Episode Overview:

In this episode, Andrew and Catherine tackle a common challenge—needing permission. Whether it’s waiting for approval to rest, to buy something for yourself, or to pursue a new goal, many of us feel like we need someone else’s okay to live the life we want. The hosts dig deep into why we feel this way, how it’s tied to worthiness, and how we can begin to give ourselves permission to live on our own terms. Filled with relatable stories, practical advice, and a healthy dose of humor, this episode is about empowering you to step into your own life.

Key Topics Covered:

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• The Roots of Needing Permission: How childhood conditioning and societal expectations play into our adult lives, creating the habit of seeking external approval.
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• The Role of Worthiness: The hosts explore how needing permission is often a reflection of feeling unworthy or undeserving of the things we want.
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• Permission to Rest and Care for Yourself: Catherine shares her struggle with feeling like she needs approval to take a break or do something for herself, even in her own home.
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• The Life Checklist: Andrew and Catherine discuss the societal "checklist" of life that tells us what we should be doing, and how breaking away from that can make us feel like we need validation.
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• Practical Steps for Self-Permission: Tips on how to start small by giving yourself permission for little things, building up to bigger goals, and how this ties into living a life of purpose.
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Actionable Steps for Listeners:

1. 
   
3. Start Small: Give yourself permission for simple things like taking a break, buying a small treat, or doing something you enjoy.
4. 
   
5. 
   
7. Awareness: Begin noticing the moments when you feel like you need permission from others and ask yourself why.
8. 
   
9. 
   
11. Affirm Your Worthiness: Remind yourself that you are worthy of good things, whether it's a snack or a big life change, without needing external validation.
12. 
    
13. 
    
15. Journal Your Desires: Write down the things you want to do but haven’t given yourself permission for yet. Start with one and give yourself the green light.
16. 
    

Quotes:

"The only person you need permission from is yourself. Start small, and build that muscle of self-approval." – Andrew Dewar

"If something keeps bubbling up inside of you, that’s your heart talking. Give yourself permission to follow it." – Catherine Collins

Glimmers of the Week:

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• Andrew: Excited about his new discovery—Siesta chips, a healthier snack made with cassava flour that’s both satisfying and good for him, especially the churro-flavored ones.
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• Catherine: Cherishing a surprise manicure and pedicure session she shared with her daughter, making for a special bonding moment.
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Resources Mentioned:

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• Feeling Wheel – For identifying and processing emotions.
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Connect with Us:

• 
  
• Visit Five Year You to sign up for emails from your future self, and start making decisions that align with your purpose.
• 
  
• 
  
• Follow us on Instagram @fiveyearyou.
• 
  

Disclaimer:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not substitute professional advice. Please consult a healthcare provider for any medical or emotional concerns.

Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with anyone who might need a little permission to live life on their own terms. See you next week!

Do you find yourself constantly needing permission to do things in life when even though

as an adult you probably don't need to?

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Today's episode is all about needing permission and most importantly, learning how to give

yourself permission.

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How are you doing today, Kat?

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I'm really good, how are you?

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I'm good.

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like this topic.

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think it's something that hits really, really, I'd say close to home, but it's like it's

right inside home.

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It's like it's deep in there.

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And where do you think this comes from initially?

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That need for permission.

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Gosh, well, I think it's obvious that all of us are kind of like raised and no matter who

raised you, right?

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We have to ask for permission from the time we're really little children to do just about

anything.

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And then as we get older, right, we get more autonomy, but all of those built in things

are still there.

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And I find for me personally, that I find that.

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I have a hard time giving myself permission, like financially, like to buy stuff for

myself.

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That is like the category that I have the most trouble

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Okay, yeah, I relate to that one too.

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I was just kind of thinking like, where's the crossover with this?

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Because at some point, we don't need permission, right?

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You don't need permission to make yourself food in the morning so that you keep living.

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But to go buy yourself something of value that's like for yourself, you know, like just

purely for yourself, that just takes that little bit of permission.

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So do you think that maybe we need permission for certain things?

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things because of conditioning that maybe happened earlier on in life.

