Saying yes and saying no: the power of permission - with Jillian Reilly

#226: Jillian Reilly is a founder, author and keynote speaker.  She explains why so many of us live without intentionality, how to reclaim the power to make your own choices, and what it really means to give yourself permission to live differently.

What you’ll learn

• [02:19] Why permission and choice are not the same thing.
• [03:47] Why we limit our own sense of what’s possible.
• [06:01] Why we give away our power to make decisions.
• [09:28] How external influences shape the choices we make.
• [12:08] The power of giving yourself the permission to say no. 
• [14:54] How the work contract has shifted in the twenty-first century.
• [19:35] Why the pressure to be constantly productive is doing us harm. 
• [22:40] How people fall into unhealthy work patterns.  
• [25:02] Why your job shouldn’t define who you are.
• [29:30] Why sometimes the right choice is to not make change. 
• [33:22] The power of intentional self-activated choices. 
• [37:43] Why everyone should be intentional and wilful in their actions. 
• [41:18] Why focusing on the present is so challenging. 
• [44:05] How to balance planning for the future with accepting uncertainty.

Resources mentioned in this episode
Please note that some of these are affiliate links and we may get a commission in the event that you make a purchase.  This helps us to cover our expenses and is at no additional cost to you.

• The Ten Permissions, Jillian Reilly
• The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks

For the show notes for this episode, including a full transcript and links to all the resources mentioned, visit:

https://changeworklife.com/saying-yes-and-saying-no-the-power-of-permission/

Re-assessing your career?  Know you need a change but don't really know where to start?  Check out these two exercises to start the journey of working out what career is right for you!

