Ep #67: How to Get Permission

You are listening to episode 67 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you stop asking for permission. Let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hello my confident coaches. How’s everybody doing out there? How are my Latta loves? I hope you’re doing fabulously. We have – I’m obviously recording before Valentine’s Day; this is coming out after Valentine’s Day. I am wearing my red xoxo shirt thinking of nothing but love for all of you. I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I hope you had – maybe you even had a little time off, maybe, possibly. Hope you all are staying warm.

It’s cold as butt here in the Midwest. Did you know that was a thing? So we’re just hunkered down and trying to stay warm. And I’m really excited to talk about today’s topic with you. It’s something that came up in a conversation with my assistant Denita and I’ve been coaching my clients on it all week inside the Confident Coaches Mastermind.

And I think this is really going to land for a lot of you because I know the topic we’re going to talk about today, which is permission, asking for permission, do you need permission, if you struggle with confidence, I know this shows up for you because it shows up for me. It’s shown up for me in my entire life. And it still shows up for me even though I am the confidence coach and I am the confidence expert. I still find my Helga brain defaulting to this.

So we’re going to talk about this today from a place of massive love. But before we do, can we do a little celebration? Will you do a little celebration with me? Alright, everybody lean in. And this is a celebration, this is a shout-out to my client Melissa.

Melissa is in my September Confident Coaches Mastermind and she became a fully-booked coach last week. What? Yes, woo-hoo. Yeah, it’s pretty damn exciting. This was her BHAG. This is something that we do inside Confident Coaches Mastermind when we start working together, we set a BHAG. A big hairy audacious goal.

It’s the thing that you want to see by the time that we’re done or that you’re going to be working towards the whole time. My clients work with me either in on six-month group, sometimes they work with me for a full year, and this is the work that we’re doing is what do you need to believe about yourself, what are you willing to feel uncomfortable in, what are you willing to feel uncomfortable doing, what discomfort are you willing to embrace, how are you going to start thinking and acting like the person who’s already accomplished that BHAG, how are you going to have your own back when shit doesn’t work out? And shit always doesn’t work out. And how are you going to keep going and keep testing and keep trying?

And we use that BHAG as the confidence comes on the journey, the destination is the big fat hell yeah when you get there. So Melissa, I’m so stinking proud. Yes, we hit your BHAG and we hit it early. It’s how we do it here. I’m so excited. So give some love to Melissa and to my confident coaches in the mastermind. That is how you work with me.

I do have this free podcast, you can follow me on Instagram, you can follow me on Facebook, you can get tons of free trainings and low-cost trainings that I offer all the time, but if you want to work with me, you work with me in my six-month mastermind and I’m launching four times this year.

So the next round is coming up. The next round starts in April and we’re going to be selling it in March and I have a super exciting brand-new stinking event coming. Details might even be live right now. But they’re definitely going to be live very, very soon, so pay attention, make sure you’re following me on social media and you will hear all of those details.

How you too can decide what your BHAG is. What’s your big hairy audacious goal for this year? What’s it going to take for you to accomplish that? What about the five steps to creating self-confidence? I teach you all about it, Melissa learned it, her fellow coaches in the mastermind are learning it too. It could be you too. This could be your year.

Not interested in sitting around waiting for permission though, so let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about permission and are you waiting for permission. So what do I mean by that? So many coaches struggling with confidence will frequently ask like, is this okay? Is this okay? Is this thing that I want to do, is it alright? Can I? Can I do this? Are they okay? Is it kosher? Is it okay? Is it too audacious? Are people going to weird out or are they going to be freaked out about it?

And really, what we’re doing is we’re wanting permission from somebody outside of us to tell us that this thing that we want to do is okay with everybody else. I want to run this by someone. One of the things that we do in Confident Coaches Mastermind, that step three, that who are you going to be when you have this BHAG, there’s a whole step that I teach about becoming your own best mentor.

We talk about self-concept, we define your future you, we talk about the qualities of the person that you’re going to become, who you will actually become as a person, how you will think, how you will feel. You will learn to mentor with that person. How do you go to a forward-thinking part of your brain and find out the answers from that part of your brain that knows?

And it’s because from there, we make decisions. Now, last week’s podcast was all about how to decide, which came out of how to unbelieve, how to believe. That was the whole three-part series that I just did. And how to make a decision without needing someone’s permission is a nuance to that how to decide.

We didn’t talk about it in last week’s podcast, but I know that it’s something that comes up often when we’re like, I’m going to get into my forward self, I’m going to raise my self-concept, this is what I want to believe about me, this is how I’m going to think, this is how I’m going to feel, this is what my Gigi brain, that inner evolved woman brain knows, and we make that decision, and then one of the things that will frequently stop us from acting on the decisions that we make is this idea of but I got to run it by who?

