In this 5‑minute motivational episode, the host explains that what many people label as a lack of confidence is often actually a habit of seeking permission from others. She describes how this behavior can be subconscious, rooted in people‑pleasing or early conditioning, and how it manifests as repeatedly asking for opinions before taking action. The speaker differentiates between a genuine sounding‑board (a coach who asks probing questions) and permission‑seeking (someone who simply gives approval). She outlines the risks of outsourcing decisions, such as losing ownership of outcomes and failing to build self‑trust. To counter this, she proposes daily self‑validation practices: before consulting anyone, ask yourself a set of internal questions about excitement, alignment with goals, and gut feeling. By consistently checking in with oneself, individuals can develop self‑trust, which is essential for making larger, riskier business and creative decisions. The episode ends with a call to stop defaulting to external validation and instead back one’s own ideas with confidence.
Chapters
Welcome to 5 Minutes of Momentum. These episodes are a short 5-minute burst of inspiration, motivation, and massive action. If you need that little kick up the butt to get things moving and to inspire you to take massive action, then every single Thursday I'll be sending you through a 5-minute episode to download, digest, and implement to finish your week off strong. Are you ready to get started? Let's go. Welcome back to 5 Minutes of Momentum. Today I want to talk to you about permission and how sometimes it can be disguised as lacking confidence. If you find that you are telling yourself, and a lot of the time it's very subconsciously, right? Like, I just want to say, when I— when you initially go like, you know, are you waiting for permission? Are you waiting for permission from someone else to tell you to go for it? Consciously, we often think, no, no, that's not the case. Of course not. I am a high achiever. I take action. I do all the things. But really, when we start to notice where we're hesitating where we're holding back and where we're looking to others to make our decisions, we can subtly see that sometimes there's a little bit of self-sabotage going on there, where we're actually waiting for permission from someone else before we go after something, before we actually decide on something. And so this can be something that's deeply ingrained in us from even as a young age, or as a people pleaser, when we're looking to other people and being like, okay, should I do this? Should I take this action? And sometimes it's through needing to process, right? So sometimes we ask other people their opinion because we're wanting to process and vent or go through the decision-making process with someone, right? And you've got to be conscious of who you choose to support you with that, because in those situations, it's not that you want someone else's opinion, you just want a sounding board, right? And so it's a really good way to have a sounding board to, rather than be like, what do you think about this? We need someone to actually ask us the right questions to determine our feeling about it and what we wanna do about it, right? So sometimes when you're making decisions like that, it's really important that you consider like, who am I asking for their opinion? Because am I really wanting an opinion or am I actually seeking permission or am I just needing a sounding board, right? 'Cause sometimes you just need a sounding board. Other times it's because we're waiting to feel like, is this the right decision for me? Should I be doing this? Is this actually going to work? And we're literally outsourcing our own confidence because we're relying on someone else to make the decision for us. And the hard part with that is that if we end up doing the thing, if we actually back it and we do the thing and it works, sometimes it feels then we don't, we really can't contribute or take credit for that because it wasn't actually our decision. So it's so incredibly important that when you're making big decisions, like you really check in with yourself to make sure it's the right decision for you. But other times when it's not big decisions, where you're literally just outsourcing your decision to other people, right? This could, this could look like instead of just putting it out there, you go and you check in with 5 other people to see like, should I do this? Does it sound right? Right? And if we're looking for that permission, right? We're waiting for that permission from other people. And this is very different to working with a coach, right? So a good coach will be your sounding board and won't just give you the answer and won't just say like, I think you should go do this, right? And so because I'm a strategist and a coach, it's a really fine line. Because sometimes I'm like, okay, I need to know firstly, do you know what you need to do and you're just not doing it? And so do you need a sounding board here? And so sometimes I'll ask that question or other times it's, I can tell it's a strategy question. So we've got to dive into the strategy. And usually what I like to do is I give the back thought, right? Like how I'm thinking about this, because I want my clients to also think about it like that. And in a good way. So then down the track, when they're making a similar decision, they actually go through the thought process themselves. Instead of then asking me again, because I want them to be self-accountable. I want them to be giving themselves the validation that they need in order to make their next move. And the reason for that is, is that I really want you to build self-trust, because when you're always looking for external validation, right, you're thinking, okay, should I try this thing, or should I do this, or should I put that out there, or what about this? If you're always looking for that external validation, then you never truly build that level of self-trust that is required for you to be able to go bigger. Right? Because when the big decisions happen, you won't trust yourself. You won't be able to back yourself because you haven't actually been doing it with the littler decisions. So the more that you can build in self-trust exercise on a daily basis where you're checking in with yourself first before you ask anyone else's opinion, it's just a really healthy way to be like, how do I feel about this? So even with a piece of content, like you can do it with that. You can be like, okay, instead of going questioning and be like, is this gonna work? Is this not gonna work? That's the wrong question to ask yourself. It's like, okay, does this resonate with my ideal client? Do I feel excited to share this piece of content? Am I happy with what I'm putting out there? Right? Because if the answers to that question, if any of the answers are no, then you wanna check in with yourself first before you go ask anybody else. And if the answer is yes and you put it out there, then you can fully back it with your own energy and your own belief in yourself. And that's what, what matters. Because when it comes to scaling your business, that level of self-trust and checking in with yourself and, or checking in with that internal knowing, of your gut, right? Your gut telling you, yes, you should go for this. That will honestly serve you in so many ways as you grow, because if you are always looking externally or wait— waiting for permission from other people, then you will never truly believe in yourself because it'll always be other people's ideas. And you've got to back your ideas. So if at any point this week that you go to put something out there, or you go to think about something, doing something that's bigger or scarier and you think, oh, I'm not really confident yet, and you start asking other people what they think. I want you to stop doing that and actually ask yourself, what would it take to back myself in this? And do I want to do this? And if I want to do this, what is it going to take to back myself? That's what matters.
