Am I Allowed to Post This?

A person will be called to account on Judgment Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not. - The Talmud

It's just gone 1pm on a Thursday afternoon in Central London and the IT staff in a large financial firm have just been told that they no longer need to ask the management when they want to do new things.

The instructions are simple, "If you want to do something to improve the way you work, to make things better for you, and to make things better for the company, get on with it". This is all part of their new AGILE approach.

Everyone pours out of the meeting with faces full of glee and high hopes for the future of the company. The new sense of freedom that's just been bestowed upon them leaks from every part of their being and finally they can take control over their own working lives and do things they way they've always wanted too.

One problem is they don’t know how.Within minutes of the meeting ending staff are approaching the managers to ask "Is it ok if I do x, is it aright for me to do y". They get the concept that they can just get on with it, yet for some reason they continue to hold on to the same old ways of working as they did before.

The guy who's training them isn't at all surprised by this. He's seen it a million times over, people coming in and learning the new stuff, getting all excited about using it and fully understanding the freedoms this new way of working brings. And then the same old thing where people go back too their normal lives and slip back into doing what they've always done having wasted 7 days teaching themselves how to filter by sameness.

The problem isn't really that these people don't know how to do the new things or that they aren’t capable of getting on with it, it's just that the idea of not asking for permission is a daunting one. "What if I just start doing things and I get it wrong......What if I’m not allowed to do that and I do it anyway.....What if I change this one thing and the whole company comes tumbling down to the ground, foundations and all".

One of the best things I’ve discovered about getting on with things is that there is always going to be some kind of feedback that helps to guide you. When the guy sitting over the other side of the room moves his entire desk to sit next to me in order to take an amount of control over his environment and he does it without asking permission, the worst that can happen is that someone tells him it's not appropriate for him to be there. If that happens, he moved back and re-evaluates.

When we talk about the things in nature being paradoxical and we realise that in order to not have to ask for permission, we have to give ourselves permission to do that, it opens up the door to a way of thinking that will take you beyond what you thought you were allowed to do.

Getting on with it

I could write some instructions here about how to go about giving yourself permission and how to think about all the things in your life that you want to achieve but aren’t. I could even go on to explain that when you give yourself some freedom and you take up the opportunity to live out that freedom without worrying about who might be watching or who's permission you might need, that you might just find there are restrictions you've been putting in your way that just vanish.

I could do that, but then you'd have had to give yourself permission to follow through the steps and start doing what it is that will make your life the way you want it too be.

"I emailed myself 6 times this morning to find out whether I'm allowed to do what makes me most happy. I'm still waiting on a reply".

For more articles like this please visit my website at Warmth on the soul

Love, Jamie

Source: Am I allowed to post this? | Warmth on the soul

Hi Jamie,

It's curious that you've written this post today because it is most appropriate!

Today at 9.30 am my sister and I had an appointment with a high ranking police officer who also happens to be a friend of ours! On our arrival my sisters husband and this police lady were waiting for us at the post office!

The atmosphere was calm in the post office, people with serious faces working and the customers waiting, looking for most part rather bored and serious. Now we arrive, as usual, laughing and smiling and greeting our police friend and my sisters husband with much happiness and cheeriness. Our friend the police lady responded happily and we continued to have a stimulating funny verbant conversation! However my sister,s husband started saying, 'oh I can't take you two anywhere' because in the meantime we had been giving contact to others in the post office and the climate had begun to change, people were looking a lot more smiley!!!

I said to my brother in law is it a crime to be laughing and having fun at this time and in this place! I don' t think so do you? On our way out there was another policeman at the door who was by now also smiling and I said Hey I think you should charge all the people that our now smiling and breaking the law!

He started laughing!

It seems that in the current climate people even have to ask permission to smile and that's just not on.... Is it?

Let's learn to claim back our freedom, let's learn to claim back our right to smile when we feel like it!

Violeta

It seems to me self-evident that the initial instructions won't work. They have only been given responsibility for IMPROVING things.

If they try something new and it doesn't work it seems they assume (correctly?) that they'll be BLAMED.

That's not a way of encouraging creativity and experimentation that would work with me.

Greg

That's an interesting angle, Greg. You're saying that people might not make the changes they want to make if they're not 100% sure it will lead to the improvement?

Makes sense.

Greg,

Thanks for replying. I think you make an interesting point and what you describe is probably what many of those people are thinking.
To me, the issue isn't necessarily with the instruction although eventually it filters down to that, but the issue is the fact that some underlying social constructs haven't been dealt with.

The idea of blame is an interesting one because it presupposes so many different things. Of course there has to be a blamer, then there has to be a blaimee, and then some criteria for deciding when to begin blame and also some level of structure to determine what things are worth blaming for.

This is interesting because when you transpose some of what you've said into the second part of my article I start to wonder. If you're going to do new things in your own life, do you automatically set up a blamer and a blamee and then decide on some criteria to beat yourself up? I know a lot of people who do this and that includes me a lot of the time which is why I think you've made such an interesting point.

We live in a culture where blame is such an integral part of the way many people work that often we even set up these roles within ourselves and start yelling internally when we don't get things 100% correct.

Sometimes people in a company need assurance that the instructions they're being given don't have the kinds of consequences that leads to them feeling bad about having tried something new. Sometimes it's worth taking a step back and asking who is really blaming who for what.

Just some thoughts. Thanks again for replying.

Love, Jamie