Episode 5 : The Power of Permission - Giving Yourself the Green Light

Join host Liza Tullidge on this episode of Humaning as we explore the invisible barrier that holds so many of us back—not fear, not skill, not readiness, but permission.

You know that bold thing you want to do? The step you know would move you forward? The opportunity that excites you and terrifies you? Sometimes, the hardest part isn’t the action itself—it’s allowing yourself to take it.

Because permission isn’t something you get from someone else. It’s something you decide to give yourself.

In this episode, we break down:

• Why giving yourself permission feels so hard—and the subconscious narratives that keep you waiting.
• The illusion of control—how our brains mistake over-planning for safety and end up keeping us stuck.
• Shifting from outcome to process—how to stop waiting for guarantees and start embracing curiosity.
• The role of self-trust—why you’re not the same person who hesitated before, and why that matters.
• The real cost of waiting—how avoiding risk doesn’t just protect you from failure, but also blocks unexpected opportunities.

We’ve survived 100% of the unknowns we’ve faced. We’ve grown through every challenge, every moment of uncertainty, every leap we weren’t sure we were ready for. And we will again.

If you’ve been hesitating, overthinking, or waiting for a sign—this is it.

Tune in for an honest, empowering, and deeply human conversation about giving yourself the green light to step forward.

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and follow the podcast on your favorite platform, and subscribe to the Humaning newsletter for exclusive content and resources. Check out the show notes for more information and join us next time as we explore another essential piece of the human experience.

To get every episode along with our monthly newsletter, which continues exploring the topic covered in that month's episode plus book recommendations, links to further resources, and helpful exercises, straight to your inbox - sign up here or at lizatullidge.com

🌍

Human-ing is a Maven + Co production.

