Brilliant One,

I was onstage at a conference last week with a few other CEOs. During a lightning round of get-to-know-you questions, we were asked:

“Do you ask permission or beg forgiveness?”

The other 3 said: “beg forgiveness”.

I said: “neither”.

To be fair to the moderator, he didn’t create this whole permission vs. forgiveness thing. Computing pioneer Grace Hooper (aka Amazing Grace) is widely cited as first having said: “It’s better to get forgiveness than permission.“

And I used to agree. Because forgiveness > permission is a rule for moving forward and getting things done, rather than inviting momentum-stopping objections from the peanut gallery.

And I’m all about that.

In an organization, the forgiveness > permission rule invites team members to do what they think is right and to do it imperfectly, which puts the team in position to gather the intelligence of how things go and make adjustments accordingly.

So sure, if I have to choose one or the other, I’d choose forgiveness over permission all day, erryday.

But I don’t have to choose between these two. I choose neither.

Now, before I explain, let me make some important caveats:

Caveat #1: I’m not saying I don’t collaborate or get my team’s feedback before I make a move.

When appropriate, I do.

But I stopped asking for permission a long time ago. And way before I had the authority to call the shots at work. I’m not talking about going rogue, or saying that junior employees should be setting company strategy unilaterally.

But here’s the truth: making bold moves and making the business case for my proposals and pitches is exactly how I got the authority to call the shots in the first place, way before I worked for myself. Because that’s what leadership is: being willing to put yourself and your ideas out there, boldly and unapologetically. Being willing to take intellectual and creative risks when they are well-calculated to drive The Big Goal.

And making career and life moves without waiting for someone else to say it was okay, to give me the money or give me the greenlight?

That’s how I came to work for myself.

Caveat #2: I’m not saying I don’t acknowledge when things aren’t working, or that I don’t apologize interpersonally when appropriate, because I do.

But letting forgiveness into this decision-making equation assumes that if you do something and don’t get the results you wanted, you’ve done something to apologize for.

And that’s just not true, in business or in life. In fact, “unapologetic” is actually a theme word of mine, a gift from one of my teachers. And real talk: I know a whole lot of brilliant beings, conscious leaders and creators, who would dial their impact up by 10X if they stopped apologizing so flipping much.

Stick with me here: most of us conscious leader types know by now that it’s a spiritual drain and losing battle to seek the approval of other people. We get that, even if we haven’t totally released our people-pleasing, approval-addict tendencies.

A smaller number of us have gotten that, but still dread others’ disapproval. For us, the Second Agreement, to take nothing personally, is good goal. Because to take nothing personally you must cultivate an independence of the opinion of others. And once you get a taste of the freedom to move and speak freely in life that comes from that independence, it reinforces itself. You get more and more independent. More and more free, more and more bold, less and less repressed.

I can already anticipate the natural next question: if it is really possible to operate independently of the opinions of other people (and it is), then what is the right way to make decisions?

If you’re not making your decisions based on others’ opinions, your only option is to get a clear internal rudder:

• to get clear on your long term vision and purpose,
• to develop a solid relationship with your own internal guidance system and
• to develop a whole-life operating system for how you know when to make which moves, how to receive and interpret the results, and how to stay in forward motion from there.

I want to offer you three specific strategies for developing your own clear, internal decision rudder:

1. Develop a daily writing practice. My testimony: if you have room in your life for only one daily habit, it should be daily free-writing.

Doing a brain dump every day—in writing—is the single most powerful creativity, spirituality, innovation and leadership ritual I know.

When you journal or do morning pages or free-writing—whatever you choose to call it—over time, you become clear on your own purpose. You are able to clearly download the deep wisdom within you and hear the answers to the questions before you.

Your thoughts get clearer. You solve problems with less and less effort. You connect dots more easily, and your timing gets better. You become better and better at spotting opportunities, because you regularly return to the calm, clear state of receptivity to inspiration.

