longing for a permission slip

Years ago, my very first coach, Dr. Elaine Millam, had me make a list of the things about my day that I enjoyed and the things that I hated doing. She helped me develop a job that could very well have overwhelmed and capsized me into one where I surpassed everyone's expectations, including my own. Often I use some version of that exercise with my clients today, with a nod to Elaine. It's a great self-awareness assessment tool, and we call it the "loves, dreads and longings" list around here.

The first step is to identify what you feel good about (those rare energizing meetings, that person on your team who inspires you, the phone call that puts the bounce back in your step) and the second is to get clear on what you dread (the meeting with the go-nowhere agenda, the busywork assignment, the minutia that is dissatisfyingly distant from the big picture). Once you understand what you look forward to with happy anticipation you can start to shape your life to have more of that stuff in your day. Once you fully understand what you dread and why, it's easier to make choices about minimizing those features that drain and devalue you.

In the workplace, this matters because it influences who you hire and what skill set you need around you. It creates purposeful delegation. It assures you that your day is going to be full of energy and insight rather than a drain on your capacity. It shapes your calendar so you can leverage your highest value. In your life…well, if you want to have a life that matters and brings your best self to the fore, it requires courageous intentional planning and action.*

When you've gotten clear on the first two steps, it's logical to tackle the third: what you long for. Often tricky because it requires the most action, this step calls for you to disrupt the status quo enough to at least add to it.

I revisit this list because I got a call from a former client who referred to that exercise. I chuckled when she called, pleased to know she was still using it. A few months ago, Susie** headed for northern California to visit her father, who was facing the end-stages of his life. She was driving cross-country because she had some heavy items and thought she'd enjoy the time to think. She told me about steps she'd taken since our work together to further assure that her work life was much more supportive of her best self and how she'd dropped elements--even from her personal life--which felt draining and disempowering. She had taken careful steps to preserve the aspects of her life that worked and innovatively discarded the elements that were eroding her. Susie said it continued to be hard, however, for her to think about her longings list.

What she really yearned for terrified her, mostly because it was impossible.

She thought about her father's last weeks and struggled with the idea of the kind of daughter she wanted to be, the kind of daughter she imagined her father wanted her to be, the kind of daughter she always thought she would be. She couldn't be assured that she would get peaceful time with her dad, since his health wasn't stable and their relationship was turbulent. She longed for--"Ridiculous, I know!"--permission from him to live her life in a way that best suited her. Not, Susie said, that permission would ever be granted in a million years. Not, Susie said, that she'd even be willing to give herself that permission. And besides, look! the road ahead was closed because of bad weather. Forget longings, Susie said. The road ahead reminded her that there were too many obstacles for her to really have what she yearned for, a life where she felt she had "permission" to be her fully sparked-up self.

Susie took a different route. She turned back, then drove south until she was beyond the reach of the storm front and then just drove on west. Even in clear weather, she got held up in shabby motels overnight because of car trouble; she almost turned around completely because of a crisis at home.

She called me after she got back to the east coast to report that somewhere along the way she'd had an epiphany about her longings list. She saw that--obviously--there was more than one way to get to California from New York, that there was more than one way to get "permission," and that there was more than one way to get what she longed for. Her father didn't give her permission to live her life in any particular way, she said, but they said their good-byes in as loving a way possible. He died both disapproving of her and idealizing her. And Susie gave herself a big ol' permission slip.

In spite of her fathers death, Susie sounded joyful when she told me that she'd figured out that neither the route to the permission slip nor the source of the permission slip was what she expected it to be.  And I really needed the reminder myself.    

~~~~~

*You can usually figure that out with a good therapist.  Call me for references.
**Although she has given me permission to share this story, I'll use a fake name. And this image is thanks to The Yellow Kite.