5. Your Permission is Required
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Overview:
As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." And what if...the opposite is true as well? People can influence us positively or negatively, but ultimately, we own our internal belief systems.
Note: I mis-quote Eleanor Roosevelt in this episode. The correct quote is: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
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Hey creatives, I’m C. Jordan Blaquera, and welcome to the Whispering Worth to the World Podcast.
I’m a Master-Certified Life and Artist Coach who specializes in working with creatives. This is where I share what I would tell my younger self, if I could, what I’ve learned about the art of being human, about our inherent divine equality, and how it all relates to navigating our creative expression in the world.
YOUR PERMISSION IS REQUIREDEleanor Roosevelt said: “No one can make you feel bad without your permission.”
And that was profound when I first heard it.
It was so succinct.
At the time, I was already learning about the power of my thoughts and how they affected my own mood, feelings and actions. And the reason I was even exploring the power of my thoughts was because of how badly I felt about myself a lot of the time.
And that simple sentence: “No one can make you feel bad without your permission,” shed light on ways in which I thought others were responsible for my feelings, but in actuality I was responsible for making myself feel bad. And I began to see the ways in which I was actually participating in and creating negative feelings about myself, suffering really, emotional suffering.
For example, cultural messages about the size of a woman’s body: society, advertisers, the media, men, can’t make me feel bad about my body unless I internalize and adopt those messages as my own belief system. Or for a visual artist, no one can make you feel bad about not having gone to art school and not having a formal art education, unless you cooperate in that belief system and you begin to believe yourself that you are a better artist if you went to art school and less of an artist if you didn’t.
Same for a musician or a dancer, or cook, or writer who doesn’t have a formal education and was self-taught. No one can make you feel bad about your level of education unless you decide that the opinions of others matter. And you permit their ideas about education to become your ideas about education.
Same for ideas about aging. I’ve worked with visual artists of a certain age who say, “Who wants to see paintings from an old woman?” So, society or others can’t make you feel bad about your age, or make you dismiss yourself because of your age, or make you take your own artistic voice and creations less seriously because of your age, unless you decide to do that as well, unless you decide to take on one or more of those points of view and then stop your own self from creating the work you want to create, or seeking venues to exhibit the work that you’re making or have already made, because of your age.
In the Untethered Soul, Michael Singer wrote: “Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can. It doesn’t matter what others do, unless you decide it matters to you.”
So, women, listen up. There is inequity in representation in so many industries like the art world, the film world, the acting world, the music world, the restaurant world. And if we internalize ideas about what’s not possible for us, for our gender, we are giving permission for all of those ideas about what we can and can’t do to take up residence in our own minds and affect our own choices.
So Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company, said, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
So whether you think you can become a musician who makes their living with their music, or an artist who makes their living with their art, or an artist coach and life coach who makes her living with her talents, skills and abilities…whether you think you can do that or you think you can’t, you’re going to prove yourself right either way.
When you’re thinking that you can do something or you can achieve a particular goal, you go down a certain path that is directed and focused at achieving that thing. First, by believing you can do a given task, you create feelings like optimism, hopefulness, willingness, commitment, curiosity, or focus. And when you feel those types of emotions, you’re going to try things that could move you towards your goal. And if they don’t work, you’re going to keep going because you know this goal is possible, you know you can achieve it if you keep applying yourself. You believe in the possibility, you believe in yourself, and you exhibit that by taking action toward that thing that you think you can do.
You get into what we call Go Time in the Create Anyway Collective. You apply yourself directly to creating your goal. If you’re a painter and you think you can create a new body of work, you take your ideas and your craft seriously, and you start painting. You start bringing those ideas out onto the canvas. You start seeing how those ideas flesh out. You may make a lot of paintings you don’t particularly like yet, but you may also create a few good ones. You start figuring out how to best represent your ideas. You prime your own creative pump. You work to keep your creative channel open.
If you’re a writer, and you think you can write a book, you get started. You write the outline. You get your butt in the seat at your desk and you write 500 words a day. You might make a writing schedule and begin to show up, even on days that you don’t feel like it. Maybe you get feedback from a writing group, and you’ll have more motivation to work through procrastination and perfectionism, and to get that book written.
That’s if you think you can.
