Permission to Unlearn: The Skill Schools Don't Teach

The day I stopped asking for permission

The email sat in my drafts folder for three weeks.

It was a simple message to my team lead: I need to leave early on Friday for a personal appointment. Twenty-two words. But I must have rewritten it fifteen times, each version more apologetic than the last.

I'm so sorry for the inconvenience… I know this is terrible timing… I completely understand if this doesn't work…

I was asking permission to live my own life. Again.

That's when it hit me: I was forty years old, a successful professional with decades of experience, and I was crafting an apology for having the audacity to exist outside my cubicle walls.

The realization was so absurd it made me laugh. The kind of laugh that comes not from humor, but from recognition—when you finally see the invisible rules you've been obeying.

The Permission Trap

It started innocently enough, the way most prisons do. As a child, I learned to ask permission before speaking, before moving, before wanting anything. "Can I…?" became the soundtrack of my life.

And like a star student, I carried that lesson into my career.

• Can I share this idea in the meeting?

• Can I charge what I'm actually worth?

• Can I set a boundary with this demanding client?

• Can I take time off without a doctor's note?

• Can I create something that matters to me?

The answer was always the same: wait.

Wait for approval that never came. Wait for validation from leaders too busy seeking their own. I built an impressive career on borrowed authority, without realizing I'd become a tenant in my own life—constantly asking landlords who didn't even live there if I could rearrange the furniture.

The Pattern Follows You

After seventeen years of this cycle, I left corporate for education and non profit sector, convinced that meaningful work would cure the permission trap. Different building. Same prison.

Instead of asking shareholders for permission, I was asking donors. Instead of executives, administrators. The external validators had new titles, but the internal pattern remained unchanged. I'd changed everything except the person doing the asking.

That's when I finally understood: you can't outsource your healing. You can't relocate your way out of neural pathways carved by decades of seeking approval. The work—any work—will always reflect back what's unresolved inside.

This wasn't about finding the right environment. It was about recognizing that I'd been carrying the same operating system into every new situation, expecting different results.

The Laptop Revelation

The breakthrough came during what was supposed to be a month-long digital detox. Thirty days without screens, productivity apps, or inboxes.

But the moment I powered up my laptop again, my body knew. My shoulders slumped forward. My breath shortened. My brain sprinted toward lists and deadlines. An invisible switch flipped: be strong, be productive, stay on, or else you don't matter.

The machine wasn't just turning on: it was turning me back into the version of myself who equated identity with output and worth with validation.

Hebb's law explains it in six words: neurons that fire together wire together. My laptop had become Pavlov's bell, and I was the dog: salivating for productivity, chasing approval.

But here's the good news: if neurons wire together through repetition, they can rewire through practice. I could teach my brain a different association: self-trust instead of self-doubt, self-permission instead of external validation.

Permission to Unlearn

The hardest permission wasn't to rest, or to say no, or even to lead differently. It was the permission to unlearn.

High achievers like us are experts at accumulation: skills, certifications, strategies, responsibilities. But sometimes the bravest act isn't learning more. It's unlearning the scripts that kept us small:

• Unlearning that busyness equals importance

• Unlearning that leadership means perfection

• Unlearning that rest must be earned

• Unlearning that we have to explain every boundary

• Unlearning that success comes from pleasing everyone else first

Unlearning isn't erasing. It's rewiring. It's giving yourself permission to question the habits and beliefs that got you here, but won't take you further.

The Permission Experiments

So I started small.

I sent the email about leaving early. No apology. No justification. Just the facts.

I stopped explaining my "no." Instead of defending my boundaries with a TED Talk, I simply said, That won't work for me.

I launched a creative project without a business case. It didn't need to succeed to matter.

I unlearned the reflex to check email before bed.

I took time off without "earning it" through exhaustion. Revolutionary.

Each micro-act of self-permission felt like rebellion. Because in a culture that thrives on our need for external approval, trusting yourself is an act of defiance.

The Ripple Effect

Here's what I didn't expect: when I stopped asking for permission, people around me started giving it to themselves too.

The colleague who finally raised her rates. The friend who left the job that was draining her soul. The team member who spoke up in a meeting without prefacing it with seventeen disclaimers.

Permission is contagious.

When one nervous system learns safety, others follow. When one leader stops outsourcing authority, others remember they can too.

That's when I realized: self-permission isn't selfish. It's systemic change.

The Truth About Permission

You already know what you need to do. You're just waiting for a permission slip that isn't coming from anyone but you.

The skills? You have them. The wisdom? Already inside you. The authority? Always yours.

But here's the piece high achievers often miss: before you can use those skills at their full power, you may need to unlearn the old rules you've been carrying.

Because the biggest upgrade isn't adding more. It's removing what no longer fits.

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What if this September, instead of adding more, you gave yourself permission to unlearn?

Permission to rest. Permission to be messy. Permission to create. Permission to be fully, gloriously, unapologetically alive.

What’s the permission you’re still too scared to give yourself?

Register for the kick of of my 7 day program called: “Permission to unlearn” that starts this Thursday, September 11th, 2025 at 8:00 PM EST and find out: “What’s the permission you’re still too scared to give yourself? “