Am I allowed to post this?
A person will be called to account on Judgment Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not. – The Talmud
It’s just gone 1pm on a Thursday afternoon in Central London and the IT staff in a large financial firm have just been told that they no longer need to ask the management when they want to do new things.
The instructions are simple, “If you want to do something to improve the way you work, to make things better for you, and to make things better for the company, get on with it”. This is all part of their new AGILE approach.
Everyone pours out of the meeting with faces full of glee and high hopes for the future of the company. The new sense of freedom that’s just been bestowed upon them leaks from every part of their being and finally they can take control over their own working lives and do things they way they’ve always wanted too.
One problem is they don’t know how. Within minutes of the meeting ending staff are approaching the managers to ask “Is it ok if I do x, is it aright for me to do y”. They get the concept that they can just get on with it, yet for some reason they continue to hold on to the same old ways of working as they did before.
The guy who’s training them isn’t at all surprised by this. He’s seen it a million times over, people coming in and learning the new stuff, getting all excited about using it and fully understanding the freedoms this new way of working brings. And then the same old thing where people go back too their normal lives and slip back into doing what they’ve always done having wasted 7 days teaching themselves how to filter by sameness.
The problem isn’t really that these people don’t know how to do the new things or that they aren’t capable of getting on with it, it’s just that the idea of not asking for permission is a daunting one. “What if I just start doing things and I get it wrong……What if I’m not allowed to do that and I do it anyway…..What if I change this one thing and the whole company comes tumbling down to the ground, foundations and all”.
One of the best things I’ve discovered about getting on with things is that there is always going to be some kind of feedback that helps to guide you. When the guy sitting over the other side of the room moves his entire desk to sit next to me in order to take an amount of control over his environment and he does it without asking permission, the worst that can happen is that someone tells him it’s not appropriate for him to be there. If that happens, he moves back and re-evaluates.
When we talk about the things in nature being paradoxical and we realise that in order to not have to ask for permission, we have to give ourselves permission to do that, it opens up the door to a way of thinking that will take you beyond what you thought you were allowed to do.
Getting on with it
I could write some instructions here about how to go about giving yourself permission and how to think about all the things in your life that you want to achieve but aren’t. I could even go on to explain that when you give yourself some freedom and you take up the opportunity to live out that freedom without worrying about who might be watching or who’s permission you might need, that you might just find there are restrictions you’ve been putting in your way that just vanish.
I could do that, but then you’d have had to give yourself permission to follow through the steps and start doing what it is that will make your life the way you want it too be.
“I emailed myself 6 times this morning to find out whether I’m allowed to do what makes me most happy. I’m still waiting on a reply”.
Love, Jamie
