Give yourself permission to dream big this year!
I have been holding back on something.
I think it’s a big something.
It’s no secret I am a woman of a certain age (the kind of age with a big 0 coming after it in January) and all the fun challenges that come with it. I am also a woman attempting to write and publish novels. A woman entrepreneur working to build this coaching business in order to help more writers. A mom with a kid in college and a kid in high school. A band booster volunteer. A wife. And a card carrying member of the sandwich generation.
With a plate so full, what am I holding back on?
Permission.
I know that seems counterintuitive, but I’m slowly realizing that I have not given myself permission to do any of the things I want to do in a big way.
I hold back in my writing.
I hold back in my business.
I allow things that aren’t priorities to take up more space.
Why?
Fear, probably. Imposter syndrome, definitely. And, sadly, because I keep waiting for someone to tell me how to do all this.
Guess what?
That person is me.
And so recently, I have written myself a permission slip.
I am giving myself permission to write big this coming year, to step into coaching spaces that I have been hesitating on the periphery of, to say yes to my big dreams by saying no to the small things that get in the way.
Yes, it’s semantics. But it’s already made a difference in progress I’ve made on projects important to me in the last week.
As we enter this season of gratitude, I urge you to write your own permission slips.
Perhaps you need permission to…
- Take a break
- Start that story
- Put that other story aside
- Write in a new genre
- Self-publish
- Query
- Start that blog/podcast/newsletter
- Try that hobby
- Raise your hand for that scary thing you secretly wish you were doing
- Quit that task you resent taking up your time
- Join a new community
- Or something else entirely!
Whatever it is, I hope you move toward granting yourself the space to want it, pursue it, and achieve it.
And, if like me, you need someone else to give you permission to do these things, I grant it to you with zero strings attached.
Let’s step into our wildest dreams.
The Summer Day by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
If you are giving yourself permission to do what it takes to finish your novel in 2026, let’s chat. I help writers create a plan to revise and finish their projects without overwhelm.