137. You Don't Need Their Permission Anymore (Midlife Truth Bomb)

In this episode:
midlife podcast for women, people pleasing in midlife, midlife empowerment, stop asking for permission, confidence after 40, personal growth for high-achieving women, School of Midlife podcast, Laurie’s midlife journey

Episode Summary:

In this week’s firecracker of an episode, Laurie gets real about a midlife realization that changes everything: you don’t need anyone’s permission to live your best life. Not your partner’s, not your boss’s, not society’s, and definitely not your inner perfectionist. This episode is part pep talk, part confession, and part reminder that the only person you need approval from anymore… is you.

Drawing from her own life, her client stories, and the clarity that comes with decades of people-pleasing and overachieving, Laurie calls out the invisible permission slips many women are still waiting for. Whether it’s going after the career shift, booking that solo trip, signing up for the retreat, or just finally saying “no” to what no longer fits — this episode is your nudge (okay, maybe a shove) to stop asking, and start deciding.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why high-achieving women often default to seeking permission — even when we think we’ve outgrown it
• The silent toll of people-pleasing (and why it’s so hard to quit)
• The story of a client who kept her dreams quiet until she realized she didn’t need a committee to approve them
• A new way to think about personal freedom in midlife
• A powerful challenge: What would you do if no one else’s opinion mattered?

📩 JOIN MY MAILING LIST
https://www.schoolofmidlife.com/newsletter

👉 CONNECT WITH LAURIE:
📩 Email Laurie

💻 Website

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Work with Laurie

Transcript

If you're still waiting for someone to give you permission to live the life you actually want, this episode's for you. Today's episode of The School of Midlife podcast, we're talking about what happens when you stop asking for permission from your husband or your calendar or your inner good girl and you start trusting your own damn voice from skipping the retreat because you have to ask first in air quotes to finally booking that solo trip to Paris. without asking the whole family first, we're digging into what it really takes to shift from please may I to this is what I'm doing. In this episode, we're talking about the quiet rebellion of midlife women who are no longer waiting. We're done asking for permission. Let's get into it.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for [00:01:00] me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. I am thrilled to have you here with me today. As you can see, I finally put up some artwork in my new office. It feels like there's, I, when I look at myself in the camera, maybe there's a little bit too much going on, but let me know if you're watching the video, is it distracting?

Um, I, I, I kind of wanna just give you a quick tour of what's on my wall. It's all the things that I love in art form. [00:02:00] So this is an Idaho River Mountain scene. This is from Cinque Terre in Italy. Boise is represented here. These are poppy fields. When I was little, when I was an infant, I couldn't say grandpa, so Poppy. And then because I was the oldest grandchild, then everyone, all the kids that came after me called our grandfathers Poppy. So poppies? Love them.

Um, this says, I love you in French. Je t'aime. I like me a little bit of word art and I love me a little French, so that's what that is. This painting was actually painted by my brother. Uh, many of you may not know that I had a brother who was 13 months younger than me. He passed away at the age of 24 in 1997, and he had to paint that to graduate from high school. That's a [00:03:00] super long story, we'll get in at some point, but, and then, uh, the lavender fields and Provence are here. And then this little piece of art I picked up in Mexico when I was there in May, and it's actually painted leather. It's the coolest thing, but it, it just reminds me of a Mexican hillside with all of the really colorful buildings.

And anyway, so basically though, this is all the things that I love right behind me. And it's, it's fun to finally be getting settled a little bit into the office, although not entirely. And then of course, I've got my books over here. Color coded because, you know, little, little crazy that way.

Anyway, today's episode, I want to talk about permission, particularly as it relates to women in midlife. And I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I have just finished [00:04:00] putting together all of the reservations for the Best Life retreat coming up next month in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Retreat weekend, as you've heard, probably on the podcast before, is one of my favorite weekends of the entire year because women are able to get away from all of the craziness that happens in home and at work, and actually just take some time for themselves and figure out what do they wanna do with the rest of their life?