Transcript

0:00

Whose permission do you need to have an extraordinary life? Who's the person who can give you the job you love? Are you allowed to be genuinely happy and fulfilled? You've probably already guessed the answers to these questions, but whether you have or haven't, this episode is definitely worth listening to. Oh, and do stick around to the end for an important announcement. I'm Jeremy Cline, and this is Change Work Life. Hello and welcome to the Change Work Life podcast, the show where we're all about beating the Sunday evening blues and enjoying Mondays again. I'm a career coach, you can find out more about that at changeworklife.com/coaching, and in each episode, my guests and I bring you tips, strategies, and stories to help you enjoy a more satisfying and fulfilling working life. Life often feels like it's full of shoulds, shouldn'ts, and can'ts. I should look for that promotion. I shouldn't spend time on something unproductive but enjoyable. I can't change my current situation because I've got responsibilities, and there's too much uncertainty in the world right now to rock the boat. Well, maybe what we need to do is ask, am I allowed to do any of that? What would happen if I gave myself permission? And what needs to happen in order for me to do that. My guest this week is Jillian Reilly, a keynote speaker and author. Jillian spent 30 years working in social, organisational, and individual change across Africa, Asia, and Central Europe. And she now focuses on helping people to navigate change and accelerate growth and learning. Her book, The Ten Permissions, guides readers to permit themselves to update how they operate in the 21st century. Jillian, welcome to the podcast. Oh, Jeremy, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. So, I touched in that intro on the idea of choice. Lots of people think they have limited or even no choices, and I've kind of got this wondering as to whether this is about reframing it as permission rather than choice. How do you see those two interacting? Interesting. Yeah, I think it's intentional choice, isn't it? It's self-activated choice. It's the choices we make because we want to, as opposed to the choices we make, as you already referenced, because we think we should. And I think part of what I'm trying to bring to the surface in this book and in the conversations and offers around it is the elevated attention and awareness of the choices that we make, the default choices that we make without even thinking about them. And then, the intentional choices that we give ourselves permission to take, which could be simply engaging with what's at stake for us to just like activating a, 'Yeah, I can do this, I'm allowed.' And part of what I say in the book is that it's not that I think that people are consciously waiting for somebody to come and give them permission. It's that they're just not used to actively giving it to themselves, to consciously self-enacting choice as a kind of muscle. I mean, I really see it as a muscle that you build capability in making those intentional choices. And the backdrop of the book and of this conversation is that we're living in a world where we've got so many choices to make. And the thesis of the book is that we need to allow ourselves to make them intentionally. Have you looked into where this comes from? This, I don't know, lack of exercise of this muscle, this not used to giving oneself permission to make choices, take decisions, is this some kind of evolutionary blocking things out so you don't have mental overload kind of thing? I do think it's evolutionary, yeah, but I think it's more, compliance was a survival strategy. We've been largely conditioned to see ourselves working within larger systems and fitting into larger systems, be they cultural, familial, professional. And so, our strategy was to make choices that matched the needs and wants of those institutions. And so, you learn from an early age that one of your survival strategies is to figure out what other people want and to become that, right? How do I make other people happy in order to garner their favour? So, I think it's been a survival strategy really. And listen, I think human beings will always want to fit within broader systems. Of course, we're social animals, and we exist within larger ecosystems. However, I think we are moving into a period where a lot of those systems that promise to take care of us are not doing that anymore, where a conscious or unconscious strategy, for instance, professionally of saying,'Oh well, I'll just find a big corporate job and hold on to it for as long as I can', is no longer a viable strategy. Making the most familiar choices, making the most obvious choices, outsourcing your choice to that which you perceive at the moment to be the safest, doesn't work anymore. We don't even know what's safe right now. So, that's, again, where this theme comes up, which is to say, I know we haven't been prepared for this moment, but it's happening. We're in the middle of something like a revolution, in terms of how we're going to navigate our lives moving forward. And to do that, we need to start building up this muscle. So, building on that, what are the things that stop someone giving themselves permission? I think it's a little bit of what I just referred to, in the book what I describe as a permissions paradigm, which is we raise children to be permission seekers. So, from a very early age, we are raised to look externally for somebody to allow us to do things, particularly the things we, quote-unquote, want. So, anything that falls outside of the realm of an already acceptable and recognisable pattern of behaviour, you need somebody to give you permission. Anything that, quote-unquote, deviates from what everybody else is doing, if you will, you've got to get permission, or things you really want. So, that's a sign of good behaviour. That's a sign of fitting in, of being as cooperative as you can with systems that then reward you by looking after you because you've asked for that permission, which is totally understandable and totally acceptable. Although I would argue that at an earlier age in this world, we probably need to prepare kids to not always believe that that green light, that yes, you're allowed, sits outside of them. But that's another question. What I don't think we've done is to, at times, intentionally help young adults transition into a phase of acknowledging the fact that they are their own authority, that there isn't anybody sitting outside of you that you require in order to make your decisions. Now, again, historically, you had about three or four big decisions, right? You maybe decided what you were going to study. You then decided what your first job was. And gosh, back in my father's day, that was it then, right? You stayed; you were fixed. So, you didn't need to be prepared to make a lot of choices, and you certainly didn't need to be prepared to make novel ones, different ones. So, the muscle wasn't important. The self-permitting wasn't as critical. Now I think we're moving into a phase where we have to make more choices. We are