Episode 2 – Giving Ourselves Permission to be Human (The G.R.I.T. Podcast)

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to the second episode of Strive for More’s G.R.I.T Give, Recognize, Implement Time® Podcast. Today we’re going to get into the give of G.R.I.T. Giving ourselves permission to be human. What does it really mean? What does it consist of? How do we do it? What’s an easy way we can do it right now and help us along the way.

So giving ourselves permission to be human really in essence is all about compassion for ourselves, forgiveness for ourselves, accepting who we truly are and all parts of who we are, not just the good, not just the bad but everything about us because it’s okay. It’s okay to be human. It’s okay to have multiple parts of us, ups, downs, negatives, positives, or as I like to say the non-serving and the serving because we’re not alone in that. We all share in this condition.

Giving ourselves permission to be human starts with accepting that dual nature that we all have. One of the ways that I love to describe this is as we see often in movies or TV shows and think about enlightenment, we have kind of this mantra of a monk say walking down the street and something bad or negative happens and they just brush it off. They don’t get flustered, nothing seems to bug them. Apparently they’ve gotten essentially rid of the frustration, the anger, the judgment. But I have a different perspective on enlightenment. When I look at things like that, what we see in TV and movie, I think that it teaches us to try to get rid of part of who we are because when we do that, it can create a compounding effect, and here’s what I mean.

Let’s say that there’s a perhaps reaction, walking my dog that I think should never happen where maybe I yank back on the leash too hard perhaps as an example and if i do that, then I could be upset that I’ve done that because I didn’t want to do it and then if I think that’s not okay for me to have done or have a part of me, then I’m now upset for two reasons. It’s a compounding effect where now I’m upset for having done what I’ve done and the fact that I don’t think that it should happen. That’s a … Just an off the cuff example, there’s a lot of other examples that we can think of in life where I maybe think, “Goodness, I can’t believe I did that again. I thought I was done with that. Why did I eat the entire bag of chips?” Or “Why did I maybe snap at this person?”

When we do something we don’t like, we’re upset because of that, and then if we think that we shouldn’t do it, we’re upset now for that second reason and compound this non-serving. When we talk about giving ourselves permission to be human and embrace that, you know what? Those things happen. It’s okay, it’s a part of who I am. I can alleviate that stress, that tension that comes with that and now start to back down on the anxiety, the stress, the tension, create calmness, relaxation, and forgive myself for things that perhaps I don’t like because it’s okay that it happens. Because when we recognize and embrace that, you know what? It is who we are, it’s easier for us to actually move past them, to prevent them in the future and to have that holistic viewpoint of it’s okay to be who I am versus this can’t happen, I should never be this way, this is not how anyone reacts.

That’s another part of this actually is we compare ourselves naturally to people. We take a look at Sharon or John and say, “You know what? They’ve got it all together. They have all the confidence in the world. They’ve had all this success.” But we don’t know exactly what it is that they’ve struggled through in life. What their thoughts are, what their crutches are, and guess what? They have them, just like we all have them. It’s part of this whole viewpoint that we are all human, we’re all in this together, and we can actually create a similar type of stress and tension by looking and comparing ourselves to other people and we can when we believe there shouldn’t be something about us and that’s got to go away and it’s got to be turned off and completely removed.

If we allow ourselves that permission, giving ourselves permission to be human, we can alleviate the stress and tension we feel on multiple fronts from comparing ourselves to other people and “shutting off” parts of who we are that are going to be there regardless. It’s just to what extent and how do I deal with it, and that is a latter part of G.R.I.T. We’re going to get into that here later when we talk about recognize and implement.

But getting back to giving ourselves that permission to be human is … It’s also okay that it happens because we are not alone and we can actually look to other people for inspiration because if we’re not alone and other people struggle with it, guess what? If we perceive that they’ve overcome this, there is a way for us to do it as well. There is hope, there is a path forward, and I can actually make that happen for me as well. I am not alone in this. It’s okay that I have both sides to me. I am able to achieve what I want because there is a path forward and I can walk that path.

That is what giving ourselves permission to be human really means. So how do we do that? One simple way we can start doing that is honestly just writing out what is it that I’m going to give myself permission to do? Do I perhaps power through work but I’m always stressed out and tense at the end of the day and I find that I am maybe short-tempered and I snap at people that I don’t want to snap at? What do I need? Do I need a break? Have I actually given myself the permission to take five minutes? To step back from my computer? To relax and to be able to move forward, much more fruitfully, much more productively? Can I give myself permission to be human and take five minutes to calm down, to relax, to get into a nice, calm state.

So for us, what I’ll put out there is what are you going to give yourself permission to do today? To do that, simply write a list out of I give myself permission to blank. What is that blank? There can be as many things on this list or as little things on this list as you want, but if we start creating this awareness around what it is that I want to give myself permission to do, then we start cracking away at the underlying mentalities that we need to bring out and address by working on giving ourselves permission to be human and starting this process of G.R.I.T.

So I hope you enjoyed what we’ve talked about today. I hope that this exercise is going to help you and get you off on the right foot. If you have any questions, please leave a comment. You can reach out to me as well, direct message me, email me, whatever you like to do, but this has been our G.R.I.T. Give, Recognize, Implement, Time Podcast and I can’t wait to get into the recognize piece with you coming up soon.

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