You know what, they, they spend some time actually envisioning what their best life looks like. They, they figure out what they want and what success means to them. And it's this lovely weekend. And of course, you know, we go to the spa because self-care is not optional. That is something that you absolutely have to take care of.

We, we actually do a little bit of hiking and we do some morning walks because movement is important. Retreat weekend is one of my favorite weekends of the entire year.

And this year, unlike any other year, no one signed [00:05:00] up until probably, Ah, God, the last couple weeks maybe. I mean, I was gonna cancel it because it didn't seem like people were interested in coming.

They were interested in coming. There were a number of reasons that they gave why they weren't going to come. And almost invariably, the number one reason was they didn't know if they could get away. They had to ask their husband if they were able to watch the kids. They had to see if there was anything else on the family calendar that coincided with the dates or if there was some reason why they couldn't get away. But by and large they wanted to go to the retreat. But they also felt like they couldn't do it unless they asked their husband.

And that I [00:06:00] get that. I mean, yes, you want to make sure that you are,

how do I put this? Lightly gingerly, without sounding like a complete biatch. You wanna make sure that the people around you are getting fed and that they're being taken care of while you're away. I get that. I also understand, though, that if the tables were turned, your spouse would come into you and say, the guys and I, we have decided we're gonna take a golfing trip and here are the dates. Or i'm going hunting for the weekend and here are the dates. Or we are going on a ski vacation, my buddies and I here are the dates. Think about that.

Doesn't that happen at your house? It 100% happens at my house, which is Mike, and I have to compare calendars because we both kind of keep our own calendar and then we have to make sure that someone's here to watch [00:07:00] Theo and I get that.

But what's also so interesting is nearly every time I have something that I wanna do, I run it by Mike first and just make sure that he is available to be here for Theo. And if he's not, can we get a dog sitter? And I realize that's not a two-legged child, I realize Theo doesn't have to be carpooled from tennis lessons to choir practice to whatever after school situation he's got going on.

So it's a lot easier for me. I mean, I don't, I don't have to to worry about getting him places or making sure that he shows up on time for his appointments or his schoolwork. I get it 100%.

But there is a difference between me asking Mike's permission if I can go do the thing, versus me telling him, I'm gonna go [00:08:00] do this thing, and we have to figure out what's gonna happen with Theo. Either you're gonna stay home, Mike and take care of him, or we need to figure out something else. I'm not going to him and saying, I would really like to do this.

Is that okay with you? What do you think? I'm not getting his buy-in or his take on whether it's something I should do or not. I'm not seeking his permission. I'm simply telling him, this is what I'm doing and if we need to, we need to figure out what we're gonna do with Theo.

Do you see the difference?

It's so interesting that as midlife women, we are so quick almost our default is to ask permission before we do anything.

When we do that, we essentially let someone else make the decision for us. We tell ourself we're we're, we're essentially deferring the decision to someone else.

And I understand why we do that.

We've [00:09:00] been conditioned to ask for permission from a very young age. Think about it. When you were in school, you had to raise your hand to be able to ask a question. You had to raise your hand, You had to ask permission to be able to go to the restroom In school, you couldn't just get up and go because you had to go.

You had to make sure that that was okay with the teacher. Many of us had to be, we needed permission to be excused from the dinner table. I had to ask for permission to stay out after curfew if there was a dance or a football game going on or something that I wanted to stay out a little bit later for.

And I'll tell you what, that kind of negotiation for staying out after curfew, that was a big deal. I mean, for me it was. It that's, that's the curse of being the oldest daughter is that yes, everything, you take care of it, you don't ever get in trouble. You have to get permission to do everything. [00:10:00] The second born smooth sailing for them, it's like, here are the car keys, you know, be back by breakfast. Otherwise, have a great time.

But isn't it interesting that we have been conditioned to ask for permission from the jump? May I ask a question? May I go to the bathroom? May I be excused from the table? When we grow up in that sort of environment, we are conditioned to ask for someone's help or permission or go ahead or consent or okay, before we act, before we can do something.