So what if you think you can’t create a new body of work? Then you go down an entirely different road. Then you create feelings like disheartenment, despair, frustration, sadness, futility, and a sense of hopelessness. And then what do you do when you feel futile or hopeless or sad? Are you inspired to get into the studio and start painting? You might get yourself to take a class which sounds fun and exciting, and you may follow the steps that the teacher is showing you. But you might not have the creativity fuel, also known as emotional fuel, to get yourself to take the risk of creating a brand-new body of work that hasn’t been tried or tested before – at least not by you. You probably won’t have the chutzpah to create that new body of work that is going to show the world something about what you really think and believe and about what is really important to you. When you think you can't, there's not a lot of motivation to get going on that new body of work so, of course, you don't get started on that body of work and then, like Henry Ford said, you prove - quote/unquote “prove” that you can't create that body of work…by ultimately not creating it.
Now don't miss the fact that it's not, because you don’t intrinsically have the ability in most cases to do something or create a certain goal. It’s simply that your actions stemmed from a belief about whether you could or could not do something. And then your emotions followed suit from that original belief, and then your actions followed suit from those feelings. And then you create the result of being able to do it or not being able to do it.
Now, I had been making myself feel bad for decades, lamenting over my family of origin and thinking that the Universe had definitely assigned me the wrong family, and that I had definitely not gotten the white picket fence childhood that I wanted. And since I was conceived during my parents’ divorce with a diaphragm in place, no less, I wasn’t even wanted as a child and on and on and on.
Fast forward to the moment I heard Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote: “No one can make you feel bad without your permission.”
And I got it.
If I engage in victim mentality, thinking I am a victim of my family of origin, my mother, my father, my socio-economic level, my gender, my past, my lineage, my age, my bank account, my current skillset, my current mindset, then I’m going to believe there’s no point in trying to create a new future and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway, about changing it. And while someone may commit an act against me, treat me a certain way, or do something to me, no one can make me continue to feel victimized without my permission. I can use my intention, my focus and commitment to direct my mind as to how I want to respond to any circumstance as I move forward.
No one can make me feel less than without my permission.
Or inferior. Or inadequate. Or unworthy. Or ugly. Or like a loser.
And that was like home base, that was the home base thought for me: I’m a loser. So many situations seemed to boil down to that one refrain: I’m a loser.
Step on the scale, I’m a loser.
Look in the mirror, I’m a loser.
Look at my debt, I’m a loser.
Look at my income, I’m a loser.
Look at my clutter, I’m a loser.
Look at my career, I’m a loser.
Look at my habits, my lack of creativity, my sleep habits, my energy level, I’m. A. Loser.
But no one can make me feel like a loser without my permission.
Whether I think I’m a loser or I think I’m not, I’m going to be right about that belief.
And even if someone like a family member, a friend or even an enemy suggests or invites me to believe that I’m a loser in some way, I don’t have to agree with them. I don’t have to take on that point of view. Even if society says, women can’t make as much money, or shouldn’t be taken as seriously, or if you’re neurodivergent, you can’t achieve as much as someone who is neurotypical.
Or if the art world seems to be saying that abstract work is more important than figurative work or landscape work. Or the music industry is saying that pop music or hip-hop music is more important than your type of music. Or the publishing industry is saying that your idea for a book isn't as good as what's on the best seller list, we, the creators, don't have to adopt those points of view. We don't have to give those ideas permission to take up residence in our own minds and take over our internal landscape.
And if we do, then we’re the ones perpetuating that type of thinking.
So back to Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel bad without your permission.”
So, when you feel bad, it's because you're thinking a sentence in your mind that causes you to feel bad. And that real estate inside your mind where those thoughts and beliefs exist and reside, and a belief is simply a sentence that you’ve thought over and over and over, that real estate inside your mind is your domain. So, in order for you to feel bad, you have adopted or taken on or internalized or chosen, consciously or not, to think a sentence in the privacy of your own mind, that is causing you to feel bad, for example, sadness, despair, helpless, incapable.
So if you're a painter, and you want to paint cats or animals, you can choose whether you want to look at that as a subject matter that is quote/unquote “less than” in the art world…or not. You're the one who's going to give permission for that idea to take up residence in your own mind, or not. Or if you're a painter who has an idea for a series about climate change, someone may have given you the impression that no one wants to see artwork about such a heavy topic as climate change. They might say, “Those images will be too intense. They’re going to be a downer.” And you can adopt those ideas and not paint the series. Or you can adopt the idea that this subject and concept matters to me, and I have these ideas and inspirations flowing through me and to me, and I am going to see them through because this matters to me. You get to choose what you give permission to take up space in your own mind.
