Permission to Quit

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Sherry Adler.

Sherry’s answer makes me think of how many times I’ve lived by the phrase “winners never quit and quitters never win”… staying when it would have been healthier for me mentally, physically and/or financially to quit. With more discernment and wisdom (hopefully), this quote from Martha Beck resonates with me, “Contrary to conventional wisdom, the ability to quit easily makes us healthier – and wealthier – than does leech-like tenacity.”

Here is what Sherry said, “I gave myself permission to Quit. To quit engaging, participating in the confrontational arguments initiated by someone else. I gave myself permission to not respond – to opt-out. I also gave myself permission to Quit believing that someone else’s opinion of me had more value than my own. I gave myself permission to Quit a marriage.”

Is there an area of your life that might run more smoothly if you gave yourself permission to quit?

Find out more about Vanessa.  Find out more about Sherry.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Keep Living

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Sandy Hofmann.

I so admire Sandy and her willingness to share how she gave herself permission to go on living after the suicide of her beloved husband, Bern. The story below is an excerpt of a talk she has given to leadership development groups around the country.

“I believe that every day we are making the choices that create our legacy.  All this to-do about work/life balance – I just don’t get it.  I see it not as a balance of work with life.  After all, life is balanced only with death.  Frankly, the only thing that you can do about death is to avoid it for as long as possible by taking care of your physical health and security and then prepare for it by making a will and exploring your faith.  Life on the other hand – it’s all about living and that is about your character, your values, your work, your play, your experiences, and all your relationships.  You are struggling every day to balance all the multitude of efforts in your life.

I didn’t always realize this, but a little over 10 years ago I had an experience that forever changed me.  I stood by the graveside of my husband of fourteen years and heard those soft words of legacy and the sobs of loss.  My husband Bern took his own life with a gun and I lost my best friend, my lover, my confidant, my guide.

I was destroyed.  I saw no reason to go on living myself and I struggled at the edge of dark abbess that I saw no escape from.  My entire world was immediately thrown into turmoil unlike any I have ever known.

Between the grief I experienced over losing Bern and having to suddenly deal with the business of life without my partner (to say nothing of the complexities of a funeral, probating a will and taking over management of our home), then there was the unexpected tragedy of a violent suicide and coping with that horror.

Unlike a more natural death, grief following a suicide has so many extraordinary challenges for the family and friends who survive and even in this enlightened era, social and cultural mores make it difficult to know how to behave.

On top of all that, I was in the midst of a very challenging assignment integrating a recently acquired business into our company.  I had to travel back and forth to Montreal for about 9 months.  People were depending on me to take care of customers and employees when I was struggling to just survive.

I did in fact survive – proof that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and discovered a number of significant gifts, which have enriched my life – personally and professionally.

In the days following the loss, I had to get just locked in on a vision of getting through each day.  Those days became weeks.  I created a vision of finishing a charm bracelet that Bern had started for me and each month I added a charm.  Months became years – my charm bracelet became a necklace!

More seriously, I developed a vision of my life without Bern, one where I had to rediscover me.  I found that in my work, it became important to create similar visions for where I needed to take my team.  I drew on leadership readings of two academic writers, Kouzes and Posner.  I also incorporated my days as a 70s flower child and began thinking of my team all loaded up on a wildly painted old school bus, a Merry Prankster’s creation, traveling down a highway toward a destination.  This silly bus became my way of thinking about the journeys I would make with others.

We don’t know how long we will have with the people who are in our lives, at work or outside work, so I actively look for ways to recognize the value of those around me.

At the end of my life I want to hear that I made a difference.  I want to hear that I gave respect, that I had integrity, that I was fair, that I had uncompromising values and commitment, that I was a caring person.  I want to hear that being on the bus with me was a trip filled with learning and with fun and that the destination was merely the first stop on the journey.

Ralph Waldo Emerson words speak to my heart, ‘success is to laugh often, win respect of intelligent people, earn appreciation of honest critics, find the best in others, and leave the world a better place.’

For the rest of us,  Martin Luther King said that ‘life’s most urgent question is what are you doing for others?’ We are each creating our legacy. Will yours be fulfilled?”

Thanks Sandy!

Find out more about Vanessa.  Find out more about Sandy.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Create Solutions

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from David Greensberg.

It sometimes seems that companies respect the solutions provided by outside consultants more than from their own staff. I love this story where David shares how he created an easy solution for a problem that the company expected to pay big bucks to solve. And, it wasn’t until he had gone out on his own that they fully appreciated the solution. A lesson for me is to be open to answers from whatever source provides them… and it may be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission!