What do we learn by that? I'll tell you what we learn. We learn to defer our decision making to someone else.

And because of that, then we roll into midlife, a, uh, for many of us, most of our life. But we, we get to midlife and we realize that we don't really trust our intuition. [00:11:00] We don't trust our own voice. We will speak if spoken to. So that's an invitation that's essentially permission to, to, in interact and, and to speak with someone.

But for many midlife women, for women in general, it just, it feels like it happens a lot in midlife, we get to midlife and all of the things that we have done in the past, everything that has worked for us before, which is asking for permission, making sure everyone is taken care of before we take care of ourselves. Making sure that the kids know where they're going and our parents are good and the spouse, I, we are always taking care of someone else.

And then we get to midlife and we think, I've done this my whole life and it, it's gotten me to where I am, but I don't know that this is working for me anymore.

When that happens, then, because we, we haven't felt that before, you know, [00:12:00] we've always thought that, I am, I'm doing so good for everyone around me. I am taking care of them so that they don't have to feel any discomfort, or they don't have to feel any pain, or they don't have to go, they don't have to be burdened by things. I'm gonna take care of that for them.

That that gets into high functioning codependency, which we absolutely do not have time to get into right now, but for many of us, we have learned, we have trained those around us to always be able to rely on us. And that's great, but it can also be exhausting. And it can also get us to the point where all of a sudden, maybe not all of a sudden it's been building for probably years, if not decades. But there re there comes a point where we feel like we need [00:13:00] to have our voice out there a little bit more.

We need to be listened to a little bit more. We wanna start making our own decisions and then we get pushback. Because the people around us are like, well, who the hell is this? I mean, this isn't how we've done things. This isn't how life with you up until this point has gone. You have always been so concerned about me and my feelings, and how are we taking care of the kids?

Who is this person? And that's why the men or the the family members in our life start thinking she's going through a midlife crisis. Because it's easier for them to label the discomfort or the new normal or some boundaries that we are finally setting to be safe and secure in our own life. They're labeling that as a midlife crisis because it's easier for them to project on us that something must be wrong with us.

What, what is she doing anyway? Why? Why is this important to [00:14:00] her now? She was never like that before.

Think about it. Trusting your intuition is only problematic for the people around you because you have deferred decisions to them for always up until this point. You asked their permission whether it was expressly asked or implied by the way that you asked the question.

When you say, I'm thinking about going out for dinner with the girls on Thursday night. That's not you coming out and saying, is that okay? But that is implying that you are looking for permission. Do you get what I'm saying there? Where it's different than saying, I'm going out to dinner with the girls on Thursday night.

Do you see how that's a statement? Do you see how that's not asking for permission or asking for consent or making sure [00:15:00] that it's okay for you to to do that? You are just saying, I'm gonna do that. It's much like when your spouse comes in and says, I have a dinner meeting on Thursday night, or I'm going hunting this weekend, or the guys and I are gonna go golf on Saturday and then we're gonna go have burgers and beers afterwards.

Do you see how that's different? One is asking for implied consent. It's asking for permission. The other one is just saying, this is what I'm going to do.

And for most women, because it's been conditioned out of us, we do feel like we need to ask for permission. Whether it is a expressly asking for permission, like I need your permission to go to the Best Life retreat. I need to know that spending this much money on myself is okay with you. I need to know that it's okay for me to be gone for three and a half [00:16:00] days to do something that fills me up.

Like you, you can take care of the family, you can take care of the house. You've got things handled right. That's different than just saying I'm gonna do it.

And I know that I don't have children, so I know that, you know, don't come at me because I don't have some of the responsibilities that maybe you have.

But also ask yourself, your kids that are completely self-sufficient, are you using that as a crutch and an excuse for not pursuing the things that are really important to you? Just in case they might need you? Are you delaying your own happiness because you have kids?

I think part of raising kids is teaching them responsibility, it's teaching them discernment. It's teaching them that it's [00:17:00] important for them to be able to make their own decisions and hopefully understand that there are consequences to the decisions that they made. I mean, we can't take away all of their ability to, fuck around and find out is is a term that comes to mind, but you know, you hope that.