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Cause I agree with you wholeheartedly.

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Like I think it's like you go to school.

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you don't ask for permission to go to the bathroom and you get up and go, are, you are

told to sit back down by the French Catholic nuns.

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Maybe that was a little too personal.

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but yeah, you know, like you, there are things that we, if you, learn very young that you

better get permission to do things.

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But at the same time, there's other things we don't.

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Yeah, I think it's as adults, it's tied to our cultural values, right?

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It's tied to wanting acceptance and wanting people to be like happy with you, right?

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Like there's a discomfort with feeling like people are disappointed in you.

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I think that there are societal expectations, like let's say like an adult woman feeling

like she needs her parents okay to

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travel alone or something like that.

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Like when she could just book a plane ticket and go, but there's this like need for

acceptance.

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And for a lot of things, it's also tied to self-worth, right?

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Like I deserve this thing.

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I just get to have the things that I want to have, right?

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Provided you can afford them and all the, you know, 3d world stuff, but,

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Even permission to rest.

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That's another thing I dealt with is just feeling like I needed everyone else in the house

is okay.

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If I would take like a 30 minute nap rather than just being like, I'm an adult and I pay

for this place that we call home.

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And if I want to take a 30 minute nap, I can do that, but just feeling like it's okay with

everyone else that I just like take a minute to myself.

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And so.

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of course I've gotten better with this over time, but, it's still the first instinct to

feel like you need to ask other people if it's okay to do anything.

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Yeah, so essentially what I'm getting from this and you know, it's always fun to go into

our own brains with these things, but it's that need for approval, which is also kind of a

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worthiness issue when you, when we really strip it all down, it's like, this is, you know,

I need to feel.

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worthy to give myself the things that I would half we give somebody else.

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I'm way more likely to go buy somebody else the thing that I want for myself than I am to

buy it for myself.

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Which I mean, and that can be just a giving sense or, you know, a people pleasing sense to

there.

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There's a bunch of layers there.

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But when we really get to the heart of it, I think it's a worthiness issue for so many of

us.

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And coupled with the

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coupled with that, you know, being accepted by the tribe mentality.

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So by the checklist police, which I've never actually seen, but I yeah, go ahead.

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that, if maybe this is your first episode is like, Andrew and I often talk about like the

life checklist, which is the sort of made up checklist that society gives us that says,

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you you got to grow up and go to college by your house, have 2.5 kids, keep your grass

mode, et cetera, in order to be happy, take your trip a year, whatever.

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And we call it like the checklist, like it is society's way of like having everybody

conform.

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And if you're a little bit different or you do things a little out of order or something

happens that doesn't match, you know, this nice cookie cutter prescription for life, then

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you can feel this sense of otherness.

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And so we are constantly encouraging people to like check in with themselves and make sure

that they're not blindly following the checklist.

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and make sure that they're actually doing things that they wanna do.

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Yeah, and I'd say with that too, that also directly ties into the coaching and all about

creating a life of purpose because...

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Pardon me.

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because in doing that, we are really living our life by accident.

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And when you start following that life checklist, which we should really get into, I think

when you start to break away from that, you feel that need for permission.

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You feel that like, is it okay that I'm doing this?

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I remember when I was paying off my mortgage really fast and I paid it off in six years.

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I was trying to get validation from anyone and I couldn't get it.

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No, nobody understood what I was doing or why.

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And it may, while it made emotional sense to me, I really needed some sort of validation

and I couldn't find it anywhere, but I still did it.

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And I, I think when you start to do these things that are outside the norm, you kind of

want to have that permission to go like, it's okay that, that I'm doing this, right?

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Like this isn't too weird.

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But what we're finding from all the work that we do is that the weird is the good stuff.

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It's not the same thing every day.

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It's not the repetitive social behavior that so many of us follow blindly and what we call

living life on accident or by accident.

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It really is a matter of kind of exploring.

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your own ability to give you permission to do the things that feel right to you.

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I think that's really, really hard because only you know what feels right to you.

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Yeah.

