back more because they adjusted their mindset for temporary change, instead of a lifestyle change. After they lost the weight, they went right back to their old habits.
The same thing is true when it comes to buying a house. A person saves up enough money to buy the house, but they fail to realize that it will take more than a monthly house payment to manage it. Ultimately, they lose their homes because they carried their apartment mindset into their new home and lost it all! Let me say it another way. You can’t own a business with an employee’s mindset.
I have heard people say, “You can take the person out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the person.” Another saying goes, “You can take the person out of the ghetto, but you can’t take the ghetto out of the person.” The undertone of both these statements that applies to every area of our lives is you have to transform your attitude and mindset if you want to change the results you get in life.
Whether your goal is to be successful in improving your quality of life, getting or maintaining love, or fulfilling your life’s purpose, you have to cultivate a fertile mindset that will sustain the success you desire. By taking the time to do your self-work— changing your attitude about success — you will have a more confident and deliberate start. You will also avoid the unconscious tendency to sabotage your efforts, and experience greater results!
Self-Permission Challenge
For your first challenge, I want you to accept for just five minutes that it’s “possible” to put the fears or doubts you have in specific areas of your life in their place. Start by selecting the simplest area of your life that you want to experience success in. After you have identified that area, answer the following questions:
1.What is most gratifying to you about the positive choices you’ve made in this area of your life?
2.When you have experienced success in this area what do you attribute it to?
3.What in this area is important for you to keep, strengthen, or preserve?
4.Without considering any limitations, what would you like to happen in order to achieve success in this area?
5.Considering your responses to the first four questions, what is one small step you can make today that will get you closer to the outcome you want in this area?
There is no time span as to how long you work through this challenge, so don’t rush this process. This is all about allowing yourself to just experience the possibilities in your life.
Chapter 2
You Are the Approval You Want
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
~Buddha
Although I tell people my journey of learning to give myself permission started in 2001 on a flight from California back home to Missouri, I have come to realize that it actually began many years before. So, maybe a truer statement would be my conscious journey of learning to give myself permission occurred in 2001. Since then, I have discovered so much more about myself — my strengths, needs, and potential. Perhaps the greatest discovery has been becoming aware of the many inhibitions and emotional shackles I somehow acquired over the years.
Growing up in the 60s and 70s, I was surrounded by contradictory messages of independence and subordination, confidence and submissiveness, and fairness and discrimination. For instance, as a child, I remember watching a news report about two black athletes — Tommie Smith and John Carlos — who had competed in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Smith broke the world record in the 200-meter dash finals and won a gold medal, while Carlos won the bronze. The men demonstrated pride in their achievement on national TV by raising their arms and clenching their fists. This salute became known as a symbol to express Black Power – translation, Cultural Pride.
The sight of those two inspiring, young Black men with clenched fists — as pronounced as exclamation marks — was a powerful visual for me as a young girl. Although I was only eleven years old, I understood their actions were a symbolic statement for our race. It announced to the world that we were, in fact, equal and proud, despite the restrictions that had been placed upon us as Black Americans. A new door of opportunity swung open and these men were standing at the threshold. It was indeed a marked moment in American history.
Unfortunately, Smith and Carlos were ostracized for allegedly “politicizing” the Olympic Games. They were also immediately suspended from the team and banished from the Olympic Village. Afterward, they received numerous death threats. Ironically, there had been no such reaction to Nazi salutes during the Berlin games. What Smith and Carlos had hoped would be a positive demonstration of pride in their wins was rejected by many, including the media and some Black Americans.
Why weren’t people celebrating, rather than criticizing them? I wondered. After all, my schoolteachers and other prominent leaders often talked about the great opportunities the Civil Rights Movement of 1964 provided for Blacks in America. So why did these two men receive so little respect and so much ridicule for their superior agility and success?
To my surprise, my grandmother and mother didn’t share my sentiment. Their responses to my questions offered little in the way of comfort. They disapproved of the men’s’ actions, to say the least. My mother viewed them as troublemakers and their actions as ignorant. Public opinion seemed to mirror my mother’s views because the young men were overtly reprimanded by the United States sporting establishment.
When they returned to the U.S., the men were criticized by mainstream White America. Eventually, I learned there were others like me who admired Smith and Carlos as heroes. We considered their actions a message of courage and liberation. Many of us still feel that way today.
In Search of Courage
In 2007, I was really struggling to find the courage to go public with my philosophy of self-permission. While searching through some of my personal belongings, I came across a picture of Carlos and Smith. I believed hearing first-hand what stirred these iconic athletes on that fateful day at the Olympics would somehow help me find the courage I needed. So I decided to contact them.
John Carlos responded and agreed to spend a day with me. I met him in Palm Springs, California, where he lived at the time. Palm Springs is a place that most would describe as a small piece of paradise. Despite the scenic utopia of his surroundings, I quickly realized Carlos remained emotionally scarred by the consequences of his actions decades prior.
Carlos, greeted me with a nice, firm handshake and a welcoming hug. In his smile, I noticed a certain excitement about our visit. Although he was willing to talk about life since the Olympics, he was visibly burdened. It seemed the weight restricted the very essence of this man, who I considered a hero. As I sat with him that day, I hung on to his every word, yet noticing through his facial expressions, body language, and intonations just how scarred he still was.
As our conversation unfolded and Carlos became more comfortable with sharing aspects of his experience, I learned how pain, disappointment, loss, regret, and bitterness had become recurring emotions in his life. He had hidden them behind superficial smiles. But Carlos’ words, which were now soaked in sorrow, and the pace of his voice, which had slowed to that of a runner trying to finish the last mile of a marathon, forced me to look beyond the physical man that sat across from me, to see the soul of the man struggling to let go of the traumatic experiences that had haunted his life.
For John Carlos, the momentary act of self-permission that took place in