So, if you can say hold up, I am not going to adopt your point of view or take on the same perspective that you have, if you don't give yourself permission to take on that line of thinking, then you are also eliminating the accompanying quote/unquote “feeling bad” that comes from thinking those thoughts.
So, this is how no one can make you feel bad without your permission.
And what I eventually came to also understand, is that no one can make you feel good without your permission either.
No one can make you feel good about yourself, or capable, or adequate.
No one can make you feel worthy. No one can make you feel that your ideas are worthy. That your creativity is worth spending your time and your resources on. No one can make you believe that the score you want to write, or that screenplay you want to write, or that choreography that you want to create and perform is worth it, or is valid, or is worthwhile or that it will make a contribution to the world. No one can make you think or believe one of those quote/unquote “good things” about yourself without your permission.
The painter Georgia O'Keeffe says, “You get whatever accomplishment you are willing to declare.”
And I have found that to be the truth for me. I only get to own and have the accomplishments that I give myself permission to own. I only get to have and to believe in the accomplishments I give myself permission to believe I have accomplished. You get to believe that you’ve accomplished only what you give yourself permission to believe you have accomplished.
At our core, I have given myself permission to believe that we are all inherently worthy and valuable. And that we are all made of the same stuff. Stardust. Divine Energy. Unlimited Consciousness. Whatever you call it. And in that regard, I believe we are fundamentally equal to one another.
And while, I now believe that that was always true and always will be true, there was a time when I wasn’t giving myself permission to believe that. I thought I needed someone else to give that to me. I thought that “they” would give that to me if I could meet some standard or measurement like being pretty enough or thin enough or accomplished enough or being talented enough or inspiring enough or entertaining enough from the stage when I used to sing. Or writing an interesting enough song with a good enough hook that was catchy enough.
When I work with artists, visual artists, in the Create Anyway Collective, I often hear that they think if they can get good enough at their painting skills or make a good enough painting or make it interesting enough or unique enough, then they will feel like a success and can avoid feeling like a failure. They outsource their emotional well-being and their sense of themselves and their worth to their paintings, but not just their paintings. Their paintings are just the conduit. What they are really after is what other people are going to think about their paintings, and by proxy, about them.
But even, even if someone else thinks that you have made the most interesting, fascinating, amazing masterpiece, ultimately, you will not feel that sense of accomplishment and pride and even worthiness unless you give yourself permission to do so. You will not give yourself the accomplishment of that masterpiece, unless you are willing to declare that you have made a masterpiece. Or to declare that you have painted something interesting, or of value, or worthwhile.
What I notice with so many of the artists is that they love the feeling of growth, but so often they don't declare that growth for themselves. They don’t declare that they’re growing. They keep seeing all the ways in which they're falling short, in which they are not quite quote/unquote “there yet,” all the ways in which other artists that they admire or that they see out on social media are so much better than them, or so much further along, or having a much easier, sexier, glossier time of creating their work. They don't take that step of giving themselves permission to acknowledge their own growth, to accept their own growth, to declare their own growth to themselves, to give themselves permission to see and accept and enjoy and experience their growth.
No one can make you feel successful without your permission.
No one can make you feel talented without your permission.
Or strong, confident, or happy.
And even if someone else declares that your work is interesting, skillful, imaginative, innovative, interesting, masterful, they cannot make you feel good about yourself or your work. Even if they declare those things about you or your work, unless you declare that about your work and yourself, you won't feel good about it. No one can make you feel good without your permission.
So here are a few questions:
***How have you been engaging in the behavior of giving yourself permission to feel badly?
For example, have you adopted someone else’s negative opinion of you? Or your talent or your skill level? Does someone have a limited view of what's possible for you or your work or your career? And have you taken up those ideas inside the privacy of your own mind? Have you started believing those thoughts about yourself? Are you living from those thoughts, and feeling badly based on those thoughts, and then taking action from those feelings?
So Question 1:
How have you been engaging in the behavior of giving yourself permission to feel bad?
Question 2:
How could you engage in the behavior of giving yourself permission to feel good?
