We grow up with social conditioning from an early age:
- You are allowed to do this, e.g., you are allowed to play in your room.
- You are not allowed to do that, e.g., you are not allowed to play in the garden at 8 a.m. (at least according to our neighbor 😊).
This can affect all areas of life, depending on when and how you grew up.
A few examples:
- You are allowed to have an opinion, but you must not interrupt adults.
- You are allowed to go to restaurants, but you must not run around (durgin my childhood in Vienna).
- As a boy, you are not allowed to wear skirts/nail polish/pink/headscarves… (add as necessary).
- As a girl, you are allowed to: not wear short hair/‘boys’ clothes’…. Not run around/not spurn dolls… (insert as needed).
These rules often manifest themselves as beliefs.
These can take the following forms:
- You mustn’t be lazy.
- You have to finish what you’ve started.
- You have to work hard for school.
- Etc….
Or we encounter them in the form of proverbs that ‘everyone knows’:
- The early bird catches the worm. (You mustn’t be late.)
- Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. (You have to work hard.)
- No pain, no gain. In the evening, the lazy become industrious. A rolling stone gathers no moss. (You mustn’t rest during the day.)
- You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. (You learn when you are young, not when you are an adult. You have to work hard at school.)
……
There are countless examples for this type of saying, which, depending on the society in which people grow up, shape their lives and experiences.
Very often, they have to do with restrictive rules and prohibitions and less with freedom, permission, personal needs, and consent.
Especially in the run-up to the holidays, after almost two years of pandemic and with the additional rules that come with it, the topic of permission comes up more and more in many of my coaching sessions.
The topic of permission often takes the form of the following questions:
- What am I actually allowed to do?
- What about my to-do list? I still have so much to do.
- What about other people’s expectations of me?
How about you? What are you allowed to do during the holidays and as we head into the new calendar year?
I wish you peaceful and relaxing holidays and a healthy and happy New Year. I look forward to seeing or hearing from you again soon.
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