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Well, I think that we are, again, we are living life with all of these different cultural

norms that are sort of thrust upon us.

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And I have found, and I don't know whether you agree or not, but in our coaching practice,

when we help people, the groups of people that have the most trouble with needing

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permission to do things are women and specifically mothers.

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Because society tells us that if you're a mother,

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and you do something that's for yourself and that's, you know, taking time away from your

kids and things like that.

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And so we've worked with women, one in particular recently who has literally been emailing

me for probably three years wanting to start a consulting business.

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And it just like never happened or whatever.

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And you know, she has little kids and things like that.

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And finally, I just said, look,

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I've looked back at all of our messages for three years you've been emailing me about

this.

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I give you permission if that's what you need to go out and file your LLC and let's get

this party started.

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And all the time that we've spent talking about this, you could have had it by now.

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And it's, we'll figure out the rest later.

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We'll figure out how much time you need, how many hours and we'll figure it out.

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But.

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I find that it's very hard for women to choose to do something for themselves, whether

it's going on a three-day yoga retreat on a long weekend.

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I don't know if that sound came through, but whether it is going on, it didn't.

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No, it did.

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It came through.

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it did.

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Okay.

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I'm just going to start over whether it's going on a three day yoga retreat for themselves

or starting a business or, trying out a hobby that's theirs.

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You know, maybe they feel like, if I want to try this new insert, whatever hobby here, or

I want to get this certification, it's going to take away from the family.

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And, I don't know what that is, but I find us saying quite a bit to the people that we

help.

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Look, if you need permission,

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We didn't give it to you.

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Like, we'll write it out.

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You have permission and we kinda tease about it, but the truth is we all really need to

learn how to give that permission to ourselves.

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Right, absolutely.

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And yeah, when you come to that place where you recognize you need permission, it's really

kind of giving yourself that identity of almost like a parental figure of yourself, you

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know, where it's doing that.

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And I want to get into how we start to do that.

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before I want to give a few more examples for myself about how needing permission, because

the big things like, yeah, starting a biz.

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I appreciate that.

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I gave myself permission to, but I appreciate the validation of the permission.

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in you needed it.

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case of case I needed it.

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So here's a few other ways that you might not be giving yourself permission.

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Maybe you go and you buy yourself snacks because you have company coming over one night or

a friend staying with you, but you can't eat them unless they're there because you're not

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worthy enough to have them.

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That's where a worthiness thing can come up.

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Maybe you just need to

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kind of have that, that authoritarian figure in your life that does that.

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And what we teach with five year you is that your, your boss is you five years from now

that you're answering to.

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And we see you as a separate entity just so that you don't, cause we don't want you

justifying, you know, not doing things because well, it's me, I can justify it.

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Seeing yourself as like this external force that goes, look, five years from now,

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We are healthy, we are happy, we are running our own business.

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I give you permission to start working on those things.

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And sometimes just by going forward into the future a little bit in your mind and going,

okay, this is it.

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This is how we give ourselves permission can be a really, really useful tool to do that.

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When it comes to giving ourselves permission,

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I think one of the, really, I'm going to hammer on the worthiness thing because the

worthiness and self-love thing are the two biggest things that I think kind of come up.

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And those are things that we can help you with, but you have to identify the issue with

them before you can start to heal them.

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So if you found yourself going, you know, I really, really wanted to go to this concert,

but I needed somebody to say it was okay to go.

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or I really wanted to go to this place or just even watch this Netflix show that I, but I

didn't want to quote unquote waste my time.

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Start small, start small with giving yourself permission.

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And I think that can, we're not looking for a switch, like an on and off switch, though

sometimes that happens.

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It's really more like we've said before, it's a dimmer switch and that dimmer switch is

representative of the journey that you're taking right now to become the best version of

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yourself.

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And you know, if you move the Denver switch too fast, it might get too bright and you're

gonna go right back down to zero.

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So maybe you give yourself permission to do something small today and see how that feels.

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And you start strengthening that muscle.

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What would you say to people that are feeling the need to give themselves permission and

they just don't know where to start, Kat?

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What would you say?

