Why We Keep Seeking Permission for Things We Already Know?
Some patient questions are medically simple… but psychologically, they say a lot about us.
Recently, I got a message from a female patient who had undergone surgery a few days earlier.
The message was, “Doctor, can I have beer?”
Whenever I receive such questions, here’s what I mostly do.
For instance, in this case, instead of immediately saying yes or no, I asked her one simple thing.
“What do you feel?”
And almost instantly, the reply came, “I think I should not.”
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And it’s because many times, the answer is already present inside the person asking the question.
Just think of it. How often do we already know what is right for us… but still search for external permission?
Not only with alcohol, it’s just about nearly everything… sleep, food, smoking, exercise, relationships, and stress and then passion we want to follow, ideas we want to share, books we want to write, career switch we want to make…
We ask people around us questions whose answers we already know.
Because many times, we are just looking for external validation or permission.
We want someone else to say, go ahead or stop doing that.
So we keep searching for external validation for things we internally understand very clearly.
And if we look at some of the most successful people in any field, one of the biggest psychological factors in them is that they stopped needing constant permission for things they should and should not do.
Not from doctors, not from social media, not from friends, not from parents, not from teachers.
So just do the damn thing or stop doing what needs to be stopped.