For, you've got 'em for 18 years before they head off to college, or they go get a job or they go to trade school, or maybe they enter the military, but you hope that you have given them the skills to make decisions for themselves. Part of that is you modeling some behavior that shows them that a woman's job is not just to serve her family and her husband.

A woman's job is not just to defer herself and her dreams and her wants so that she can take care of everyone else. Do you see what I'm saying here?

This, this really has been coming to mind because like I said, I [00:18:00] talked to a lot of women who really wanted to come to the Best Life retreat and are not coming because when they went to ask for permission from their significant other, usually he said, not this time.

It's not, it's not a good time for me. It's not a good time for the family. And I contrast that with, um, about a month ago, a month and a half ago maybe, I was very informally introduced to this really fascinating woman who lives in France. She opened an American speaking French school. She's, she's an American, she was from Chicago.

She moved to London for a banking job and then was transferred to Paris. And then after working in the banking industry in Paris for a while, decided, you know what I really wanna do with my life? I wanna open a cooking school. I wanna open an American [00:19:00] language cooking school in France. And of course she got a lot of pushback because it's France and you know, we, we shouldn't be catering to the English speakers.

But it was, it was something that she, she just had on her heart. She wasn't a chef, but it was, she wanted to do this. She recently published a book, a memoir, and I read it. I started following her on social and about like in the span of three days, figured out who she was, that she had published a book, that she owned, a cooking school, things that I love, lives in France.

I'm looking on social, and she has a three day retreat coming up in Paris in November. Application only. I didn't even know who this woman was. I didn't know much about her. I scrolled a little on her Instagram and I applied for the retreat. I checked my schedule, made sure that I didn't have something going on, and I submitted an application, and then I got [00:20:00] accepted.

And the conversation between Mike and me was much different than I think the retreat conversation that some of these other women that are having that are thinking about coming to the Best Life retreat. I said to Mike, I am going to Paris in November. I'm going to a three day retreat. And I think at first he didn't.

, It wasn't that he didn't believe that I was going. I think he was just surprised that that's something that I would do for myself, by myself. Because there's a difference between traveling to Idaho from somewhere else in the United States or traveling to Sun Valley from, say, Boise or the surrounding area.

That's different than getting on an airplane, flying to Europe by myself. Spending a week by myself. It's a three day retreat, but you know, you gotta get there a couple of days early so that you're not completely sacked out from the jet lag.

And then a couple of weeks after I told him I was [00:21:00] gonna go, then he has decided he's gonna join me for the second week.

That is so much different than me approaching Mike before filling out an application and saying, I'm thinking about going to Paris for a retreat, and then him shooting all sorts of holes into why that would be a bad idea, including we are just moving, how are we going to get settled? You have a ton of work travel coming up, I have a ton of work travel coming up. I mean, there are plenty of reasons why it doesn't make sense.

Doesn't make sense. I can come up with a number of reasons why I should, should I, and again, awful word, but why I might have decided to delay a trip to Paris. There are plenty of reasons. There are always, are. There are other ways to deploy that capital. There are other ways to maybe save some money. There are other things that that need to be done [00:22:00] around this new house that we just moved into.

But i, I'm trusting my own intuition. I really think that this is going to be a pivotal experience, not only for me, but for the clients that I work with at the School of Midlife. This is me modeling behavior that I am inviting so many of my clients to do in their own life, which is figure out what you want in life. Figure out what success means to you. Figure out what your best life looks like and start doing that. Stop delaying. Stop waiting until the time is perfect or the time is right, or someday.

Because what'll happen then potentially is you'll get to the point where all you've done is waited. You've waited for other people in your life to tell you it's okay to do something. It's okay to make a move. It's okay to go to Paris for a retreat by yourself.

I don't know about you, but I'm [00:23:00] just, I'm done waiting. I'm done asking for permission. I'm done asking for people's opinions on how I'm living my life. I'm done with that.

