Freeing Ourselves from the Legacy of “Waiting for Permission”

This month, I hosted an AAPI Community Conversation where we talked about our Permission to Thrive. A recurring theme anchored around how we narrow career and lifestyle choices in order to fulfill the obligation to honor our parents’ expectations and sacrifices. While this permission structure seems associated with Asian culture, I know that limiting our life choices to gain approval from others is a human phenomenon.

Many of us aren’t even aware that we’re operating under a permission structure that had been established by other people. Seeking approval is a powerful motivation to abide. What I know for sure is this: living our Best Self is not something that arrives. It is something we choose.

We don’t live our dreams by just dreaming. No one hands it to us. Choice creates options. But exercising choice is a mindset. Choosing is a decision we make again and again, when it could be easier to stay quiet and wait.

Waiting for permission is like a bird flying in the confines of a cage, believing that the cage’s perimeter is the world.

But here is what I keep returning to. Permission structures have always been built by people in power, whether it’s family, employers or governments. It is not natural law, and it is not fixed. Permission was made up, and it can be unmade.

As a leadership coach, I see the effects of this every day. Brilliant, highly talented people waiting for permission — to take on the project they want, to get the overdue raise or promotion, sometimes waiting years and years, simply because they were waiting for permission rather than advocating for themselves to pursue what they wanted.

This past year showed us how fragile that bargain always was. Corporate employers decided, all at once, that they were free to lay off thousands of people because the technology of AI was going to make them more money. The promotion you were patiently waiting for, the permission you had earned and re-earned, was dissolved overnight.

You have the opportunity to see the permission structure for what it is: a cage, built by the powerful in society to control you. Inside that recognition is a freedom that feels almost existential. It is the freedom to say: “I make the choice to do what is best for me, regardless of what they think of me.” It is also the freedom to say, “I choose to live inside the cage of permission because it feels safe even though it restricts me.” Both are choices. We are always choosing.

Some people will choose to stay rather than take the risk to self-advocate. They stay because there is security in the familiar, in rules they already understand. But know that the tradeoff for security is the lock you put on yourself. The thing that feels like safety is often the very thing keeping the cage door shut. Inside the cage, however, is a door that opens. Only you can decide if you will fly out. The permission has to come from you and from no one else.

For those of us who are Historical Power Culture Outsiders, people who are marginalized, who carry the legacy of people who fought before us, this weight is heavier. The “waiting for permission” was handed down in our bodies, for there was a time when flying out meant certain danger and likely death. And still, this is our moment to do more than inherit that cage, for the cage is no longer what it was. We have the chance to create a new legacy, for ourselves and for the families who come after us.

During my decades of coaching individuals, I’ve witnessed the courage of clients who dared to examine their personal and professionals decisions; who honestly dug deep to understand why they made certain pivotal choices. What I’ve found out is that gaining approval from parents, teachers, the community and established power have been key drivers of their choices.

Yet once clients realize that the permission structure they’ve been operating from is limiting their true potential, they’re eager to develop strategies that give them true choices to live a bigger, bolder and more meaningful life.

Awareness is the first step to releasing the legacy of “waiting for permission” that had been handed down to us by our family or imposed on us by society at large. Giving ourselves the Permission to Thrive is a journey of letting go, of daring to explore the unknown and taking the risky steps to live a more rewarding life.

In America, our founding principle of freedom is under threat for most of us. This is the time for us to choose. To move from permission to choice. To claim sovereignty for ourselves and act.

Waiting for Permission is like living in a cage. But the cage has always had a door. The choice to fly out has always been yours.