“A while back I worked for a company that utilized a program for displaying exploded parts diagrams on a computer screen at a call center. Customers would call in, want to order a part for something, and the agent would pull up the diagram on the screen and try to figure out what the customer wanted.

This is all back before the advent of the Internet and the WWW.

The program used was designed as a proof-of-concept in another part of the Company, and ended up getting into production use. It suffered from poorly documented code, memory leaks that required daily reboots of the workstations, and worst of all – a code library that wasn’t Y2K compliant. In fact, come 1/1/2000, that program was dead.

The entire business for this division relied on this program working, so the powers-that-be started bringing in the sales guys with their dog ‘n pony shows, the consultants, and everyone they could think of in order to come up with a solution.

As a member of the IT team, I got hauled into meeting after endless boring meeting. Finally several solutions were arrived at – none less than $500,000 for the initial software install, and none of which would suit our needs entirely. All the software required costly ‘customization’. I asked the IT Director what would happen if we didn’t have the Y2K to contend with, and he said ‘we’d keep looking – but we have to do something…’.

I decided that I didn’t want to maintain some half-baked, hacked up off-the-shelf system that we crowbared into the business – so I sat down one weekend and wrote something in PERL that would work with our current infrastructure, work faster than what we had now, would add more functionality, would be well-documented, and wouldn’t suffer from Y2K or memory leaks.

I didn’t ask anyone. I didn’t tell anyone. I simply turned it on and gave it to the Call Center supervisors and leads to try out for the day. By lunch time, the word was out – everyone wanted ‘The Bridge’ (it’s what they named it – it was supposed to bridge the gap over the Y2K).

My IT Director came up to me – said ‘Ummm, what’s ‘The Bridge’? I don’t recall approving anything.’ I told him ‘That’s right – I whipped something up this weekend as a proof-of-concept – figured I’d keep you out of it so you could have deniability in case it didn’t work out so well…’

He smiled and asked me for more info. Liked what he saw and we rolled it out to everyone that day. Training requirements were minimal because I kept the interface super simple.

Because ‘The Bridge’ was faster, we reduced our call times by 3 seconds per call (and with thousands of inbound calls per day that was a lot of seconds), and as a result we needed 18 fewer phone agents to handle the load.

Despite the success, the Company kept looking for a ‘real solution’. I eventually moved on to other positions, and heard after the Y2K that they’d implemented something from another firm. A month or two after that – I got a call ‘Do you happen to have a copy of the source code for ‘The Bridge’? We’re going back to it… what we put in doesn’t work as well…’ I gave them what they needed, even helped re-install it in exchange for a pizza that evening…

Besides the refinement of my programming skills, I learned a great deal – all because I gave myself permission. Could I have been fired? Sure, maybe. But I still wouldn’t have done anything different.”

Thanks David!

Find out more about Vanessa.  Find out more about David.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Write

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from David Greer.

Sometimes we can give ourselves permission to try something at which we didn’t think we would excel and surprise ourselves and everyone else. David told me his high school English teacher is shocked that his career is focused around writing. His businesses include magazine/newspaper publication, marketing, song writing, movies and more. I love a good surprise… how about you?

“I gave my permission to write. Sounds easy enough, write? I mean right? You have to understand, I can’t spell. I don’t do grammar. Dangling participles and prepositions..all that stuff – you may as well talk to me in Latin. I was a math and science dude. Not a creative writing dude. I wanted to start a business publication and I wanted to share stories and write a column but I feared my old high school English teacher would be watching and would surely kill over with my butchered up writing style.

So one day I just decided to give myself permission to write whatever I wanted to and that if it pleased me then that would be OK. I gave myself permission to not over analyze, not worry and not let the fact I knew not what I was doing hold me back. I decided that I didn’t care if journalists, English experts or folks who read my work really like it… I was just going to give it a shot with no boundaries.

I discovered removing self-limiting parameters on what I could do opened up more doors than I could ever imagine.

With that newfound confidence I decided to tackle songwriting, movie making and I continue to publish magazines and newspapers. Crazy career for a non writer type.”

Thanks David!

Find out more about Vanessa. There are soooo many cool things about David. Check out The Heroes Project which raises money and awareness in the fight against cancer.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Fire Clients

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Beth Hawks.

