The Daily G.I.F.T. from The GratiDude

If you are scared to dance, let’s fix that. Fast.

www.grateful4.org

Gratitude

Intention

First

Things

The G.I.F.T. Today

Grateful: to be focused on and enjoying the journey I am on to the place that I’ve never been: where Future Me lives.

Intention-to embrace the essence of who I am and express myself fully even when silent

First-lunch appointment with Doc Tracy before he gets booked up!!! #popular #mentor #blowingup

Things-stroll like a peacock to go visit the peacocks(literally, we have 2 peacocks in the neighborhood, Fran and Ferdinand).

Morning Platitude from The GratiDude

You can often see from a distance without even having to get close to a person if they allow themselves to really go with their own flow.

What I mean by that specifically is they are giving themselves permission to act upon their intuition and higher self when it comes to spontaneous behavior or a public and outward demonstration of your internal emotions.

That lady skipping through puddles in the rain, that man telling a joke on the street, the child giggling uncontrollably. All of them are enjoying “high permission levels”

The term “Permission Level” is one that my mentor Dr LJ Rose introduced me to that covers this concept.

Permission levels is a concept that states that all of us have an internal permission level for joy and happiness we allow, or “permit” ourselves to experience.

As Dr. LJ describes:

Permission levels can be likened to an internal barometer measuring how much bliss, well-being, success, and love we allow ourselves. In other words, a person with high permission levels is one who has a positive life experience. An individual with low permission levels would feel an overall sense of dissatisfaction. They can be likened to an internal and unconscious control mechanism that modulates the enjoyment that we permit ourselves to experience.

Permission levels are related to the amount of self-esteem and self-love that we have developed. They are the results of the programming that we have received in our childhood. Repetitive and traumatic events occurring in the significant years between birth and twelve years old form subjective impressions and perceptions of reality that follow us into adulthood. Core beliefs about ourselves, life, and the world that are fear-based, tend to inhibit our capacity to embrace freedom, responsibility and joy.

Consider the various aspects of your life. Do you feel fulfilled in your career? Have you achieved a level of satisfaction in your relationships, romantic and otherwise, in that you feel loved and appreciated? How is your health, or your levels of energy and well-being? Have you been able to provide yourself with certain luxuries of life that you long for, such as travel or free time?

Dissatisfaction with our present circumstances and a sense of frustration at not being able to achieve our desires are an immediate red flag that your low permission levels have been obstacles to achieving your desires. Your permission levels can be high in some areas and lower in others. The good news is that they can all be raised!

This is a direct correlation between permission levels and self-nurturing – our ability to be kind to ourselves. According to Gary Zukav, author of Seat of the Soul, “When you can do kindly things to yourself then you know what it is to be able to love yourself.” Self-nurturing, or what Sarah Ban Breathnach, creator of the Simple Abundance path calls “the hardest thing you’ll ever do” demands that we regularly give ourselves permission to take time off, to indulge in simple pleasures, and to provide what is necessary to feed our heart and soul as well as our bodies. I know a few hard-working and dedicated women who can never allow themselves time off and have to wind up with a flu or sheer exhaustion as a way of taking a break. A good indicator of where your permission levels are in relation to self-nurturing and well-being is the degree of anxiety or guilt you experience when you are not being productive, or just spending a day in bed or other forms of indulgence. As Breathnach sums it up, “Perhaps we are all Scrooges when it comes to self-nurturing, because if we were kind to ourselves, our creativity might begin to blossom like a plant moving toward the light.”

When you feel yourself limiting an expression of an emotion that you’re feeling because you are not sure whether the expression or behavior that you will exude will be socially acceptable at that moment, you are lowering your permission level to reduce or limit your demonstrative behavior.

Not good for you.

Here’s why:

Your focus shifts from your own personal experience and the experience of your emotional state( which at that moment you find to be quite pleasing )to instead finding yourself questioning your own state of BEING:

“Am I OK to feel this way?”

Will other people be OK if I let them know how I’m feeling?

How honest can I be in my expression of how I feel at this moment?”

You have gone from being utterly present and in the moment of experiencing your life and feeling deep enjoyment to instantaneously being self-critical or at the very least self-doubting in terms of the validity of your experience.

When you see someone skipping down the street or singing or laughing in a way that is a bit uncommon without any concern of what people are thinking about their behavior at that moment, chances are you are seeing somebody with a high permission level.

And at the end of the day, why would you really care if somebody thinks your crazy?

You know what opinions are like…..everyone has one.

So, hell no I don’t care!

Honestly, as sick and sad as the world is, the more people that think I’m crazy tells me I’m moving in the right direction. Furthermore, it informs me that my form of unique living is different enough that it scares some people.

If The GratiDude is blending in, that means I’m probably doing something wrong or I ran out of poker chips.

I am weird. I am different. Just like you are.

And when you feel it, it’s OK to let it flow because that flow of true energy rewards your higher-self for being true and for the healthy practice of expressing your emotions.