Waiting vs allowing

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How often in our lives do we find ourselves mentally waiting for something, not a bus, or a train. Not allowing our lives to move on.

We are often waiting for the right conditions, we are waiting for someone’s approval or permission.

That’s because we’ve been trained that way from an early age, it’s all part of making us compliant. ‘Ask before you do that’ ‘Have you got permission to do that?’ and ‘you need permission to go to the toilet’ and so on. Our lives are full of expectations of needing permission.

What if we decided to stop waiting? What might happen? What if we just did things without asking others first?

The thing is there never are perfect conditions, we are not a school anymore having to ask permission to go to the toilet. The approval of others is an internal excuse because we can not face our own fears. We do not need permission to build our dreams or be happy.

Perhaps we could replace waiting with allowing ourselves. It is all a choice in our heads, as the world is not waiting for us, we have a duty to ourselves to go out there and be our best. Share with the world our creations, our work.

Take control, ‘take permission’ as Andy Traub says.

Then don’t wait for the applause, the congratulations, carry on allowing yourself to do your thing. By asking approval you are compromising your best for other people’s opinions.

Start again

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If something does not work out how we expected, then sometimes the best thing to do is take the rubber and rub it all out and start again.

Sure, we can tweak or adjust things and modify. It depends on how broken a thing is.

Patience and persistence are essential elements in everything we do.

There has become this badge of honour wearing philosophy of failing fast and in a world where everyone is looking for shortcuts, easy, and certainty, this fits perfectly.

However, sometimes we have to be brave enough to start from scratch and accept we’ve gone down the wrong path.

The great thing about this is, there is always another path, another way, another solution.

We will never create our best things in life if we are not prepared to risk and the risk is sometimes it just doesn’t work and it can not be modified.

Take a shower, walk the dog, go to the gym, or have a nap. Then take a clean sheet of paper and start again, don’t look in the rear view mirror for what has gone before. Look forward and start again, start afresh.