adapting and reinventing in ways that causes us and requires us to much more frequently choose things. And that is where this conscious green lighting, if you will, becomes critical, where you've got to override that default instinct to say,'Wait a second, what's going to happen if I do this?' And I talk about it in the book of like 50-year-old people who are still unconsciously sitting there going, 'But what will my parents think?' And it's like, you do realise that their opinion in this matter is a single data point, but your own variety of other needs and wants and conditions right now is probably even more important than that. So, I think there's a lot of heavy conditioning that unconsciously prepares us to hesitate before acknowledging and acting on our wants. And that's becoming an increasing liability in a very, very fluid world. And there's some very interesting societal things going on at the moment. You almost get the impression that external organisations, which could be governments, it could be large companies, it could be whatever, are expressing a preference that maybe we didn't have so much choices in things we do. But I think there's a bit of a realisation that people are going, 'Now hang on a minute, I'm not sure I like the direction that I appear to be being nudged in, and maybe I'm going to start making choices which go against my perception of what someone out there is saying they'd quite like to happen.' Well, I mean, in so many realms of our lives, we now have unbelievable choice. We curate so many things in our lives which only a generation or two ago we accepted were off the shelf. And again, it's a line that I use in the book, that we've gone from off-the-shelf life choices, like, I just do this, I pick it off the shelf, it's there, it's available, it's what I do, to, oh, wait a second, maybe I can make this a little more unique, maybe I can make this work for me in the same way that I stand there and say I want a double shot, triple foam, extra hot coffee. As opposed to black or white, or decaf or not. So, we are very powerful consumers who recognise that I want what I want, and I don't want something that's not on the menu kind of thing. So, I think it's impossible to draw a line between people who've spent a lot of time now exercising the power of choice in large realms of their lives, to then say, 'Oh, but when you get into the office, you need to just sit here and say yes, sir, no, sir, thank you, sir.' It's not feasible. And to my point, I don't think it's desirable either, because you're losing out on a lot of their best contribution by doing so. But I think that's the kind of weird, uncomfortable position we're in right now, that we're navigating this right now. And again, that part of the theme of the book is, you might sit there and look at your career and go, wait, am I really allowed to have an extra foam, double hot career? One that looks the way I want it to? Now, the answer is, it might be what you want, you go out, and you find out that it's not feasible. And so, you're going to have to adjust and adapt. And it is not to say that you get everything you want, or that the world will reward or recognise that, but that that is a beginning of starting to figure out how to thrive in a world that is not promising to look after you in the same ways it once did if you just put your head down and worked hard and stayed loyal. There's permission to say yes to something. There's also permission to say no to something. And it feels to me like it's the permission to say no which maybe gets overlooked or sometimes seems harder. How do you think about that? Yeah. So, those, for me, fall under my first permission, which is be wilful. Which, in its simplest form, is what you've just said, yes or no. And being alive to those things. What am I saying yes to? What am I saying no to? Do I really want what I'm saying yes to? Am I allowed to say no? And I think what's an interesting generational trend that we're observing right now is, I'm 54 years old, and I was from the yes generation, yes, I can do it, yes, I will do it, we earned favour by essentially taking on more and more and more, we would do the extra task, that was a sign of your diligence, of your commitment; we now have my teenagers, Gen Z, who's essentially saying no, I'm not going to sell myself to my career. No thanks, I have boundaries. And being judged very heavily for that as a sign of entitlement, or who do they think they are? Do they not understand that you're supposed to give yourself over completely to your job? And they're sitting there going, wait a second, we've watched this movie, and we can see how it ends. And by the way, we're living through a different era where companies aren't promising to be our families. I mean, that's over. We lived through that where it was like, oh, we'll look after you if you only give us your every hour of the day. We'll even give you a ping pong table and food. And we're now through that. And so, I think no is coming to the fore much more now. And younger people are far more comfortable saying it, and they're getting a lot of heat for it. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there going, yeah, of course, say it. Renegotiate in terms that make sense for now, because it's not 1996, right? It's not a time when that yes might have bought you stability and security in your life, or at least you thought it would. Now it doesn't get you that far. So, I think that boundaries are coming into the conversation a lot, because we're living on the heels of decades of burnout and overwhelm. And so, creating those fences around your time, around your desires, is now, I think, in terms of social discourse, more increasingly allowed, to use my language. It's really interesting. And I'm of a generation a little bit younger, but not that much younger than you, but I vividly remember in my last job where I was asked if I could get involved in a particular project, and there was the oversight in managing the project, and there was doing the work within the project. And I identified pretty quickly that the oversight and management was something that I felt like I could do, and I could probably enjoy doing that, but the actual getting involved with the work was going to be soul-suckingly dull. I made that point, and consequently, it went to someone else. I'm no longer working at that company. I don't know how directly it was related to that or not, but I think... Where am I going with this? It's definitely something where there are still consequences, or rather there are still perceived consequences of that, but perhaps organisations are slowly beginning to evolve and realise that people are recognising that the contract isn't there anymore. That people aren't thinking, 'Oh, if I say yes to this, then you'll look after me.' They're kind of wise to the fact that, actually, even if I say yes, you might not look after me. Probably won't. You know, it's a transactional relationship, and I think the veneer of the family has been ripped away. I mean, that was an extreme articulation of a relationship that everybody always knew wasn't like