Give Yourself Permission

One day some time ago my building manager came around to tell me that they would be doing repairs on the pipes from 11am to 1pm, and to make arrangements accordingly because the water would be off and unavailable.  I go to bed and wake up late anyway.  So I thought, this would be fine.  All I would have to do is go to bed even later than usual, and then wake up later than usual, therefore bypassing the whole water ordeal. 

This was my plan.  And a great plan I thought it was.  Throughout the day, I kept reminding myself that I could go to sleep late.  Now, just so you know, I have no problem staying up late but I am constantly berating myself for doing so.  And yet, I still sleep late and as time goes on, much later than I would like.  But it is a vicious cycle that seems to have no end, because the later I sleep, the later I get up, and the later I sleep that day, and so on. 

But this time, this time, I allowed myself the opportunity to sleep late.  Not only could I then get more things done, but I would have the added benefit of not having to deal with not having water for three hours the next day. 

And so I was happy thinking that I would carry out this plan, and that I would finally be giving myself permission to stay up late, and to go to bed late, and to even *gasp* enjoy my time.  And then midnight rolled around.  And do you know what happened at midnight?  I fell asleep.  Yes, that's right, I fell asleep.  I was supposed to go to sleep around 5am in order to get up around 1pm and bypass the whole water ordeal.  But no, I fell asleep at midnight.  And do you want to know when I woke up?  8:30am.  8:30am!   

I got up at 8:30am when I didn't have to.  Even though I had given myself permission to sleep late, I didn't take it.  Instead, I slept early, which I never do, and I woke up early, which I also never do.  And then I had to go about prepping water for the three hours that I would be without it.  Exactly the thing that I had been trying to avoid dealing with by going to sleep late.  This should have been easy for me, but it didn't work out that way.

I have heard this before but this experience helped further to impress on me how perverse humans are.  That is, when you don't allow yourself to do something, or you don't give yourself permission to do it, or you berate yourself for doing it, then you end up doing it nonetheless.  But when you do finally give yourself permission to do it, you end up not even doing it, even when it's good for you, even when it benefits you.  It's a perverse reaction.  But it holds true.  I have first-hand experience to it.

So then, if it is human nature to be perverse, then at least we might as well learn to make some use of it and use it to our advantage.  After all, if we start giving ourselves permission to do things we know we should not do, perhaps we would stop doing them.  It is the feeling that we can't do them that makes us want to do them, after all.  It is the forbidden fruit that we seek.  Permitted fruit is not so tempting. 

I was thinking of this reaction as it pertains to overeating.  People who overeat don't give themselves permission and that might be why they overeat; just as I did not give myself permission to stay up late, and yet that is exactly what I did.  So perhaps what overeaters need to do is to give themselves permission to eat.  A lot of times when I talk to people who are trying to lose weight or on some sort of diet, they say things like they can't eat this or that, or they eat too much.  They don't give themselves permission to eat the foods they like and to enjoy them, and so their body reacts by eating more.  So maybe what they need to do is to give themselves permission to eat more and enjoy it, and see what happens. 

The thing is, we will do the opposite of what we tell ourselves, especially if we judge our actions as being somehow wrong, so why not then give ourselves permission to be bad?  And maybe, that will make us somehow better.