Who Gave You Permission?
Your history holds the authority you’re looking for.
It’s January 1st. The calendar has turned. And if you’re like most people, you’re already thinking about what you want to change this year.
Maybe you want to finally launch that startup. Scale the one you’ve got. Leave the job that’s slowly draining you. Build something that matters.
But here’s the question nobody asks: who gave you permission to do any of that?
Not your investors. Not your board. Not your spouse, your parents, or your mentors. Not even me, though I wish I could.
The truth is, no one can give you permission to become who you’re meant to be. You have to find it yourself. And the place to look isn’t forward into some imagined future. It’s backward, into your own history.
How I Found My Permission
In 2000, my startup collapsed.
We were building a digital health venture, raised money, hired a team, and bet everything on a January 1st launch tied to Y2K. When it fell apart, I lost more than my job. I lost my savings, my confidence, and my sense of who I was supposed to be.
In the months that followed, as the tech bubble burst and then the towers fell, I watched people around me spiral into the same crisis I was living. Everyone was questioning everything. Who am I? What am I supposed to do now? Do I have what it takes to start again?
And somewhere in that fog, I wrote a manifesto. A declaration that I would spend my life equipping leaders with “the clarity, commitment, confidence and courage to make a positive difference in the world.”
It sounds grandiose now. At the time, it felt audacious. Who was I to coach founders? I’d just failed spectacularly. I had no credentials, no certification, no external validation whatsoever.
But I had something else. I had evidence.
Not evidence that I was destined for success. Evidence that I had already been doing the work I was claiming permission to do. I just hadn’t recognized it.
The Evidence Was Already There
Years earlier, when I was a newly minted Captain in the Royal Canadian Air Force, I’d been assigned to take over a shop with twenty technicians. One tech in particular had been underperforming for months. The paperwork was already in motion. My commanding officer assigned me to complete the process and release him from the military.
Instead, I started asking questions. What I found wasn’t a bad worker. It was someone whose particular talents were being ignored, whose capabilities were going unused. I found a way to redeploy those talents, and he didn’t just improve. He became a top performer.
I didn’t think much about it at the time. It was just problem-solving. But looking back, that moment revealed something essential about who I was: I could see potential that others had written off, and I could find ways to unlock it.
That wasn’t management. That was coaching, years before I had the word for it.
Then there was the startup itself. Yes, it failed. But something happened during those final months that I almost missed in my grief over the outcome.
When the pressure was highest and the hours were longest, I was there. Not in the executive suite reviewing spreadsheets, but with my team during the overnight grind sessions, making sure they had what they needed to do their work. When everything was falling apart, I didn’t retreat. I stood beside my people.
That revealed something, too. My instinct under pressure wasn’t self-preservation. It was presence. Leadership through standing with people in the hard moments, not above them.
Permission Isn’t Invented. It’s Excavated.
When I wrote that manifesto in the shadow of collapse, I wasn’t inventing a new identity. I was finally recognizing the one that had been there all along.
The Captain who saw potential others missed. The leader who stayed with his team when things got hard. The person whose instinct in crisis was to help others find their way forward.
“I inspire possibility” wasn’t an aspiration. It was a recognition. The evidence had been accumulating for years. I just hadn’t stopped to look at it.
This is what I call permission: the internal authorization to act decisively despite uncertainty. And here’s the thing most people miss: permission doesn’t come from credentials or external validation. It emerges from reflecting on your past successes, something that few of us take time to do.
We’re trained to analyze failures, to conduct post-mortems when things go wrong. But we rarely pause to examine what made our successes possible. When you study moments where you created real value, patterns emerge: the conditions that allowed you to perform at your best, the principles you were honouring, the capabilities you were exercising.
These patterns reveal your authentic foundation for action.
Permission isn’t invented in the moment of crisis. It’s discovered through honest reflection on what has already worked.
Your Permission Is Already There
Your permission works the same way mine did. It already exists, encoded in your history. You just haven’t excavated it yet.
Think about the moments in your life when you created real value. Not when you got lucky. Not when circumstances aligned perfectly. The moments when you made something happen that wouldn’t have happened without your particular combination of skills, instincts, and determination.
What was true about you in those moments? What principles were you honouring, even if you couldn’t have articulated them at the time? What capabilities were you exercising that felt natural, almost effortless?
These aren’t just nice memories. They’re evidence. They’re data points that prove you have done hard things before. And they’re the foundation for your permission to do hard things again.
The Exercise: Finding Your Permission
Here’s what I want you to do today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today, while the year is still new and the calendar still feels like a blank page.