that. But even the contract that you referenced, that has shaped the nature of careers and work, probably since the mid to late 20th century, is now unravelling at the same time and not completely unrelated. We have AI coming onto the picture. So, as I look at my 17-year-old, the last thing I'm going to tell him to do is go get a job and then station yourself within a hierarchy because you think that's your best strategy. Hierarchies are flattening. Companies are outsourcing as many of these functions as they can. So, that's now pulling the last piece away in terms of having to think about the way you navigate your life differently. Now, my son will probably go find a job somewhere. And my message to him would be, learn as much as you can out of that. I always talk to my kids and to other people about imagining that you have a toolkit, a backpack, or whatever, you are accumulating capability as you go. You are then at every point figuring out how to shape and adapt that capability for different industries, for different eras, for different times. I think our identities are being divested from roles and moving more into a set of evolving capabilities. So, again, the idea that, you know, I learned to become an accountant, I go get an accounting job, and then I curry favour for as long as I can, as a strategy for success and status, I think is dissolving in front of our eyes right now. In which case we're moving into, okay, I will probably move through multiple roles in multiple contexts. I might apply my accounting knowledge in a variety of different ways, whether in start-ups or in a fractional role. So, a lot of these permissions and a lot of the underlying theme of permission is change readiness. Am I actively greenlighting myself to say yes to things that might feel a little bit unfamiliar or uncertain, but they're necessary for my growth? Am I saying no to things that might stifle me and render me irrelevant in 10 years' time because I stayed put for so long, I stopped keeping up with change as it was happening around me? So, I think, if you take the no conversation, we're moving into an era where I think we all have to be prepared to utilise yes and no in ways that serve us. And the downside of that is going to be less than it might have been for our parents who were still working within that old social contract. I'd like to expand a little bit on the no, and extend it to permission to stop. Sometimes there's going to be a feeling that we can't not do something because of, I'm going to call it a negative pressure, like what we've been talking about. Oh, I shouldn't rock the boat. Oh, this is safe. Or that kind of thing. But sometimes I feel like there's things which we do, which we do actually quite enjoy, but you start to get to a point where you think, I am really enjoying this, but maybe I'm taking too much on. Maybe something's got to give. But all of these things combined give me so much fulfilment. I'm just loath to drop something. Yeah, curious how you think about that. Yeah. I mean, I think stopping is like the ultimate capable or ambitious adult taboo, right? You don't stop, especially not in this era. Again, you take on more, you keep going. Stopping had a lot of explicit and implicit negativity wrapped up in it, in terms of, oh, quitting or bailing or not seeing something through. And what's so interesting for me, and one of the reasons I've enjoyed working with permission as a concept, is because it has a visceral effect on people. When you start to dig a little bit to what you wish you were allowed to do, the two things that come up the most unbidden, if nobody were watching, stop some of the things that I'm doing, because as you say, for a variety of reasons, they don't work anymore, but I'm not allowed to just stop something, am I? Just because it doesn't work. I mean, that's a perfect example of this unconscious set of beliefs that somebody has to tell me it's okay, even when I know patently nobody's coming to tell me it's okay. So, the confidence of your own authority to make choices that work for you is something that people crave. The second one is rest, which to me is sort of a daily form of stopping. Like, literally, can I just pause? Can I just stop? And if I think about growing up, I think my parents felt allowed to stop in ways that we don't. We're now, you know, fully on the rabbit wheel, the hamster wheel, sorry, of adulthood, which is more, more, more, go, go, go, yes, yes, yes. And I think there's just this deep craving right now which found expression in quiet quitting, in people saying no to new roles in favour of more flexibility and more time. So, I think we're seeing that play out at a cultural level. And I think there are just legions of people who would love to give themselves that permission, but don't feel allowed. And I think there sometimes is a trade-off. So, I know that I'm someone who can accrete hobbies and interests outside of work. And occasionally, I look at my diary and think, I've got six things in here this week. They're all things which I know I'm going to enjoy, but I'm looking at it cumulatively thinking, oh goodness me, how on earth did I get to this stage? And then, I have to start thinking, well, which one do I want to drop? And I keep on coming back, I don't really want to drop any of them. And then, you have to just make that conscious choice that what you've got, yes, you might enjoy all of it, but you can't do all of it, because there's that need for rest. Yeah, I think also two things. One, I think part of this practice, if you will, for me is the curious observation of self. Why am I making these choices? Why am I saying yes to this? Which doesn't have to be with the eagle eye of a therapist. It can just be a, hey, that's interesting. Why am I inclined to fill up my calendar like this? And then, no need for an immediate answer, just to continue gentle observation of a pattern. That's how we work. We work in patterns. That's fine. I'm going to take myself as an example where I feel like I'm in a no season right now. So, with the publication of the book late last year and a lot of things going on around that, I was just, yes, yes, yes, I'll talk to you, I'll do that, I'll show up, I'll be there. I finished the year, and I was just like, I've got nothing left. Now, no doesn't come naturally for me. I'm very much a product of A-type Gen X conditioning. But the no came from somewhere really deep. I wasn't having to override too much. All I had to do was listen in deeply to this part of me that was just like, 'I actually just need less.' And for the first time in probably over a decade, I have lots of open space. Now, that's what I need right now. I'm listening to it, I'm acting on it, I'm not overthinking it. I think we also can observe ourselves going through different times in our lives where sometimes that full calendar feels like precisely the kind of forward motion and stimulation you want. Other times, it's just like, I can't. So, attuning yourself to your evolving wants and needs is a central piece of this. There's two points I'd like to pick up in that. One is, I know that sometimes