Waiting for permission
Nobody ever grants the permission you're waiting for.
For a long time, I thought I was waiting until I felt ready.
Ready to start.
Ready to trust my own judgement.
Ready to believe I knew enough.
Looking back, I can see that wasn’t what I was waiting for at all.
Because the women I write for are not waiting to be brave.
They have raised children, led teams, managed crises, cared for ageing parents, survived divorce, built careers, carried financial responsibility, and kept families afloat. For thirty years, in many cases more.
Bravery is not what is missing.
The permission is.
And those are not the same thing.
When I look back at my own story, I don’t think I was waiting for permission to start. I have started plenty of things.
What I was waiting for, and this took me a long time to see clearly, was permission to trust myself.
I had already accumulated the experience. I had led companies, advised businesses, solved problems most people never encounter in a working lifetime.
Yet when it came to building something for myself, there was still a quiet voice underneath all of that.
Surely someone more qualified should tell me I’m ready first.
Not out loud. Not consciously. But structurally.
I kept waiting until I knew more. Taking another course. Building another plan. Making sure it was right.
It wasn’t fear. I know what fear feels like.
It was something subtler.
The habit of external validation.
Somewhere along the way, I had stopped treating my own judgement as enough.
The deep groove worn by decades of having success arrive through somebody else’s decision. The moment nobody came was not dramatic.
There was no revelation, no turning point I could point to.
Just a quieter realisation: the people whose permission I had been unconsciously waiting for were no more qualified to decide my future than I was.
Thirty years into a career, who exactly was left to approve me?
Nobody.
That is, I think, both terrifying and liberating. Sometimes at the same time.
From what I have seen in the women I work with, there are a handful of figures they tend to be waiting for.
The most common is the former boss.
For decades, success arrived through somebody else’s decision.
A promotion.
A bigger budget.
A bigger title.
Somebody noticed you.
Somebody selected you.
Somebody said yes.
Then you leave corporate and find yourself, without quite noticing, still waiting for someone to tap you on the shoulder and say:
You should do this.
Entrepreneurship doesn’t work like that.
Nobody appoints you.
You appoint yourself.
Then there is the partner.
Not always openly, but often quietly.
Waiting for complete support, complete understanding, complete certainty from the person closest to you. Most partners love us, but they cannot see our future.
Many women wait until everyone around them is comfortable with the idea.
That day rarely arrives.
There is the market.
Waiting for proof before starting.
Waiting to know it will work.
But markets do not provide certainty upfront.
They provide feedback.
After you have started.
There is the future self.
The version of you who will finally feel ready.
More confident.
More organised.
More certain.
She doesn’t arrive.
You become her by acting before you feel like her.
And then there is the impossible standard.
The one that says:
When I know enough.
When I have got everything figured out.
When I have removed all risk.
The particular cruelty of this one is that the women holding themselves to it are almost always the most qualified people in the room.
Here is what I have come to believe is the real insight underneath all of this.
The problem is not that permission has been withheld.
The problem is that nobody was ever going to grant it.
Because permission is not a document.
It is a decision.
The women I write for are often waiting for certainty to arrive before they act, as though certainty were a threshold you cross and then begin.
But certainty is almost never the prerequisite for anything worthwhile.
It is the reward.
It comes after the action, not before.
The hardest thing I had to face was this:
I was not waiting for permission from anyone else.
I was waiting for permission from myself.
And that, it turns out, is the one approval process that can last forever if you let it.
There is no committee meeting.
No external event that closes the loop.
You can wait indefinitely, and it will never feel officially granted, because you are both the applicant and the approving authority.
And the approving authority keeps moving the bar.
At some point you simply have to decide.
Not when you are certain.
Not when the timing is perfect.
Not when the risk has been removed or the plan has been perfected.
Just now.
With what you have.
Knowing what you know.
Nobody is coming to tell you that you’re ready.
Nobody is coming to certify the timing.
Nobody is coming to remove the uncertainty.
The permission you have been waiting for was never theirs to give.
It was yours.
Whose permission are you still waiting for, and what would it actually change if they gave it?
Hit reply and tell me.
I read every one.
Warmly,
Pia
The Strategic Second Act is where I work with women who are ready to stop waiting and start building, on their own terms, with the experience they have spent decades accumulating.
Nobody is coming - also both liberating and terrifying.
So much of what you said made me feel seen - trust, certainty, waiting for permission. 🙏