Set aside an hour of uninterrupted time. Turn off your phone. Close your laptop. Get a pen and paper, the physical kind.
Then work through these questions, one at a time. Don’t rush. Don’t edit yourself. Just write.
Part One: Mining Your Successes
Think back over your life and identify three to five moments when you created something valuable against the odds. These don’t have to be business successes. They could be from any domain: a relationship you saved, a project you completed despite obstacles, a problem you solved when everyone else had given up.
For each moment, answer these questions:
What was the situation? What made it difficult?
What did you do? Be specific about your actions, not just the outcome.
What strengths were you exercising? What capabilities felt natural to you?
What principles were you honouring, even unconsciously?
What did this moment reveal about who you are at your best?
Part Two: Your Permission Statements
Now look at what you’ve written. Patterns will emerge. Themes will repeat. Capabilities will show up across multiple stories.
From these patterns, write ten statements that begin with “I am...” and describe the person who showed up in those moments.
Not “I want to be...” or “I’m trying to become...” but “I am...”
These aren’t aspirations. They’re excavations. You’re not creating a new identity. You’re documenting the one that already exists, but that you’ve forgotten to acknowledge.
Before proceeding, make sure you have at least 10 statements, no fewer. You may need to dig, but you have them within you.
Part Three: Your Empowering Beliefs
From your ten “I am” statements, choose the three that resonate most strongly. The ones that make you sit up a little straighter. The ones that feel both true and slightly uncomfortable to claim.
These three statements are your empowering beliefs. They’re the foundation of your permission. They’re the answer to the question, “Who said you could do this?”
You did. Your own history did. The evidence of your own life did.
Part Four: The Critical Question
Finally, answer this question:
Who is going to give me permission to take the leap I’m ready to make?
Write your answer. Take your time. Be honest.
If your answer is anything other than “I am,” go back through the exercise. Look harder at your successes. Dig deeper into your patterns. Keep writing until you can claim your own permission with confidence.
Why This Matters for Founders
Founders who have a clear sense of who they are approach uncertainty differently. They gather relevant information quickly, filter it through their guiding principles, and act decisively. When those actions don’t produce intended results, they adapt rapidly because they’re committed to staying aligned with their authentic identity while learning from market feedback.
Founders who lack this permission become addicted to analysis. They commission more market research, seek additional customer interviews, always believing that the next piece of information will provide the clarity they need to act. They outsource their decision-making to people who don’t share their mission or bear the consequences of indecision.
Most importantly, those who lack permission end up procrastinating or abandoning their efforts to make the change they say they want.
When you understand who you are and what you stand for, you stop seeking external validation for every choice. You act from authentic clarity rather than reactive anxiety.
In a world of endless possibilities and constant change, your own identity becomes the North Star that keeps you moving in the right direction, even when the path ahead remains unclear.
Your Permission Practice
Developing internal permission requires consistent practice in smaller decisions before crisis moments test your foundation.
In daily decisions, when choosing among competing priorities, ask which option best aligns with your guiding principles.
In strategic choices, before pursuing new opportunities, assess whether they enhance or dilute your authentic identity.
In crisis responses, resist the impulse to abandon who you are. Instead, ask how you can adapt your approach while staying true to your core.
The permission you build through these small moments will be there when you need it most. That’s how it worked for me. When my startup collapsed, I didn’t find my permission in the wreckage. I found it in the patterns I’d already lived. The crisis just forced me to finally look.
Happy New Year
Today, you have a choice.
You can make the same resolutions most people make, powered by willpower that will fade by February. Or you can do the harder work of excavating your permission, documenting the evidence of your own capability, and giving yourself the authority to act.
No one else can give you this permission. But no one can take it away, either. It’s yours, encoded in your history, waiting to be claimed.
The question isn’t whether you’re ready. The question is whether you’re willing to look backward long enough to see the foundation you’ve already built.
Happy New Year. Now go find your permission.
This post draws from Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book, Momentum Scaling, which helps founders navigate uncertainty without losing themselves in the process. If you’re building something that matters and want frameworks for the journey, subscribe to follow along.
Davender’s passion is to guide innovative entrepreneurs in developing the clarity, commitment, confidence and courage to enter, engage and lead their markets in an unpredictable world by thinking strategically and acting tactically.
Find out more at https://www.davender.com and https://linkedin.com/in/coachdavender .
The shift from inventing permission to excavating it through past successes is profound. Most folks analyze their failurs but rarely pause to study what made wins actually happen. The exercize structure here forces that reflection in a way that feels actionable rather than just motivational fluff. It's kinda like archeology for your own authority.