when I've got a blank calendar, there's almost like an anxiety as to, well, what am I supposed to do now then? You know, but if it's like a weekend and say, my wife's doing her own thing, and my daughter's watching TV or whatever, and I've got some free time, and there's always the urge to do something useful, do some tidying, do some cooking, that kind of thing. And there's that kind of anxiety. Related to that, there's also, I think, something around, I don't know whether it's an underlying belief that things shouldn't be easy or shouldn't be pleasurable. So, in the context of work, work isn't meant to be something that you enjoy, or like I was saying there, oh, I've got too much to do to be having fun or just turning my brain off and doing something completely unproductive but still fulfilling. So, interested to know how you think about those two points. Yeah, I mean, I'm a strong believer that we have become too preoccupied with work as the cornerstone of our identities and of the primary way in which we express our value and our interest in the world and make our contribution to the world. Again, I think that was largely my generation that started to buy that, that this is my whole identity. It has to have purpose, it has to have meaning, it has to have passion, it has to have all the things. And if it doesn't, then I'm stressed out. So, as a result, we edged out a lot of other things that might bring meaning and value into our lives. We heaped a tonne of pressure on work to do so much heavy lifting for us, which is almost impossible for any job to do that. And I think some of the correction right now is to, you know, I kind of coldly describe it as invest in high-quality leisure time. As both just an antidote to overwork and the obsession with work, but also as a wonderful space in which to grow and learn. When people talk about practising permission, I often say, first of all, I want you to forget about your job, your core relationships in your life, where you live. Let's put those aside. Because our brains instantly turn to the really high-stakes pieces of architecture in our lives that are hard to shift. We're very anxious about shifting them. Just take the pressure off of yourself in the first instance to make big changes in your life, to make hugely consequential choices. Let some of this choice muscle building, if you will, play out on a weekend, on a Saturday afternoon. What do I want to do? If what you want to do is kindle your own sense of agency, a great time to do it is on a weekend when it's kind of like, I've got lots of free time. What do I actually feel like doing? Nobody has to know. Doesn't have to feel like, what happens if it goes wrong? I think there's tremendous scope within the life beyond our professions to learn, grow, connect, develop a lot of the capabilities that work will never necessarily allow us to, but are actually so, so critical right now. So, yeah, and I can see, I think, amongst younger, again, I use my kids a lot as a little lens into younger generations, and I think that the pendulum is getting to there with them where they kind of want to have multiple things on the go, which makes a lot of sense for me moving into a world where portfolio approaches are more viable, where people are not trying to have one thing, where they want to have multiple different things. Now, everything doesn't have to be a side hustle, but I think if you're cultivating lots of different interests, if you're used to having more than just your work to keep you alive and engaged, it's a lot easier then to begin to have a portfolio mindset, as it relates to some of the more consequential professional choices in your life. What about permission not to change? What about, I don't know, making a choice, taking a decision that things might not be perfect at the moment, but just right now doesn't feel like the right time to make changes? Is that, I was going to say, is that acceptable, which is instantly putting judgement on someone else, but I guess again, because there's so much information out there about personal development and that kind of thing and self-improvement, but maybe sometimes it is the right thing just to sit back and go, yeah, I know there's all this stuff out there, there's all this stuff I could do, but not right now. Of course. I mean, I think that's usually the answer that a lot of people arrive at, right? But they arrive at it by default. Or they arrive at it almost through shame. Oh gosh, I'm too scared. I'm too overwhelmed. So, if that's a conclusion that you reach, I'd love for you to get to that place because you've really observed what's happening for you, and you've, with a lot of care and curiosity about yourself, said, 'I don't have it in me right now to go after change in this sphere in my life.' And I often say this to people who've reached that place, which is to say, okay, great, so let's keep your life exactly as it is. You came into this discussion, or there's something on your mind, right? Otherwise you wouldn't even be asking yourself whether you were ready in the first place. So, there's something bubbling within you. Now, can whatever's bubbling find expression or get attention through things that have nothing to do with making change in your life, have everything to do with letting a little bit of new life in, with stretching out a little bit? One of my permissions is take it outside, permission 3. So, leave your life exactly as it is and start opening yourself up to some new things that are not about change, like I need to make a big change, they are about active choice. And I would argue that anybody right now, any human that is alive right now, regardless of whether or not they feel like they want to make big changes in their lives, should be exercising their choice muscles. And those choice muscles could be applied simply to what do I want to eat tonight. Maybe I'm going to start trying some different toppings on my pizza. I love chocolate ice cream, I'm going to see if I can go and find some nice chocolate ice cream out there. Active agentic choice doesn't have to lead you to radically different changes in your life, but it should create a kind of richness of experience. And that, for me, is where I often find people who are feeling a little bit reluctant, that just start a simple phrase as I use it, letting new life in. Start experiencing some new things. Just expose yourself. Music, people, join a new network, download a bunch of books about something. Just add to the fabric, the experiential fabric of your life and let that start to inform you a little bit. An expanding sense of perspective. I think we ignore that peace a lot in favour of trying to make big changes when small choices can go a long way towards shifting our own sense of agency and power in our own lives. And there's a lot here around intention, isn't there? What you were saying at the beginning, intentional self-activated choices. You might decide that there is something in your life which you want to keep as a status quo, but you're actively taking that decision, rather than necessarily just defaulting to it. So, a