It is hard to fire a client. I had a client a few years back that caused me to get hives because working with them was so stressful. I fired them, but only after I ran out of my maximum strength hydrocortisone cream! I love the wisdom in Beth’s answer… “resigning an account opens up doors for new accounts to come to my business.” Read Beth’s story and add your comment if you’ve ever fired a client.

“A few years ago I gave myself permission to ‘fire’ clients and it opened a new door for my business.

In my business I struggled with difficult clients. I held onto them because I wanted to see the client through their situation and wanted to grow my business. The stress of working with the demanding and high maintenance clients was distracting me from doing my best work and obtaining my ideal clients. It also was taking a toll on my health and personal relationships.

When I gave myself permission to ‘fire’ a client and resign the account, it felt like a new door had opened and an enormous weight was taken off my shoulders. I found that my attitude had changed and that I was better able to connect with ideal clients for new business opportunities.

Since this time period I have resigned accounts when it was appropriate for me and my business. I’ve found that resigning an account opens up doors for new accounts to come to my business. It has also given me a new source of strength when dealing with new clients.

My new attitude is that you are constantly building an ideal client base. A client is more than someone who pays you for a service – they are your partner giving you as much as you give them.”

Thanks Beth!

Find out more about Vanessa. And find out more about Beth.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Create My Own Path

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Rebecca Fein.

I am always inspired by people like Rebecca who take the things that haven’t gone the way they planned, grow from the experience and turn it around to help others. Her dream is moving forward and she has just been accepted into a coaching certification program which starts in July. WaHoo!!

“I have finally begun the process of giving myself permission to create my own path in life. This answer is pretty complicated actually and brings up a lot of personal issues for me that are very painful, but I will try and give you all a short explanation.

I was born to a therapist mother and a pastor father. Now you all probably need no further explanation than that, but here it is. I guess in part, in large part to my parents being who they were, I was raised feeling that I was not being able to defend myself. I felt I had to do what was asked of me, even above and beyond what was asked of me.

I went to college, graduate school, married and had children. I did everything that was asked of me. My parents started to raz me a little when I was 19 and not even engaged because of course my mother was 19 when she married my dad. Stuff like this went on, and I had similar issues related to when was I going to have children and more .

Finally when I turned 30 and all the people I was supposed to be able to trust and feel safe with turned on me I realized what a waste my life had been for me and how I needed to stop living for other people. After all children eventually grow up, parents eventually die, and some spouses betray. The only thing I can ever count on is that I will be with me until I die, so I need to decide what makes me happy.

I am currently planning to pursue a certification and career in life coaching. I wrote a book about my divorce and have decided that the circumstances uniquely qualify me to coach people through divorce adjustment/recovery.

I have found this process to be very difficult, that is the process of giving myself permission to feel things (or not feel things) as the case may be and to behave (or not behave) in certain ways and in certain situations. This is hampered by the circumstances I find myself in, and by society in some ways as well.

However, I am working very diligently at this by reminding myself every day that I am entitled to opinions and, like my current husband tells me, that I deserve to be happy and to have good/nice things in life. I am trying to remind myself that the opinions of others matters far less than my own.

It has become a question of my self dialogue and the language that I choose to use when discussing myself with others as well. I never really thought about things in this context before, but it really does seem we need to give ourselves permission for lots of things every day.“

Thanks Rebecca!

Find out more about Vanessa. And find out more about Rebecca.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Take Care of Me

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Wendy Watkins.

My friend Wendy is full of joy and energy. I love knowing people who take care of themselves first because they have so much more to share with the world. And knowing others who are taking care of themselves, reminds me to do that for me. I’ve been very busy the last few weeks, but I gave myself permission for a 90 minute massage yesterday. I feel so much more creative and alert today! Yeah!!

“I love this question and I love all of the wonderful answers. One of the pieces of giving myself permission to be myself each and every day, is to take care of myself first. This feeds into giving myself permission to create and succeed-what a beautiful puzzle! No matter how busy my day, I find the time to weave in self care. Since I have a variety of options that fit into that category, I can always find something that will “fill my fountain”. This includes exercise, eating healthy, yummy food, walking the dog, listening to music, riding my bicycle or taking time to sit and be. In my fast paced world, with lots to do, giving myself permission to fill my time with what I love first, allows me to be my best for myself and others.”

Thanks Wendy!

Find out more about Vanessa. And find out more about Wendy. Wendy hosts a fun “Get Happy! Hour” every month and I’ll be the guest speaker on June 11th. Join us at the Decatur Healing Arts in Decatur, GA from 6 – 7:30pm that Friday.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Be Who I Am

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Lisa Russell.

