Good morning Reader,
In a distribution center in Monroe Township, New Jersey, cosmetics come down a conveyor line all day long, and for years a woman named Adela Perez Marin spent her working life inside a workstation about four feet by four feet.
A screen in front of her, a stack of flat boxes within reach. She would read the order off the screen, fold a box, wait for the tub to come down the line, reach in, pull what the order called for, drop it in the newly folded box and send it to be shipped. Then the screen again.
Head down. Pick, pack, ship.
One day she lifted her head, and she saw that the warehouse was a great deal bigger than four feet by four feet. That is when she saw the forklifts whizzing past. That work looked different. More meaningful. A bit dangerous. And it looked like it came with more freedom.
So she asked herself, 'I wonder if I could become a forklift operator?'
As quickly as that desire surfaced, she put her head back down to pick, pack, ship.
But that inner voice is consistent, if not relentless. She lifted her head again, and the same thought stirred within her. Again she quieted it, this time by reasoning that every one of those operators is a man, I'm a woman, I can't do that.
Head down. Pick, pack, ship.
Once more. Man, I would love to do that, but they are all big, burly men, and I am a small woman, and I can't do this.
That forklift had been going past her for years.
I know that forklift had been going past me for years too. I think it goes past most of us. For one person it is the mountain they have been saying they will climb since they were thirty. For another, it is work that means something more than a job that covers the bills.
That's Adela. That might be you. I sure as hell know it's me.
That voice, that yearning, that call Adela was feeling and hearing and sensing is within us all. And maybe, just maybe, we too often let it go quiet.
Adela eventually told her friends at work what she wanted. What do you think they said to her? You would hope they said go for it. But that is not how life works. They love Adela, and so they did not want Adela to change, to grow, and certainly not to move on.
They told her to stay in her lane. You don't want to do that. We're good friends here. We're a team here. We love you just the way you are.
No single rope held Gulliver down. A thousand small ones did, tied by people who meant him no harm.
My ropes were laid down over thirty-five years as a consultant to industry. It was a lane I knew well, and I was good at it, building a second-generation legacy of leadership and sales work that led to boardrooms and ballrooms alike.
One phase I am especially grateful for is the years of crossing this country with Andersen Windows, facilitating two-day Signature Selling workshops. I mean, I was running. For about three years, many weeks had back-to-back workshops. The money was good. The impact on the distributors and dealers whose people were in those rooms was felt.
And with each one, in hindsight, another rope was laid across me. Because right around that time I was hearing something within me saying I want to shift our beliefs and focus our impact on the individual, not the business, as the one who wins first.
I started to hear things about how the people sitting in those rooms were using what we shared to improve their lives, not just their sales numbers.
A man who had been in one of those Portland, Maine Signature Selling workshops found me again later and told me he used what he took from that room to help him win the race for mayor of his hometown. Crazy! I thought I was a sales trainer.
Others told me they took their notes home and talked about them at the dinner table with their spouse and their children.
I heard all of that. Then the ropes that bind us to who we already are, rather than to what the yearning is telling us is possible, tightened themselves at the anchor point.
So I quieted that voice and went on doing what I was supposed to do. I booked the next date and the next project.
I did write it down. In one of our annual plans, in my own hand, the desire to branch off to the individual.
Then the other voice reared its ugly head. You're no Tony Robbins, Dirk.
Those damn ropes that bind us have got to be severed.
Here is what Adela did sooner than I did. She gave herself permission. Despite the lane she was told to stay in. Despite the ropes holding her down.
She gave herself permission.
And in that one moment, and one moment is all it is, something welled up in her strong enough to say damn the lane and damn the ropes. This is my life, and I have the authority I need to create the life that serves me.
Permission. It is yours to give yourself.
The word itself comes from the Latin permittere. Per, meaning through. Mittere, meaning to let go, to send. Put together, the oldest sense of permission is to let pass, to let go, to let loose.
It began as something we release. Only later did it become something we wait to be handed.
Giving yourself permission to go after something you want is, in my mind, a moral act of living fully alive. I am not saying what is moral is easy. We build our lives around being the one everybody counts on, and the permission we grace ourselves with can feel like taking something away from people who need us.
Adela carried her stirring until it got louder than the ropes were strong. One day she decided that stirring was enough, and she walked over and told her boss Tony what she wanted.
By the time she was standing in front of him, she had already given herself the thing she had spent years waiting for somebody else to hand her.
She operates the forklift now, right alongside those big, burly men. She calls her mother back home in Mexico and tells her about it. She has two daughters who know their mother's whole world used to be four feet by four feet, and that it is not anymore.
Those girls are dreaming bigger than Adela ever did at their age.
Right now, on this Sunday morning, this moment, you might stop everything, quiet everything, shut out the noise, the expectations, the obligations, all of it, for just a moment.
Know that in this moment the kids are going to be all right, the customers are going to be all right, the world is going to be all right, your aging parents are going to be all right.
Just for this moment, know that with all you have.
And then listen to what you are yearning for.
When we give ourselves that moment, when we let the thing come up and stand there without making it justify itself first, something arrives that no other person will ever hand us. A little clarity. A voice telling us it is all right to want this. Clarity about who we yearn to become.
The courage comes out of that. Nobody talks themselves into brave. We get clear about what we want, and then there is nobody left to ask.
I suspect if you have read this far, something is already welling up in you. Don't let it pass.
I like to grab a pen right about now.