silly example: 33:41

I have the same breakfast every morning, and I'm happy with that. It works for me. I know what I'm doing. I quite like going on autopilot in the morning. But I recognise that there might come a point where I'm curious about making some change. Maybe it's too carb-heavy. Maybe exploring something like intermittent fasting is something I want to do. But it's about making the choice at the right time for you. Yeah, we also think about everything in a hugely binary way, which is why one of the permissions is experiment. I mean, have something different tomorrow. Just tomorrow. Just doing that will switch something on for you to go, actually, you know, I tried eggs today, I really like porridge. It's amazing. There's a reason. So, the default quickly becomes a choice the minute that you do something else. And it doesn't have to be forever. And it doesn't have to be labelled with good, bad. All it has to be is the briefest of departures from what you've always done. And then, you are making, you are forced to make a choice to say, huh, do I want to do that again? Do I want to go back to what I've always been doing? So, we tend to treat everything as some high-stakes behavioural thing, when it can just be, I'm going to try cornflakes tomorrow. And if I get halfway through my bowl of cornflakes, it will have switched on a whole lot of sensibilities in me that are like, whoa, I don't like milk, I don't like this, I don't like that. Okay, cool. But all of that gets dulled when you're just doing the same thing all the time. So, I really want to also encourage people to keep it very low stakes and even pleasurable. This doesn't have to be, as my 17-year-old would say, deep. It can be small shifts that just wake up that choice-making muscle. The point being that we are having to make more and more choices than ever, whether we like it or not. And in some cases, we probably love it. In other cases, we're probably like, oh my gosh, it was so much easier when television was programmed, and I just switched my TV on, and they were telling me what to watch. Now I have to choose. That's a very simple example of how life has shifted so dramatically from preprogrammed and selected by somebody external to me, to I now sit down, and I can spend forever scrolling through, going, oh, what do I want to watch? So, choice is now baked into our lives. We know that. We love it. We get tired of it. It's bubbling up now into the upper spheres of some of the bigger decisions in our lives, which will obviously scare us in ways that Netflix won't. But either way, we need to have pretty more attuned choice-making capabilities to take advantage of this. Otherwise, it's just going to feel like overwhelm, which again, I think we can all relate to when we sit down on a streaming thing, and we're just like, oh, I wish I could just watch LA Law or some... It's an old reference. I wish Ted