Transcript

Hello there. Welcome to Humaning. I'm your host, Liza Tullide. Thanks for taking a snippet out of your day to come and join us as we explore how to be human. Let's get to it. In today's episode, we're talking about permission. The kind that doesn't come from anyone else but from you. Why is it so hard to take that bold step sometimes, even when we want to? We're diving into why we hesitate, how control plays a role, and what happens when we finally allow ourselves to begin. So maybe you listened to the last episode and something clicked. The idea of doing one bold thing felt exciting, maybe even a bit electric. You thought, yes, I want that. I need that. I'm going to do that. But then when it came time to actually do the thing, something happened. That excitement faded, or maybe it was still there but tangled up with hesitation. Like you could see yourself taking the step in your mind, but in real life, when the time came, you just didn't. If that sounds familiar, I want you to know there is nothing wrong with you. That is so human. I am there constantly myself because taking bold action isn't just about knowing what you should do. It's not about do you see the value in it? Do you understand the logic of it? Or even how much do you really want the thing? A huge part of it is also about feeling safe enough to let yourself do it and safe enough to try. And that's where permission comes in. And this isn't permission from someone else, not from society or your boss or your friends or those voices in your head or those moments from your past, but it's permission from you. Because sometimes the biggest thing standing between us and that life we want that's built by those bold things isn't a lack of time or talent or ability. It's the simple fact that we haven't allowed ourselves to take the steps yet. And why does permission feel so hard? Before we go into that, let's pause for a second because I don't want this to feel like one of those just go for it conversations or easy Instagram hacks where it's just the one step to unlock that dream life and aren't you silly for having not just done it yet. Because that's not what this is. If giving yourself permission... was easy and was just one step away, you would have done it already. So let's talk about why this can feel hard. For a lot of us, there's this internal dialogue running in the background, a quiet voice that whispers, you're not ready. This isn't for you. What if this goes wrong? What if you look silly? It's that little imposter syndrome voice sometimes that's just waiting for the fuel to come to get to rage around. That voice, it's not stupidity, it's not self-sabustage. As we've talked about in past episodes, it's protection. It's our brain who spent years and decades even learning how to keep us safe. It knows that the unknown that will come with this bold step and the new space that it would open up is unpredictable. And that unpredictable things can be uncomfortable, risky, even painful. So when you start to think about taking that bold step, even if it's something that you desperately, passionately know you want, your brain is scanning for threats and is scanning for those unknowns. What if you fail? What if you embarrass yourself? What if it turns out badly? But what if I can't control this? And sometimes instead of consciously processing those fears, we as the human just freeze. We avoid. We tell ourselves, I'll do it later. I'll come back to it later. Or we get lost in the conversation of reminding ourselves of all the times we would have failed or embarrassed ourselves or those really unhelpful spirals that we seem to sometimes enjoy to drag ourselves back into. And what ends up happening is all of that avoidance or all of that energy of reminding ourselves of the terrible thing is an attempt to keep ourselves safe. But what we take away from it is that we're just not going to go there. and it stops us from taking that bold step, but what we don't always realize is that when we avoid taking that step and attempt to keep ourselves quote-unquote safe, we aren't just preventing the potential bad outcomes. We're also completely blocking all the good ones, the incredible things we might not see coming, those opportunities that only reveal themselves once they're in motion, the possibilities that might feel out of reach right now but may come entirely normal with just a little bit of time, or even those ones that we know are basically a guaranteed good thing if we just take that step, but we're denying ourselves that chance and we're denying the fact that just as likely as could be those negative ones, equally as likely those good ones could be real too. So we hesitate and this is where it gets even trickier because we don't even always recognize sometimes why we're hesitating. We think maybe we're just being cautious or strategic, or we're waiting for that right moment to show itself. But really, more often than not, are we trying to control something? Are we trying to make sure that if we take the leap, it'll work? That if we send that email, that ask that new thing, that they'll say yes. That if we show up in that new way, we won't embarrass ourselves. That if we step into the unknown, it will be guaranteed to be worth it. Take a minute, think about that bold thing that you might have wanted to do, but haven't acted on yet. And ask yourself, why have I not acted on it? Do any of those things we just talked about sound true? Have the reasons that we've told ourselves where we haven't acted on it, been somehow related to not being able to yet guarantee a successful outcome? Or the outcome that we want? Because a successful outcome could even be something we can't even imagine yet. So is it the fact that we maybe can't control and guarantee the outcome that we want? That makes sense. We're not trying to control things out of malice or ignorance. We do it because we care, because we want something so much that we're afraid of not getting it, or of it not coming true. Because we want to protect ourselves, protect the people we love, protect our dreams from failure, from embarrassment. And that we convince ourselves that if we just hold on tightly enough, if we plan well enough, if we anticipate every possible outcome, or if we wait till that quote unquote right moment that never seems to actually exist, then maybe, just maybe, we can guarantee that it all turns out the way we want. So we equate control with safety. And when we face something that we can't control, or we can't guarantee, When we stand at the edge of something uncertain, it can feel dangerous, and that's when we hesitate. That's when we start spiraling through every possible thing that could go wrong, every possible past thing that might be correlated with this that did go wrong. We don't just fear failure. We start gathering up evidence for why now is not the time, why failure is inevitable, why things won't go right. We pull up past mistakes, the times we didn't show up for ourselves, the time things didn't go to plan, the times where we didn't get what we wanted. And we use them, those small lenses, as proof that we should stay where we are. But here's the thing that we forget. We are not the people we were in those moments where we may have made mistakes. We aren't the person