And that is the thing. I got to run it by someone. Somebody out there has an authority over me and I need to go run this by them first. I’ve made the decision, I’ve done all of that unbelieving, believing, and I went into my forward-thinking brain and I made this powerful decision, I’m really excited to act on it, and then what? I got to run it by somebody. I need to make sure this is okay.

So it’s really interesting because permission is by definition consent or authorization. We’re looking for somebody to give us consent. We’re looking for somebody to give us authorization. And this is just like this concept that I’ve talked about in the podcast before about the rules.

I’ve done this episode, it’s a concept that I’ve taught in a ton of trainings before, it’s definitely a module that’s even in my Confident Coaches Mastermind about one of the things that will stop us is worrying about if something goes against the rules. And of course, if you’ve heard me coach on that before, you know that of course the trick is there are no rules.

All rules are thoughts. Rules are just thoughts. And we frequently will hold other people’s thoughts against ourselves. So as a for instance, so-and-so says this isn’t okay, this is okay, and this isn’t okay. And I believe them. What we’re saying is so-and-so thinks a certain way and I’ve decided that I should too, so I will use so-and-so’s thoughts about life and what is okay and what isn’t okay and I will decide that those are rules for living and I need to adhere to them in order to fit in, in order to belong, in order to be okay with this person that has thoughts about life out here.

And what I want to challenge all of you is there are no rules. All of this is made up. I hate to be the bearer of bad news here but literally everything in your life is a farce, it’s a lie, it’s all like the matrix. It’s all made up. All of the humans in all parts of the world are making it all up every day.

Now yes, this is different than there are laws. This is not me telling you to go violate laws and then the police officer says, “Ma’am, why did you do this?” “Well, Amy Latta said there were no rules.” No, there might be laws, please adhere to the laws in the state and the country in which you live in.

I’m just talking about rules for living. Rules for operating in this world. Rules for running your business. Rules for how you communicate with people. Rules for how you function in your day-to-day life, the things you do and you don’t do, the things you say and you don’t say.

There are no rules. It’s all made up. All there are other people’s thoughts on what is okay and isn’t okay. You’re the one that gets to decide if you want to also believe those same thoughts. And that’s what permission is. permission, thinking we need permission, wanting to ask for permission, wanting to run this by some authority out there, let me go ask my coach if this is okay, let me go ask my peers if this is okay, let me go ask the other coaches in my mastermind if they think this is okay.

Really what we’re doing is we’re just having a conversation about the made-up rules using different language. Because there are a lot of people who are like, yeah, totally on board with there are no rules, but I need to go ask my coach if it’s okay if I do this one thing right here. You’re just using different language. We’re talking about asking for permission as opposed to wondering if this breaks the rules. It’s just different language about the same thing.

Now, we coached on this in my mastermind just today. So in my Confident Coaches Mastermind today, this was my January class. So this is my class that I’ve been working with for just a couple of weeks now. And I asked them some questions. I’m going to ask you the same questions in just a couple of minutes.

So I’m going to give you some questions in this podcast episode to think about where you’re asking for permission and why and what you can do to drop that. So I’m going to give you those in just a couple of minutes, but this is how we had this conversation today inside the mastermind.

So some of the areas that came up was asking permission to be the expert. So this is something that can come up for coaches where it’s “am I really the best person to coach on this? There are other people who know more than me. There are other people who’ve trained more, who’ve studied more, who have a different degree or different certification, and am I really the best person to talk about this thing?”

There are other people who have larger audiences or more years of experience. So is it okay for me to come out to the world to say hi, my name is Amy and I’m the confidence coach for coaches and this is what I’m going to teach you, this is what I understand about confidence and how it affects your ability to market, to sell, and to coach, and this is what you’re going to learn, and this is what I believe in.

Do I need to ask somebody for the permission to say those things first? Do you feel the need to ask somebody if it’s okay for you to be the expert in what you know and what you do?

Another area that came up was permission to belong. Permission to be in the room, permission to be in the same space as these other coaches, permission to be in that mastermind or in that small group or in that Facebook group. Like, permission to be in the room, we’re talking virtual rooms, we’re talking literal rooms, right?

It’s this idea of do I belong here? Do I fit in? Is everybody else okay with me being here? Do I have permission to be here? Am I going to get kicked out? Is somebody going to find me out because maybe I’m also thinking I need permission to be the expert too, right?

So notice some of these permissions can kind of cross over. So permission to be the expert, permission to belong. Another area that came up is permission to stand by what I believe in.

So once you have established that you are an expert in your area and once you have established that you do belong in the room that you’re in, there might be people who don’t agree with you. There might be scientific evidence that says the opposite is just as true as what you say.

This came up specifically with a coach of mine who coaches nutrition. She’s a health coach and she’s adding group mindset coaching to her traditional eat this, don’t eat that type of situation. Of course, we know there’s tons of science that’s contradictory here.