Lasso was on Wednesday night at 9: 37:01

00 PM, and I just knew that I could sit there and watch it. We can't; that's gone. So, we've got to choose. We get to choose. And the point is, the more that you're alert to how you're defaulting and where you're more actively designing these choices, the more able you will feel to make your way through a world that, quite frankly, I think a lot of us just feel pretty overwhelmed by a lot of the time. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to the infographic on your website, which outlines the 10 permissions, which I encourage everyone to look at because it is absolutely fantastic. We're not going to be able to go through all of them, but I am curious whether there is one of them, or maybe more than one, which are foundational. So, it all starts here. I'm conscious I might be asking you to pick your favourite child here. You wouldn't be the first one. And I would say, I do kind of have to have a favourite here, in that I did start with the first one, which is be wilful. I mean, and we've spent a lot of time today essentially talking about that. I mean, I do see it as a foundational thing, if you're not more actively and intentionally, again, I'll go back to yes and no, because I often find myself coming back to that with people tuning in to what you're saying yes and no to, I'm not sure that any of the other ones will land or resonate or make sense in the way that they should. But then, I'll also go to the second one because it is also a favourite, which is go astray. I think these two for me are the most foundationally transgressive, coming out of a time when we outsource what we want to other people, and we picked a lane. I mean, that was sort of the unconscious operating model for many a generation. And now we're moving into a time where fluidity is requiring us to not pick one lane, because if you're like this, you're missing so much. And yet, we know that intellectually. But how many people do I know, you know, people we work with, who are still so reluctant to make a change, to turn left, to turn right, as you already referenced, to stop sometimes and just take stock of what's going on? There's this, life is a four-lane highway, and I pick it, and I just keep going. And I think the permission to go astray is to say, one, it's okay because our lives are not linear anymore, they involve doing many different things. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that great? You can make a podcast as part of being a coach. You can do different things and weave around and not feel like you're somehow losing the core of what it is that you are trying to offer. But especially with young people that I talk to, who are in their 20s, early 30s, who are like, gosh, you know, I've done different things, I feel like a failure, they still have a mindset that they were supposed to get a big job out of college or education, and then stick with that and ride their way up. And it's like, it's not that anymore. We know that. But we're really still deeply holding that idea that that's what success looks like. So, they hold themselves back and hesitate from actively and consciously making changes and choices that might serve them. So, it is both a reassurance that if your life isn't linear, it doesn't mean you failed, and it's an encouragement to say we need to embed change in our lives, because change is happening to us all the time. If we are not driving it and choosing it in other realms of our life, we're going to find ourselves getting overwhelmed by having to accommodate so much external to us. So, yeah, one and two are kind of where it all begins for me. And which have you found to be the hardest, the one that it takes people, that they've got to travel on the biggest journey to get their head around or to start to implement? And that can be one of the first two if that's the case. Yeah, I mean, I think it is different for different people and where they are in their lives. But I will say, I think, forget about the future often raises eyebrows. Because we are so heavily ingrained, as humans, I mean, it's a capability that we have to think into the future, and it's a powerful one, however, I think in a time of disruption, the need for certainty, the reliance on predictability as a supposed justification for choice is now more faulty than ever. So, you've got a lot of people who will not act in the face of uncertainty, who are deeply programmed with, well, I can't do that, I don't know what's going to happen. And it's kind of like, you're not going to know what's going to happen. All right. Can we accept the fact that there's now baked-in unpredictability into our operating environment? We are probably not going to be able to have super clear five-year plans. Things are evolving too quickly. And whatever we think we can see from where we are is really just an articulation of the present moment. To remain truly open to what's evolving around us, we've got to suspend ourselves a little bit into this more inductive way of finding our way forward, allowing things to unfold a little bit, which is not to say that you're haphazardly pinging around, but that you might have shorter timeframes. You might build flexibility into your plans more than you previously would. You might accept the fact that you have a big picture intention of what you think you might want to create, but you're completely open and actively learning as you go about how that might shift along the way. It's really a reaction to, a lot of the work I did in the '90s that was, you picked your five-year destination, and then you worked backwards from there, and that's how you succeeded because you deduced your way forward. And a lot of us are really finding our way right now and feeling unsettled by that. And it's saying, it's okay, you don't have to know, but you do have to learn and be willing to adapt quickly, so that you don't get caught out when things start to shift in ways that you might not have anticipated. So, this isn't about a binary choice between you only live once and delayed gratification. So, you can still make decisions which you believe your future self will probably thank you for, whether that's saving in a pension, whether that's doing something for your health now, even though there might be uncertainty about whether things will pan out, that that ends up being the right choice. I mean, I think truly that's all we've ever had. That's all we've actually ever had. I mean, it was just that we could reassure ourselves more that the future would look like the present. And so, we had a very good chance that we could predict it, but we never could. So, yeah, what we need to do now is to lean into backing our next best choice, so that even if it doesn't turn out the way that it was supposed to, we understand, as you say, we're doing it because, with all that we have available right now, it's the best choice that we have to make. And I would often say that those choices would be ones that would be expansive rather than contractive. Maybe they opened up a few more options or connections, so that you were