For example, do you dismiss your achievements? Could you be giving yourself more credit for the actions that you have taken, for the results that you have created, for the perseverance that you've exhibited, for picking yourself up when you get disheartened or disappointed that your creative effort didn't turn out the way you wanted it to? Do you constantly move the finish line out a bit further and a bit further and a bit further and never quite give yourself the satisfaction of completion or of success? Do you compare yourself to other artists, to their work, to their exterior results that you may see in sexy Instagram photos of their work or 15-second reels of them at work in their studio?
And if you did less of that kind of comparing behavior, could you give yourself permission to feel good that you went into the studio today for 20 minutes, for two hours, or that you spent 8 hours in the studio this week, even if you didn't finish any paintings, or even if you quote/unquote “ruined” some of the pieces that you worked on?
Could you congratulate yourself for finally beginning to work on an idea for a body of work, or a body of paintings like a series on climate change, or beginning an album of songs that you've been thinking about for a very long time? Could you pat yourself on the back for having the courage to begin writing, in the face of all the uncertainty as to whether you'll wind up with a finished album or even one song that you think is any good? Can you appreciate that you are moving forward with your time, money, resources, and your emotional investment without any guarantee that anyone is going to “get” the work that you create? You can’t be sure anyone will “understand” your creations, or think they have any merit or value? Come on! This is – this is how we creators live and exist. So much uncertainty.
How could you engage in giving yourself more permission to feel good?
There’s probably a lot to feel good about, but only if you agree to give yourself permission to do so.
So I want to share with you a very specific moment when someone broke my brain and how I gave them permission to do so.
And what I mean by the phrase “broke my brain” is when a belief or two or three that you hold, maybe a belief about yourself, it gets questioned, and you begin to think in a new way.
There is the moment when a belief gets broken, and after that moment, new ideas, new concepts, new roads that didn’t even exist before – and they’re now a possibility. Those roads are now available for you to travel down.
So the brain-breaking moment I want to share with you -- I remember it was a Saturday when I was talking to this guy about this project where I was trying to figure out how we could take written testimonials from artists and perhaps get those words recorded so that they could be paired with visuals like images of their paintings, for example. And I could only see that the artists themselves would have to record their own words, which seemed like a logistical nightmare to me. So I just didn’t see a way that this was gonna work.
And this guy that I was talking to basically said to me, “Look - paraphrasing – Look! People do voice over work all the time. So, seriously, Jordan, if you want to take verbiage from testimonials of artists you’ve worked with and lay it over some video images, that is totally possible, and you can record the testimonial words. Done deal. Easy.”
But my brain was locked in to, “No! It must be said in the voice of the actual artists.”
And here’s what happens with me. When I find myself arguing with a person inside my head over and over and over, as I was hours after the conversation with that guy about this audio project. I was spinning, and looping, and justifying my own point of view, digging my heels in, thinking “he” just didn’t get it, and he was wrong, and I’m irate and defending myself in my own brain, over and over, and over, that is when I know:
There is something here for me to learn, to see, to get, to understand about myself.
So when I can do it, I like to take a pause, and I can usually find that “something” that is here for me.
So finally, after my brain looping and looping and looping and justifying and arguing, I finally decided, hours and hours after that meeting, to give that guy permission that maaaaaaybe he was right. Maaaaaybe he had a point.
So, I asked myself what if his idea was possible? And that was when I “gave permission” for him to brake my brain. I let go of my insistence that I was right, and I entertained his solution, his idea. And that is when, miraculously, I could finally see how it was possible. I could record the testimonial wording.
So no one changes your mind without your permission. You have to participate. It cannot be forced on you. You must use your free will to participate in your own revolution, in your own evolution, in the changing of your own brain. Otherwise, no matter who is in front of you, your coach, spouse, your best friend, your artist peers, your musician peers, your writer peers…they can be reflecting to you, the very best of what they see in you and what’s possible for you, or how talented they think you are or how good they think your work is. But if you are Teflon, and you do not find a way to give permission for your ideas about yourself to change, your brain will remain stuck.
No one breaks your brain without your permission.
And that said, thank goodness for the people who are the vessels and the conduit for offering us new ideas to consider. Give appreciation and gratitude to those who offer us brain-breaking new ideas about ourselves, about new possibilities that are available to us.
That’s what’s so amazing about coaches. We offer our clients new brain-breaking ideas to consider, and then they get to decide whether they’re going to give themselves permission to change or not.