Lisa has a passion for writing and for writers. My heart jumps for joy with her that she is giving herself permission to pursue her graduate degree in professional writing. She already writes professionally, but this will give her the confidence and credentials to move it to the next level. Yeah, Lisa!

“Great question and right where I am.

I gave myself permission to be who I am.. what God created me to be. Amy Grant used to sing a song that said, ‘All I ever have to be is what you made me.. any more or less would be a step out of your plan.’

I decided to apply for Masters in Professional Writing, yes to get credentials but because I am a writer and I gave myself permission to FINALLY go back to school and get that degree that has always been just out of reach either financially or for family reasons. I even chose the degree focus that suited me, not what others told me to do. I always listen to people and find myself not being true to me.

Little things like today I decided to raise my freelance writing, marketing and web design rate because I am giving myself permission to be paid for my skills at a livable wage instead of taking just anything and whatever. I am giving myself permission to succeed basically is what I am saying.“

Thanks Lisa!

Find out more about Vanessa. And find out more about Lisa.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission to Move On

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Michele Wilke.

Michele is an example of a very cool woman that I’ve connected with through social media. She has provided thoughtful answers to several of my LinkedIn questions and it is exciting to hear about the BIG changes she is making, both in her career and her physical location. We’re planning to meet face-to-face in Atlanta next time she is here to visit her cousin. Won’t that be FUN!

“Looks like you nailed it again – hope this info will help people make positive decisions and unplug from whatever they need to unplug from! I have recently made a decision to leave Detroit and move to New Orleans. It has been a thought nudging me into a final decision at the back of my brain for a few months. Instinct played a big role – you know that voice inside that simply knows what is so for you… Well, I heard the whisper, the talking, the shouting, and then waited for the 2 by 4 that finally propelled me into a decision – and then I took action.

The permission part was two-fold: actually listening to my gut and not pretending that it is not talking to me, and also allowing myself to let go – on every level. I am now going to put my business up for sale, get into a different career path (I have a culinary, event, music background, so New Orleans is my version of Mecca!)… and when I hear myself talking to people here in Detroit and offering them the news, I have to give myself permission – EVERY TIME – to leave, to know I lived at my potential here, helped thousands of people… and now it is simply time to move on. I watch people listen to me and this is resonating for them, too. That’s how I REALLY know that I can unplug…

No apologies, lame reasons, made up stories. Just what is so for me, my gut and the ability to listen to it. These things all allowed me to say yes to moving on. No judgments, no remorse, perhaps a dose of sadness, yet mostly, it offered clarity, succinct language to explain to people what I am doing, and yes, inner peace… Cool stuff!”

Thanks Michele!

Find out more about Vanessa. And find out more about Michele. Get the latest updates on her adventure by reading her blog.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com.

Permission for a Sabbatical

by Vanessa Lowry with a story from Myra McElhaney

One of Myra’s gifts to me, and to others who know her, is her humor as she tells of her great love for Phil, his illness, his death and her grief. She is a masterful storyteller and one of the funniest women I know. Her stories make me laugh even as we cry together. Myra is a “steel magnolia” in the very best sense of the phrase.

“I gave myself permission to take a sabbatical. My husband died eighteen months after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Of course I took time off from my business to spend those months with him. After he died I’m sure that many people expected me submerse myself in work and in rebuilding my business. Instead, I took six months off to focus on resting, renewing and grieving. It was great not to have to handle the many things that must be attended to after the death of a spouse while trying to revive a business. After six months I decided that I needed more time to plan for rebuilding my life and restructuring my business. Now as I prepare for next steps I’m rested and rejuvenated. I believe that in the long run the sabbatical has not only been beneficial to me personally but that my business will be better for it.”

Thanks Myra!

Find out more about Vanessa. And find out more about Myra.

Shirts are dark green Hanes Beefy Ts, men sizes S thru XXL

Support brain cancer research by purchasing an ultra-cool McElhaney’s Pub t-shirt for $25. Also, Myra and I are working on a book together with a portion of the proceeds going to brain cancer research. The focus of the book is Tips to Help when someone you know is diagnosed with brain cancer. If you want to purchase a t-shirt or have a tip to contribute to our book, email us at tips2help at gmail.com.

When have you Given Yourself Permission? Let me share it with others! Email me at vlowry at gmail.com or join me for a tele-class series in May!