positioning yourself. I think that's one thing that has been, for a lot of the people I work with, one of the big shifts, instead of always looking for the one thing that you thought was the sure bet, because that's how you worked, you might have a number of things that are smaller bets where you're hedging a little bit, where you have, again, a portfolio that allows you to say, okay, this one, you know, I'm not sure how it's going to go, it's hugely unpredictable, this one I have a little more control over, I'm going to try that. So, it's a mindset of managing options, as opposed to going all in with something because you believe it's a sure thing. Aside from your own book, which I will, of course, put a link to in the show notes, what other resources can you recommend? Maybe a book or something which you found has been particularly influential in this area. So, I love Gay Hendricks' The Big Leap. I think it was one of the first times that I personally really listened into my own default operating system. He talks in the book about people having a kind of thermostat that they set for themselves. You realise that you unconsciously orient back to a certain way of being, even if you're not aware of it. And he starts the book with a very powerful example, something really wonderful happens to his son, and he's sort of momentarily excited, and then he finds himself introducing worry into it. And he then becomes aware that he's worrying. When he's like, why are you doing this? This is a wonderful moment. And because you're so used to worry as your default, I'm simplifying this terribly, you introduce these thoughts. They have no place here. It really has nothing to do with this moment. But you're much more comfortable worrying than you are being really excited about something great that just happened. That landed with me where I was like, gosh, I'm absolutely aware that I have, again, he describes that as sort of a thermostat, an internal setting that you often return to whether you're aware of it or not, and I found that a very powerful concept. And I can honestly say that I'm hugely aware of the way in which I will introduce thoughts, feelings, and then go, huh, why are you doing that? Is it a real concern, or are you just introducing that to the mix because that's something that you're familiar feeling? Or you don't feel allowed, again, to use my language, to just be excited, to just be positive. You're so used to being sort of worried about things. So, yeah, I'm not sure I did the book justice with my little intro to it, but it's a very powerful book and super interesting. I'll stick a link in the show notes. Where would you like to send people to find you? My website's probably the easiest place, tenpermissions.com. It's got both links to where you can purchase the book, it's got details of some of the other things that I'm doing at the moment around creating a kind of an ecosystem of support. As I describe it, permission is a practice, not a pep talk. It's a process of patterning and repatterning yourself for a very fluid world and building those choice muscles, nurturing that adaptivity. And it's a practice. And for all of us, and I see it with team leaders who find themselves working in unbelievably demanding and fluid operating context, to career professionals who are sitting there looking at the 10 years ahead going, 'I have no idea if my job will still be here, much less my role in general, my profession.' I don't think we have a playbook for what lies ahead. And I think the more that we introduce this conversation of self-permission and intentional choice into the mix, the more we start to build our capability to navigate it. So, yeah, have a look there, and you'll learn more about what I'm offering. This sounds like an absolutely fantastic resource, which I would encourage everyone to look at. Absolutely. Jillian, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your knowledge and wisdom. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you, Jeremy, for your very thoughtful questions. I've enjoyed it as well. Yeah, I'm grateful you're hosting this kind of conversation, I think it's more needed than ever. Okay, hope you enjoyed that interview with Jillian Reilly. As Jillian said, we're all part of larger systems, and so not every choice will always be available to us. But I think people tend to underestimate the amount of choices that they have. Too often the assumption is, oh, that's just not possible. And so, the thought or the conversation ends there. But what if instead you gave yourself permission to explore? What if you were to say, well, if this were possible, what would it look like? Or, okay, well, maybe that's not possible quite like that, but what if I was to make some adjustments or look at it another way? If you start to be more intentional, and you open yourself up to possibility, you'll find that there's actually an awful lot more out there than you first realised. And it doesn't always have to be right first time. You can course correct. That's something that's really important. I've seen with my coaching clients that people can get hung up on, oh, I've got to get this choice of job right, otherwise it's all going to go terribly, and I'm never going to get another job. And the reality is, there's very rarely a one-way door. If a decision turns out to be the wrong one, chances are there's something that you can do about it. Show notes for this episode are on the website, and I'll include a link to the graphic I mentioned on Jillian's website, which goes through the 10 permissions. It really is a very, very good, very simple graphic and worth a look. And I mentioned in the intro the important announcement. Well, if you listened to the end of the last couple of episodes, you'll have heard me say that this was my last interview, or at least my last interview for the time being. I've decided to stop the podcast. Whether that's a permanent stop or a temporary stop, I'm not quite sure yet. I'm planning to record a solo episode to come out in two weeks' time, which will explore and explain a little bit about how I've come to this decision, and also give you a really, really helpful framework which I used to help me decide not just this, but do an awful lot of planning at the beginning of this year. It was an extremely valuable exercise. It involved AI, and as long as you've got access to something like ChatGPT or Claude, anyone can do it. And I'll go through it in the next episode when I come to record it. So, if you want to find out about that and my reasons for calling a halt to the show for the time being, then make sure you're subscribed. It's actually worth staying subscribed. There's another podcast that I listen to where they stopped, and then they had a break for, it must have been best part of five years, and then they came back. And because I was still subscribed, I got the new episodes. So, you never know, I might put out some extra stuff. But in the meantime, there will be that show in two weeks' time where I go into it in a bit more detail, and I can't wait to see you then. Cheers. Bye.