You Don’t Need Permission

On permission, unconventional choices, and the risk of looking ridiculous

A friend of mine sent me a couple T-shirts and a hoodie for my birthday from a brand I had recently found on Instagram and gravitated toward.

I loved the vibe, the designs, the merch, the messaging. It just connected with me.

The brand is called Die Tired Company.

The more I looked into their mission and went through their content, the more I liked the idea behind it: living your life and not being afraid to be a little tired in pursuit of your goals.

Some days require us to be a little tired the next day because we put in the work required to move ourselves a little closer to something we care about.

When I got the gift in the mail, though, I sat with the idea a little longer than I had when I was just looking at it on Instagram.

I held the material in my hands. I looked at the messaging on the clothes themselves. I wore them around for a few days.

And I kept thinking about it.

Eventually, I realized there was something else about the message that resonated with me.

I think what a lot of us need, myself included, is permission.

Because I think sometimes we have an idea, a side project we want to pursue, or simply something we want to do differently, and we hesitate because it isn’t how everyone else does it.

Maybe you want to write a book, but the way you want to go about writing it isn’t conventional.

Maybe you want a different job and you come up with some outside-the-box way of presenting yourself to a hiring manager.

Whatever it is, there’s this feeling that you’re doing something you’re not supposed to do.

And maybe what we need sometimes is simply to give ourselves permission to do something unconventional.

That’s what the hoodie and T-shirts made me realize.

Last week I had a conversation with a client of mine. He told me he had just pulled an all-nighter working on content for his business, building things, and interacting with his community.

He said something along the lines of, “I’m 40 years old, and this is just part of the grind for me. I love this stuff.”

Obviously, pulling all-nighters isn’t exactly healthy advice.

But my immediate reaction was:

Yeah. Why don’t I do that?

Not necessarily pull an all-nighter.

It was more the realization that he had given himself permission to operate differently because he cared about what he was building.

And it made me wonder:

How much of what we do, or don’t do, in life is because we’re afraid it isn’t the right way to do it?

Because it isn’t how it’s done.

You have an idea for a project at work, but it’s unconventional. Maybe it gets shot down because that’s not how things have historically been done.

And at some point, I think you have to be willing to do things differently without asking for permission first.

Because that’s how change happens.

Look at brands that have come into established industries and managed to shake them up. Look at some of the newer energy drink or clothing brands that have managed to break through.

The ones that stand out tend to be a little different, and they don’t try to perfectly fit the mold.

And I think that’s the main idea I’ve been trying to get at:

You don’t have to fit the mold.

To grow, you have to become comfortable with occasionally being unconventional. You have to become comfortable with the possibility that this isn’t how things have been done, but you’re going to try doing it this way anyway.

That’s uncomfortable.

Because when you do something differently, there’s always the possibility that it won’t work.

And if it doesn’t work, you might look ridiculous. But if it does?

The payoff can be massive.

Maybe that’s the price of doing something differently.

You have to be willing to look a little ridiculous before you know whether you were right.