Discernment, intuition, They're like muscles. When you don't use them. When you spend the first 40 years of your life deferring your decision making to someone else, it can be sometimes hard to pick that up in midlife.

I, I get it. But I also know that if you start with some easy decisions, if you voice your opinion about something, if you tell somebody, this is what I wanna do for dinner, I know that that doesn't seem like high stakes decision making, but it's a start. When you can start voicing your opinion, when you can start taking a stand, making a declaration without being asked [00:24:00] into the conversation, without seeking someone else's approval or permission. If you can start doing that on the little stuff, then you can start re, it's a muscle, you build it, then you get to the point when it comes to higher stakes or a bigger decision, you're ready to make it.

Because you can trust your intuition. You do know what it feels like in your gut. You, you feel it in your body and you know it's the right decision and you're able to act on it before your brain kicks in with all of that editing, the, the somebody telling you something, um, the the logical side of your brain saying, that's not gonna work, and here are all the reasons why. Your decision is made before your husband says, this doesn't make any sense to me, and here are all the reasons why.

Because you trust yourself. You trust your intuition, you trust your gut, but most [00:25:00] importantly, you trust yourself. You can stay the course, you can dig in and say, I'm gonna do it.

Whether it works for you or not, it's important to me.

I really believe that following your intuition is the most important life skill that midlife women need to learn. We had it at one point. Before it was conditioned out of us, before our parents and our teachers and the other adults in our life told us to, you know, smile and just go with it or sit there and look pretty or don't ask questions, man.

I mean, think about how we are raising young women today versus how we were raised. As a Gen Xer. I 100% was raised with this idea that I could do [00:26:00] anything and everything.

But in reality, what that meant was if you are invited to do it. If it makes sense for the other people around you, and I think we're done with that.

I think we've just decided it's not working for us anymore.

It's time to figure out who we are. It's time to figure out what we want. It's time to stop letting others make decisions for us.

If we wanna do something, we need to give ourselves permission to do it, to trust ourselves, to make a decision, and come home and just say to our spouse, this is what I'm doing. And sure there might be some pushback in the beginning because that's different than maybe how you've acted before, but you'll get to a point [00:27:00] where that boundary will be respected, that your decision and your choices will be valued.

So as I think about how can I use this idea as a teachable moment in today's podcast episode, it's this: no one's going to give you permission to do the things that you wanna do in your life until you decide to trust yourself, until you stop asking for their permission, and you just make you just start making a decision. You just start doing the things that you wanna do.

Be more like your spouse. Just say, this is what I'm gonna do.

Instead of saying, I would love to go to dinner with you, or I would love to spend three days at a retreat with you, but I have to ask if he can watch the kids. They're his kids. That's called parenting, isn't it? I mean, I, I don't know. But [00:28:00] your inability to leave the house when you want, because you have to see if he can watch the kids.

He's the parent. I, I would think he'd wanna parent his children, but like I said, I don't have kids, so maybe it's different.

Coming full circle: it's midlife.. You need to get to the point where you stop asking for permission to do the things that you wanna do, to feel the way you wanna feel, to say the things you wanna say.

Trust yourself. Trust your intuition. Trust your gut that you know what is good for you, or that you have the tools and the skills and the experience to figure it out. You don't have to defer decisions or defer action or ask for permission from anyone else.

It's time though to build that discernment muscle.

It's time to build that intuition [00:29:00] muscle. Let's not wait until it's too late.

I'd love to hear how you are moving through life without asking for permission anymore. What are you doing that you just now, when, when an opportunity comes up, you just know how did, how did that switch for you? How did that, how did you move from asking permission to just saying, this is what I'm gonna do.

I would love to hear that, because I think we can always use more examples of women who are doing it beautifully. We can always add more to our toolbox when it comes to skills that we can use and rely on when we are trying to be better at something. Let me know. Drop me a line. I'd love to hear. Thank you so much for being here today.

I have so enjoyed chatting with you on this episode, and I will see you right back here next week when the School of Midlife is back in session. Until then, take good [00:30:00] care.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.