There are so many cities that say this is okay and you’ll have an equal number of cities that say the exact opposite is okay. So she was really looking for permission to stand by what she knows to be true, even though other people might say, “Yeah, I believe the opposite is true.”

So do you not only believe you’re an expert in your area, but do you also believe that your experience, even if other people might have different experience, is still valid? Do you believe that you can stand by what you believe in, even if there’s contradictory evidence to say otherwise?

Because there’s always going to be contradictory evidence. There’s always going to be somebody else out there who also is an expert in an area and they might say something different, and do you have permission to stand by what you believe in?

Another area of permission that came up was permission to connect with my people. This comes up so often for coaches that do struggle with confidence who are wanting to get better at sales and marketing is like, is it okay if I email my people more often? Are they going to get mad at me? Is it okay if I post every day on social media? Is it okay if I post three times a day? Is it okay if I include this in my Instagram stories? Is this TMI? Is this too much? Is this too often? Is this not often enough? Does this all sound really familiar?

This is an area I coach so much on because it’s a lot of the work that I do around learning to be uncomfortable doing, implementing the decisions that you’ve made. A lot of it is contacting your people on a more regular basis, making 10 times more offers than you have been offering before.

So this need to ask for permission, if it’s okay to connect with people this often often can come up. Do you believe that your ideal audience wants to hear from you? Do you believe that you have something that’s so valuable to share that the people who want it will want to hear from you?

I love this idea that my people would devour anything that I have to offer them, that they can’t wait to get their hands on a new program or a new training or a new podcast. They’re just like, sopping me up with a biscuit, right? That they love to hear from me and the people that are in my sphere are waiting for me to connect with them.

And then the last area that came up when we were coaching today was permission to charge our worth. So this is also very common of in the is it okay file. Is it okay that I charge what I charge? Is it okay that I charge anybody at all? Is it okay that my program is as long as it is? Is it okay that my program is the price that it is? Is it okay that I don’t offer payments? Is it okay that this is the only way that they can work with me?

And where this can really bite coaches in the butt is when they will set up 27 different plans and scenarios because they think they have to ask permission and so they will sell the client whatever the client wants. And so if you have 10 different clients, you might have 10 different payment plans and you might have one-off sessions here and another person and 15 sessions and another person that’s paying by the hour and another person that’s making payments.

All because you were looking for somebody outside of you to tell you if it’s okay or not. So here’s what I want to ask you. Where else does this come up for you? Where does asking for permission come up for you? And then I’m going to give you the question that you need to answer so that you can stop asking for permission.

Because ultimately, permission is a lack of belief in yourself. Ultimately, this need to ask for permission for somebody outside of you means that in that moment, after you’ve made the decision, and in that moment before it’s time to act on that decision, your belief has started to wane just a bit.

And that’s when we will go to the maybe I need to make sure this is okay. So here’s what I want you to consider. Where are you asking for permission right now? What are you asking for permission for? And then why? Why are you asking for permission? What are you hoping to avoid? What are you afraid will happen if you don’t ask for permission?

What do you worry “they” will say if you don’t ask for permission in advance? What are you afraid is going to happen? Why are you asking for it? And then what do you need to believe to drop that need for permission? What do you need to believe about you, about your coaching, about your business?

Because the truth is if permission is in fact consent or authorization, where does consent and where does your authorization come from? It comes from you and it can only come from you. And it can only come from how you think about yourself.

As soon as you give someone else your consent or your authorization, you are giving your power away to somebody outside of you and you do not have to do that anymore. When you learn how to stop asking for permission, you are taking your power back.

This is ultimately an empowerment and a belief issue right here. Because the need to ask for permission comes in those moments between the decision being made and the next action being taken, and your belief wavers just a little bit. And in that moment, it’s your Helga brain’s desire to give your power and your consent and your authorization away to someone else and you don’t have to do it anymore.

Where are you asking for permission? Why are you asking for permission? What are you trying to avoid or what are you afraid is going to happen? And then what do you need to believe to drop that need for permission? What do you need to believe about you, your coaching, or your business?

Alright my friends, because in those questions right there, we can quit asking for permission and start acting on the decisions that we’ve made. Because again, we’re going to test it, we’re going to give it a try, we’re going to see what happens, we’re going to evaluate it, and then we’re going to make another decision, and then we’re going to implement it there.

In none of those steps does asking someone else is this okay needed. The desire to ask if this is okay is your first sign my belief is wavering just a little bit here. And I wonder why. What little belief boost do I need to focus some attention on so that I can implement the decision that I’ve made?

Alright my friends, I can’t wait to hear back from you in the comments, on social media, or in replies to the email when this podcast goes out. Where are you asking for permission and what do you need to believe about you to drop that need for somebody else’s permission for you?

Let’s go get your power back, let’s go become empowered, make that decision, and now go implement it. No permission necessary, except for your own. Alright my friends, I can’t wait to see what you create. Confident coaches, remember, until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

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Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.