No One’s Going To Give You Permission To Start

My family owns a farm sixty miles outside of St. Louis, MO. Members of my family have lived on the same piece of property since 1813—almost fifty years before the civil war.

One day I invited a friend out to my family’s farm to shoot skeet. We loaded up his SUV with our 12 gauge shot guns, ammo and clay birds and took the hour drive from St. Louis out to the country. When we got to the farm, I told him to pull into an empty gravel driveway. My aunt and uncle’s trailer used to sit at the end of the driveway, but they tore it down when they built their new house on a different part of the property. All that was left now was an overgrown open-field.

We got out and unloaded the SUV. I set up the clay bird thrower pointing toward the field. I then pulled the spring back and tested it out once to see where the clay bird would launch. When I was satisfied that we wouldn’t be shooting at any family member’s house, I then looked at my buddy and said, “You ready?”

He looked at me and said, “What? We just start? Doesn’t someone have to come and give us permission first?”

I was dumbfounded for a second, then said, “Who the hell’s going to come give us permission? We just start.”

I was on the phone with a lady the other day and she reminded me of this story. She was a, “Career Path Counselor,” and she said, “If you want to do something, just start it. You don’t need anyone’s permission.”

I would say this is true with almost everything you can possibility do in the world, unless you are required to have a license…i.e. doctor, lawyer, therapist, etc. But there are even creative ways around that…i.e. “homeopathic healers, paralegals, coaches.”

I’m not saying to do anything illegal. I’m saying, no one’s going to tell you how and when to start. There’s a good chance that you already know what it is you want to do, and you probably already have the skills to get started. So if you are waiting for someone to give you permission, well here I am, now get started.

Tags: get started