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Yeah, I think starting small is the best with just about anything that you're working

towards.

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And we always say awareness is really the first step.

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It's just sort of noticing.

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yourself talking yourself out of the things that you want to do.

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Notice yourself saying, no, I shouldn't do that.

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Like, the kids have this or they might need help with their homework or whatever.

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And the truth is, is that you have to send a signal to your own brain that you are

valuable and worthy of all of the dreams and desires that you have inside of your head.

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If something floats up into your mind as something that you want to do, that is your heart

talking to you and saying, this is meant for me.

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This is something I wanted to do.

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I have...

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ideas and things in my head and things I've been wanting to do for a while, you know, like

these are things that are on my heart that I'm maybe waiting for more of an investment or

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maybe waiting for like a higher income and things like that.

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We can all start small by just acknowledging those things that bubble up the things that

we can't quite stop thinking about.

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the people that we work with that is often, business ideas that they've had or.

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like trips that they've wanted to take or things like that, something that they've wanted

to do for them is usually what it is.

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that they see the virgin of themselves five years from now is maybe, a very fit person, a

very, a very calm person because they've started a meditation practice, something like

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that.

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so I think that we always say awareness is the first thing, but I would add awareness plus

journaling and you'll sort of notice the things that bubble up more.

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and more and just allowing yourself to sit with those thoughts for a little bit longer and

acknowledging that those ideas are meant for you and it's okay for you to take the first

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step towards going for them.

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I love that.

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I'd like to add to, because I could hear my prick voice coming up in my head and we're to

do an episode on that soon because it's needed.

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But the voice that would come up in my head as those things happened was, that's it.

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Everybody has that thought.

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Everybody has the idea of putting ice cream on a hamburger and deep frying it.

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And nobody has ever had that.

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I don't know where that came from, but I'm hungry now.

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It came from your heart apparently, based on what I just said.

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Fair enough.

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So I think the point that I'm trying to make is that those things that you have in your

head, they actually are unique to you.

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And that is part of your uniqueness and you need to embrace that.

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And part of your need to conform that need for permission is gonna wanna keep you in

place.

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So being able to hear that and go, know, no, I don't think that I need to just

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tow the line, think that maybe I can lean into my, you know, deep fried hamburger ice

cream stand idea that you're, but maybe not, you know, you got to explore the idea.

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So please, please don't on this one.

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You do you.

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Folks, never come up with ideas beforehand.

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They always just fly out.

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And one of these days we're gonna be floored when they're good.

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So giving yourself permission today, start small.

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So whether that's permission to go lie down when you're tired, to eat maybe when it's not

a meal time, to not eat when it's a meal time, there's no, like we've said before, and

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we've done a whole episode on this, the rules are fake.

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And...

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that permission that you're needing is part of your soul crying out to you right now

going, we should do this.

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And your conditioning, your ego, whatever you wanna label it is coming back and going,

well, we can't do that.

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Somebody has to tell us.

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I would say most of the, you know what, no, the best things in life that happen to you are

when you go and you follow your heart and your passion and your purpose and you give

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yourself permission to do that because you feel so liberated in that moment.

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and you start to see how life can actually be when you stop living by everybody else's

need for conformity.

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I love that.

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really do.

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And I feel like, again, this is something that is very common.

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Do you notice as a man this coming up a lot or, or, cause I said, I don't know if you

agree or not, but I feel like this seems predominantly more of like, a female thing

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majority.

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I think you and I can both agree that I do not conform to the typical man.

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even know I was gonna say lingo and I'm like that it there that is it thank you very much

but I will definitely say that there are there are a lot more guys out there that just

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they just kind of do right and I don't know if that's a genetic thing or condition thing

or whatnot myself personally I've always found that I've needed permission and I start to

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see it more and more in both genders as people are growing up right and depends on the

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I mean, everybody's different, know, somebody might need permission.

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You could have several siblings in a household, you know, different genders and

everything, and it'll be mixed up because of their own personal experience.

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So I do think as society has gone, as a mother, there are things that are expected or,

that's not the right word.