The people who inspire us do that too. They show us what excites us, what lights us up, they show us characteristics we want to develop and hidden gifts inside of us that wait to be awakened and utilized. Thank you to those people. To our friends, and family members and peers and clients who see the best in us, and who don’t waver in that point of view. To the people who see who we really are when we can’t even catch a glimpse of it ourselves. Thank you for seeing us.
To the people who tell us to keep going, to keep painting, singing, writing, performing, dancing, choreographing, acting, directing, creating. To the people who see that our work matters, that we matter, that we love doing that thing we do, and that it matters that we do things that we love doing. Thank you for telling us to keep going. Thank you for encouraging us.
Eventually, we might give ourselves permission to consider your ideas about us, to consider what you see as possible and available to us. Eventually, we might believe we can, rather than believing we can’t. Eventually, we might give ourselves permission to see what you see.
So thank you to all of those people who invite us to have a brain-breaking moment.
And I know, sometimes you send us those invitations over and over and over. God love ya.
And thank you to the guy who broke my brain that Saturday. Somehow and some way what you saw and what you said eventually got through, and I gave myself permission to see what was abundantly clear to you.
And because of that brain-breaking moment, this podcast was born. Thank you.
After that, a whole vista of audio-only options and voice over options opened up to me, and I had so many creative new ideas that engaged and utilized my literal speaking voice. And just a few short days after that pivotal brain-breaking Saturday, I recorded the following track to share with you what that specific experience was like for me.
HE BROKE MY BRAIN
I was talking to a guy this past Saturday, in fact. We were talking about a video project and the idea of doing a voice over came up.
Me: “But who will record that?.”
Him: “Oh, I think you know who will record that? With all the little sass and attitude that youth can exhibit.”
Squinty-eyed. Not taking any crap: Oh, I think you know who will record that?
Truth was…I did not know who would record that.
Me: “I said, Oh, you???” I thought he was volunteering.
Him: “No. He says, You?”
I could not fathom that. It made no sense to my brain. They were someone else’s words and it would be logistical nightmare to have them record them. And if not them, then who? No one. That’s what my brain told me, no one. That’s who.
That’s when the stuttering started. My brain making endless circles in a cul de sac of my mind.
Me: “Me? A disembodied voice?”
Him: “Yes. It happens All. The. Time.”
We went on with the conversation. It stuck with me.
His idea just Doesn’t. Make. Sense.
And now, by the way, I remember that I don’t like recording my speaking voice. You can probably relate to that. Why would I possibly want to be the voice in a voice over?
And then…what if?
He had broken my brain. The answer was right there. Completely visible to him. But not to me.
But I entertained it. I wondered what in the world he could possibly mean or how he could see it so easily.
That’s what life coaches, creativity coaches, artist coaches do for their clients.
Break their brains, or more specifically their beliefs…especially about themselves.
They can help clients access ideas, possibilities, capabilities that are right there in their reach but did not see. Did note even consider.
I had this conversation on Saturday, and I’m recording this on Tuesday.
He broke my brain.
With that clarity. Seeing it so clearly and not backing down. At. All. No question in his mind how simple the answer was.
Even though I didn’t see it. He did.
After that call, my brain argued with me. “I can’t say someone else’s words. That’s weird. Nobody does that. And oh yeah, I forgot, I don’t even LIKE my recorded speaking voice. Not once. Ever. In my lifetime. Ever.”
But he was so sure.
Maybe I’m missing something? What did that guy see so clearly that I did not?
What if…I could record something?
How would I do that?
How would that work?
Could it be?
Is there any way that that works? That that makes sense.
Saturday, my friends. Four days later. Brains can change. Coaches can help you change your life.
I am a coach.
That’s what I do for my clients. I help them break their brains, their old beliefs, their limited thinking. Helping them drop in possibility where once there was not one iota of possibility.
Last week, I asked a painter what thought was working for her to support her creativity and how she felt in thinking that thought. She said “free and open but that’s usually when I start paintings.”
And immediately I asked her: “Have you ever tried that at the end of a painting?”
There it was.
That pause.
When I broke her brain.
It's like a record scratch. When the surface of the record will never be exactly the same in that spot.
And when that happens in a brain, who knows what is possible?
I am a coach.
I help you break the beliefs in your brain that you may not have even been aware of, but when a coach helps you see it:
Now there is a new possibility.
There are new vistas that open up.
New roads. A gate that was locked, that you never considered going down, now stands open. And the dirt road behind it beckons you.
I am a coach.
I help you break your brain and your beliefs.
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