I hear so often in the course of a conversation the following phrases:

“Oh, I couldn’t _____,

I’d never let myself ______,

I’m being bold having _____,

I really shouldn’t _____”,

“my life wouldn’t be worth living if I _____”

needless to say you can fill in your own word or phrase for the blank spot. What is surprising about this is it is not children or even teenagers that I most often hear saying this phrases, it’s adults.

Children and teenagers will respond with “My Mam/Dad won’t let me” or “I’m not allowed to” Young people don’t mess around with permission, either they have it or they don’t and either they stick to it or they don’t. And they learn all about consequences when they don’t have the required persmissions for their behaviours.

But adults are different, these are grown up people who are now fully responsible for their lives and are still acting like they need permission to do something that they really want and are going to do anyway. What they are really looking for is social approval. My attitude: get on with it already!!

Take a fair sized chunk of today’s women. Many of them meet up with friends for a coffee and a chat every on a regular basis, yet the amount of them that buy a cream bun or a slice of cake to go with the coffee and then bemoan the fact that they “shouldn’t be having this”, and “I’ll have to jog for an extra ten minutes every evening this week to burn off the calories” is amazingly high. It’s like they not allowing themselves to enjoy the cake or bun.

And a fair sized chunk of our male population do something similar. One of them gets a call to go to a football match or go have a round of golf or meet up at the local pub and the response is “I’ll have to ask herself first, or my life won’t be worth living”. These are the men who won’t make a decision without “her” input or feedback first, and it’s got nothing to do with there being something else on, it is more that they are not allowing themselves to make their own decisions.

At some point in their lives these people have denied themselves permission to have or do something with pleasure, simply for the pleasure of it. And if they are doing that with simple decisions how are they reacting to big decisions? So I say: give yourself persmission to enjoy the simple things in your life for the sake of it, or make the little decisions for the sake of it. Learn to take responsibility for your simple pleasures in life. It makes it a lot easier to take responsibility for the big things too.