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There's like these stereotypes.

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Good word, by the way.

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Thank you.

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that not lingo, apparently.

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but, but I think that when it comes to these stereotypes, they're just that they're,

they're not, they're not valid and they don't necessarily represent you.

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It's just, that's just the, the belief that somebody took out of the freezer, like a

frozen TV dinner and put on the counter and said, this is what it is.

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And you can look at that and go, yeah, but I don't want that.

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So I'm going to pick something else.

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what about you personally?

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ooh, personally, I would say, you know, there's a great movie called The Shawshank

Redemption.

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And at the end of it, Morgan Freeman is, you know, he gets released after 50, 60 years in

prison.

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And he is like bagging groceries at a grocery store.

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And he goes and asks his boss, you know, if you can have a two minute break.

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And the boss says, you don't have to ask me every time you need to go to the washroom.

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And I would say I'm just like fractionally better than that would be kind of where I'm at.

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Meaning like it's hard.

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mean, I grew up my whole life.

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I don't know if I've shared this on this podcast, but I've shared on a lot of other ones.

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I grew up needing to feel safe.

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So I was a people pleaser and people pleasing literally means that you sacrifice your

yourself for everybody else.

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So.

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When I go and buy something, I mean, I live on my own now, you know, and when I go buy

something, like if you're coming by, I'll go buy whatever it is that you like, but I won't

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eat it until you get here.

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And it's something I don't know if that's I don't know where that comes from, but I

definitely find myself needing permission to do a lot of things.

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And I am actively working on that.

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I, you know, I

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I have given myself permission to listen to the voice in my head and to acknowledge that

it's not me.

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So that person that kind of goes, we have to wait for the light to change.

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Well, that's a safety one.

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Maybe we should leave, let's leave personal safety out of this.

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Maybe let's just, please follow all stop signs.

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But when it comes to like, you know, giving myself a treat or something like that, now I'm

rather than feeling that that voice is the thing that's right.

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I start to acknowledge that.

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this voice is just a voice.

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And much like a feeling, it's not a fact.

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And I get to play with that.

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So I can kind of look at that.

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And I've very recently started to look at it go, this voice doesn't make me happy.

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It has served a purpose, but its job is done.

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But it still pops up.

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And I will say, like, look at me.

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Look at me thinking that I can't have a bag of chips unless there's somebody else in the

room.

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You know?

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because Lord knows I couldn't just go buy a second bag of chips for when that person

comes, but you know, just kind of noticing the, sorry, go ahead.

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No, no, I was going to say, well, that's the worthiness thing, right?

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And I think grocery shopping is a super great example.

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Like how many parents go and make sure their kids have every single thing that they want,

but maybe, or they even get their other half's favorite thing, but they don't get their

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own favorite things.

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You know, I, at least I know that I do that.

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and it's more of like a frugality thing of a, you know, that's more me.

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like, I can go without.

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I want to make sure the kids don't, but that's like a really small way you can again, send

a signal to your own brain that, you know, you're worthy of your favorite kind of cookies.

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And then once you believe that you're worthy of like your own treats or you're worthy of,

like I just took my daughter to get our nails done, right?

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Cause like, I just, I want to, hadn't done it in a while and we both really needed to.

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And, but that's like a special treat for us.

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You know, that's not something that I take her to do every two weeks or myself for that

matter.

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but then that way, when you build yourself up and the big dreams start bubbling up, like

I've always wanted to start a podcast or I've always wanted to start a side business.

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So I've always wanted to purchase the ice cream cart to make the ice cream hamburgers that

are deep fried.

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whatever it is.

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Well,

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then you have a history of signaling to your own brain that you matter, your choices

matter, your dreams matter and you kind of like work on that worthiness button inside of

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you and build it up.

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I like that.

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I will say you and I have both been really working on finding the things to avoid

inflammation in our eating.

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We really have focused on this year as far as like an eating thing.

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And one of the things that was really, really hard for me to do was to allow myself to

stop buying more affordable, lesser quality foods.

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and to start buying things that actually were healthier for me and serve me.