If that’s not enough, this might be: a daily writing practice gives you a place to go every day of your life to deposit your dramas, grudges and resentments, so you can leave all of that drama on the page. You become more resilient and less stressed, less anxious. I won’t cite all the studies, but you can Google it or just trust me: it’s science.

You might think you don’t have time to do this. And it does take some time; somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes a day. But I dare you to get up a little early or get off the internet a little earlier than normal before bed, and redirect that time to trying out free-writing for 30 days.

Once you see how much less time you spend agonizing over decisions, asking for permission, dithering and hesitating before you act, you’ll realize that you really don’t have time not to do this practice.

2. Lean Life Methodology. If you’re familiar with Lean methodology for business, the idea here is to do the same thing in all of your decision-making. Ditch the delusion that you can optimize every decision for perfection. Instead, get still, listen to your inner guidance system and make the next step that feels expansive, that feels directionally right.

[Here’s a YouTube video I filmed on the concept of Lean Life Methodology.]

As you see the results unfold, use them to double-down on your current course of action or to course-correct.

This way, the only results you can get are not good or bad, not success or failure. They are wanted and unwanted. But the real beauty is that the unwanted results are often the most powerful in terms of helping you get clear on what you do really want. Once you see this over and over again, you’ll come to appreciate and even welcome them, too.

The other learning you have, when you do this consistently, is that almost none of the catastrophic future scenarios that come to mind when you envision making a bold move ever come to pass—even if you make the move and don’t get the result you wanted. Catastrophes are much fewer and farther between than our lizard brains let us think.

This is how you learn to make bold moves and transitions, without the paralysis, without the indecision. And it applies whether we’re talking about deciding whether to start dating again, whether to propose a potentially game-changing marketing strategy, whether to give a talk about which you’re nervous or whether to pitch the corporate customer of your dreams.

So many of you have shared how helpful Mel Robbins’ 5-second rule is for this. She says: when you’re hesitating before an action or task you really need to do, you just count backwards from 5 and DO IT on 1. Don’t wait for motivation. Don’t wait for inspiration. Don’t put it in the calendar. Don’t wait until the “right time”.

I’ll add: and whatever you do, don’t ask for permission.

3. Consonance, resonance and dissonance. In music, consonance is the harmony of two nearby notes. They sound pretty. Consonance is like asking permission: everyone agrees, and it’s nice. Well, sometimes it’s nice, but it can also be predictable (meaning: boring). And if the musician’s objective is to create something original, edgy or powerfully evocative, consonance can render the piece ineffective.

Enter resonance. Resonance is that deep, inner expansion, the swell you feel in your body and in your spirit from the vibration of wonderful music. Musical resonance is pretty much the same feeling as the resonance, the feeling of solid expansion, the feeling of YES-ness, that sparks deep inside when you know something is the right thing to do, or at least the right thing to try.

Even if others won’t necessarily understand, approve or agree.

Asking permission and anticipating the need to beg forgiveness: these both seem like terrible starting blocks for decision making.

But resonance is a solid place from which to make a decision, especially if you have clarity of objectives, clarity of heart, purity of motives and clarity of vision.

In fact, resonance is the ideal place from which to make your business and life decisions. Especially if others don’t understand, approve or agree.

But here’s the part people forget: when a musician wants to evoke emotion, they don’t turn to either consonance or resonance. They turn to dissonance, because the conflicting notes, the disharmony, evokes tension. It creates a strong emotional reaction, a clear emotional response.

Dissonance does the exact same thing in our lives. When we get unwanted results or unwanted emotions, that contrast creates clarity. And that clarity is so valuable, there’s no need to ever apologize for it.

NOTE: I recently had the deep pleasure of talking with my homegirl Meghna Majmudar, Head of Marketing for Wisdom Labs, on the Wise@Work podcast. We discussed a number of angles on the grail quest for a healthier, wealthier and wiser life. We also explored what it looks like when you invite employees to bring 100% of themselves—including their souls and spirituality—with them when they come to work.

You’re invited to join our high energy mind meld moment by listening, here.

Head up + heart out,

TNN

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