who hesitated before. We're the person who survived that. We're the person who learned from those moments. We're the person who grew from those. Who accumulated the silver linings that came with them? Who learned the lessons? That came with each of those wobbles. This is one of my favorite statistics or facts about ourselves We have survived one hundred percent of our hardest days We have survived one hundred percent of those bad things And you know what? Here's the other thing We have never known how something was going to turn out before we tried it and Yet we have still survived every single time Even in the moments that might have felt impossible When we were deciding whether or not to try something even the failures even the times we tried And we didn't show up the way we wanted to we've learned we haven't known what was coming But we got through we learned we grew and we carried on and we will continue to I'm a big equestrian and I can tell you that the first time I got on a horse I didn't know what was coming and I can tell you I didn't do great But it's opened up so many amazing things. I could have never imagined in that moment and I have fallen I have had bad accidents. I have had rough days, but I've also had amazing days and if I had just acted from That fear of that lack ability to control and that for before the first time I rode a horse I would have never gotten any of the amazing places that I am now and I would have not have gotten the opportunity to learn What does it mean to really dust yourself off and to get back in the saddle and to see? Where the resilience was that came with each time I wobbled? And you know what the I might make a mistake and I might make more mistakes But actually the amazing thing isn't about the mistake the things that matters isn't whether or not I've made a mistake. It's actually what comes through it. And it's shifting that focus from, oh, shit, I made a mistake to, oh, interesting. I'm now getting to learn something from that. You know, like the other day I made a bit of a rookie error, but it actually got to take me back to a fundamental lesson I still needed to learn and revise and work with. And I ended up having a great hour-long session of getting to correct something that and learn something new that I've been carrying forward a misunderstanding of during 30 years of writing. And I got a chance to get to go back and learn. And it's not because shoot, Liza, you've been making a mistake for 30 years. That's a very easy narrative to tell myself, but actually, hey, I'm getting, this is the process and I'm going to get to keep learning. And this is where the really magic starts to happen, and this is where everything changes. Angela Duckworth, the author of Grit, has this really great quote. The people at the top of any field aren't just good. They're also lucky enough to be fascinated by the process of getting better, even when it feels like a struggle. That's it. That's the shift. That's where the real magic happens and the permission comes. When we stop focusing on being good and start focusing on getting better, when we stop anchoring to the outcome and start anchoring to the process, because when we only value that success or that guaranteed outcome or that guaranteed safety, we limit ourselves to what is predictable. But when we start to associate our value and the value of a step of weighing up, is it worth it? With the learning, the expansion, the curiosity, the possibility, we allow ourselves to get growing and to keep growing. When we stop measuring whether something is worth it, based on whether it works right out the gate, and instead start measuring it by what opens up for us, what we might learn, how we might grow, what might be unexpected in there, what we could learn and who we might become. That's the magic. And that's what permission really is. It's not a guarantee or a guaranteed outcome. It's not a promise that everything will go perfectly or go to plan. It's not a promise that the outcome you've chosen will be the outcome you receive. But it's simply the decision to let yourself begin, to let yourself step into the unknown, not because you can control what happens, but because you trust yourself to handle it, whatever it is. Turns out to be and maybe that's the hardest part not the actual act of giving yourself permission But trusting yourself enough to take it Because sometimes when we think about taking the leap our brain pulls up the memory of all those times We didn't show up all the risks. We didn't take All the time we had the opportunity and all the ingredients, but we didn't seize it Those failures that still sting and we hold those moments against ourselves Like proof that we aren't ready or we don't deserve it or now is not the time or whatever the story is But those moments they are not our definition They are not a prophecy of what's to come for us They are simply moments. We have already survived taken out of context We're looking at the act of where we wobbled and we're forgetting to see where we rose where we learned, and where we grew. We have survived 100% of our hardest days. We have survived every challenge, every rejection, every unknown, every wobble, every mistake. And we will continue to do so. And this is where it gets exciting, because when you take the pressure of the outcome, when you start giving yourself permission to just explore, to experience, to grow, to just take it one tiny step at a time and figure it out. You unlock an entirely new way of moving through the world. You get to fall in love with becoming, not just arriving. So consider this your invitation, to take the bold step, not because you know it will work, but because you, yes, you deserve the chance to try as you are and where you are. You deserve the chance to allow yourself the possibility of something extraordinary today. To give yourself permission to step into that life you want, not because you can control every outcome or because it's guaranteed to happen or guaranteed to happen today, but because you trust yourself enough to meet whatever comes and because today is as good a day as any to start exploring that space and to figure out what might come, what it might look like, and take it one step at a time to see what this path may hold. Because at the end of the day, permission isn't something you need to earn or a checkpoint you need to cross before you can try. It's something you're going to decide. And maybe today is the day you decide to give it to yourself and to take that first step, because let's be honest the heart part of any journey is the first step out your door and you deserve the chance to take that first step to do that bold thing because the rest that uncomes will be a great and wonderful journey. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow the podcast and rate it on your favorite platform. Your support helps us reach more listeners who are on their own journeys of growth. Don't forget to subscribe to the humaning newsletter at lizatellage.com for updates, exclusive content, and additional resources. As always, all links, notes, and resources for today's episode can be found on the show notes and on my blog. Thank you so much for listening. Keep being curious, stay kind to yourself, and take charge of your path.