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So, you know, like I went and, you know, I bought organic chicken, which I never would

have done before, you know, and it was really, really hard to do.

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you know, am I a hero?

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No, but I did, sorry, but I did actually, it did matter to me to say like, look, you're

worthy enough of,

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treating your body with the foods that make sense, not continuously poisoning it with

other things.

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And this isn't about like good foods or bad foods.

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There are just some foods that like when I have, they really are hard on me mentally the

next day or two.

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And I've just become aware of that.

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So I actively avoid them.

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then more power to you.

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But unfortunately for both of us, we have had to really change the way that we eat, for

health reasons.

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And, it has been hard for both of us because I would describe both of us as money

conscious people.

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I we met at a personal finance conference.

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it's really hard to give ourselves permission and say, look, you know, like for me,

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I have autoimmune diseases and eating really well helps to reduce my inflammation.

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But I have to tell myself like you're worth feeling good.

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know, yeah, this organic chicken costs $5 more than this one.

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But at the same time, we're no longer buying a lot of snacks.

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We're no longer buying alcohol, all of these different things.

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so yeah, it's, it's challenging to do, but I think if

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If our listeners take anything from this video, it's or this podcast episode, it's that

start noticing the times where you feel like someone needs to give you permission to do

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something.

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Start noticing the times where you want to do something or you want to have something and

you immediately turn yourself down because it might inconvenience someone else or it might

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not be what someone else wants and start to treat yourself like you're your own best

friend.

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Like you're your most cherished.

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person, right?

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And you'll start to notice a little bit of a difference in how you view yourself.

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I love that.

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I think it's just all about awareness, like we said.

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And to know that you're not alone on this one.

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I think sometimes, you know, it's just, there's this lack of shared consciousness when it

comes to our own personal experience.

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And when anything is negative, we don't wanna share it because we're so afraid that

someone else is going to ridicule it.

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But the truth is, the more we share our shortcomings, our challenges,

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the more we realize that we're all going through these things in our own way.

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And it's really powerful to be able to come to somebody with that and go, look, you know,

I need this.

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And even if it's going to your kid and say, can you give dad approval to make a chocolate

hamburger, you know, or ice cream hamburger?

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You know, if that's all you need for permission, ask for it.

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If that's really it.

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But know that you don't need it.

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But

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The start of needing this permission is to ask for it and knowing that the only person you

need permission from is yourself.

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That's right.

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All right, I think that's a good place to stop.

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And at the end of each episode, we do something called the glimmers.

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And these are happy, fun, sparkly things that bring us joy, and we just like to share them

with you.

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So, Andrew, what is your glimmer for today?

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you know what I, in line with giving myself permission on eating healthier foods and stuff

like that, I discovered siesta chips, which apparently were just bought up by Pepsi.

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So, but they aren't, there's something I can eat.

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Their cassava flour, the ones that I have, and they're so good.

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And they have a churro one, which is just, it's like a chip dessert, which, you know,

probably is way better than an ice cream hamburger.

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So that's my glimmer.

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How about you cat?

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What's yours?

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gonna keep on going like, like the almond on the tart.

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That's a throwback to previous episode.

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Lord.

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Honestly, I just mentioned my glimmer earlier in the episode.

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I should have saved it to the end, but like, I was really excited to surprise my daughter

with a Manny petty.

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I, she had been asking me to do her nails and like, we kind of kept running out of time

because Lord is the week busy with kids and school and their activities and stuff.

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And so I picked her up from school.

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last Friday and I said, you know, guess what?

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I booked us an appointment and she was really excited.

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Had some really nice quality time with her and you know, just let her pick what she wanted

and you know, held her hand while we were getting our pennies and stuff.

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And I know this won't last forever because she's 10 and she wanted to hold my hand.

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And so I just really, really cherish those quality time moments.

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Again, if you're new here, I have 10 year old twins and so having one on one time with

them is

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pretty rare.

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They're pretty much kind of two peas in a pod most of the time.

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And so that is my glimmer for today.

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that it's a it's a good one and thank you everyone for listening we'll see you next time

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bye.