 134 | GIVING YOURSELF UNCONDITIONAL PERMISSION

Permission can only be granted when there’s a recognized and agreed upon authority. Hierarchy. Systems of control. When you believe that there is someone or some power outside of you, judging you. And when you agree that there’s a right way to be or exists or express, and then there’s how you do it (Obviously WRONG…)

We learn this in childhood. We learn to change and hide ourselves to receive love, security, and safety. We learn to achieve and perform. We learn the rules of society and who is allowed to speak and be in power. Who is valuable and who isn’t.

Once in an ayahuasca journey I remembered myself in a dance recital. I was six. I was an adorable and precocious little dancer, showing all the other kids how to do the steps they couldn’t follow. I was smiling and performing. But it was clear to my adult self that I was not having fun the way a dancing child has fun. I was anxious.

I was adored and praised for my perfect performance. I got flowers from my Dad and he made a big deal out of how good I was. He saw me and paid attention to me and was proud of me.

From that day forward all I wanted was to make my Dad proud. To be a good girl worthy of love. I would do about anything for his attention and love.

So I learned to be good at things. Get good grades. Be good at sports. Good at being friends with all the cool kids. And inside, a seed of perfectionism and never being good enough was planted.

By 10 years old, I was on my first diet. Not skinny enough. By 14, I was only eating 1,000 calories a day while going through puberty and playing sports. By 15, I gained 30 pounds in my first year of high school. By 30, I was almost 100 pounds overweight.

Needing permission looks different for everyone. The way I protected myself from the inevitable impossibility of high functioning anxiety and not feeling worthy was through alcohol addiction and hiding inside myself under a thick layer of Doritos and blacking out in bars.

For some people, it looks like numbing, locking parts of yourself away from the outside world so you never get rejected, ridiculed, or hurt again. It looks like hypervigilance, always looking for danger. What’s not good enough. What hurts. What’s off.

It’s never being satisfied. Never giving yourself credit or slowing down long enough to enjoy anything. It looks like hard wiring self-criticism, judgment, comparison, and pessimism into your operating system.

It looks like never letting anyone see the real you. Only the curated version.

This belief that there is something wrong with us roots in. It wreaks havoc on our physical bodies, our emotional and mental health, our relationships, and our sense of self and purpose. If we believe something is wrong all the time, our system will reflect that back to us through chronic pain, chronic illness, untreatable mystery conditions, autoimmune disorders, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and more.

These symptoms, the stuckness, the battling inside ourselves — they are all normal, natural, protective solutions created by a system out of balance. When you stuff and shove and hide and ignore and repress, the body and mind will create doors for you. Portals. Rooms inside of you full of unfelt emotions, and darkness, and shame, and grief, and unexpressed love.

When you never open them, you are walking the empty hallways of an unlived life.

I know this because it happened to me. I wasn’t living, I was dead inside. I wasn’t in my body. I didn’t experience my life. I didn’t love myself. I was lost and believed that it was terminal.

Finally, I decided to accept where I was. I decided to go inward. To walk through a door inside myself. I decided to give myself unconditional permission.

Unconditional permission to…

stay alive
stop fighting
stop drinking
heal, no matter how long it takes
change my mind
like, then love my body
practice radical acceptance
be open minded
fuck around and find out
make mistakes
look stupid
believe in God
quit politics and social activism
become a divine feminist
make a mess
fail repeatedly and try again
cry in public
stop caring what other people think
go on a wild adventure to South America by myself at age 40
find reverence
become sacred
let go
believe in magic
be silent and still
seek out visionary experiences as a way of life
trust the universe
trust myself
trust my intuition
decide I am worthy
be grateful
enjoy my life
never abandon myself

The doors are there inviting you to come home. To come back to your full, radiant, messy, weird, too much, awkward, nerdy, authentic self.

But you have to give yourself permission to let go of the comfort of being broken.

It is our life’s work in this world to find our light and radiate it out into the world in service to others. That is our only job.

You don’t need permission from anyone but yourself. Can you give it?

Love, 
Sinclair