Some of you may know that I am a huge, huge, fan of Brené Brown and have been very inspired by her work and her books. Recently I had an opportunity to take an eCourse offered by Brené and Oprah, I jumped at the chance. Not only did I feel this course would be an opportunity to improve my own life, I felt it would hone my life coaching skills too, double win! Being willing to do the difficult tasks many of my clients choose to undergo on their paths to cultivating the life they want, makes me better at understanding and offering the right support.
In the spirit of support I am excited to share a part of this eCourse around authenticity or being authentic to oneself. In my experience as a person and a life coach I have observed that much of what gets in the way of living the life we want to live, has to do with the idea of authenticity. So much of the time we act on our “shoulds” or what we think we are supposed to look like or act like. We live in a culture where we are taught to “fit in.” So we forget who we really are and stop acting in accordance with our “authentic” selves; this causes a lot of misery and is a huge obstacle in achieving our life goals.
Recently I have noticed the wisdom inherent in cats, I am not the only one as the above comic so aptly demonstrates. 
I am in the business of change and that is the primary reason people come to see me, so why do people cringe at the word “change?” Ultimately because change or changing can feel like a loss of control, and frankly we don’t like to admit the following; we want control of our lives and seek control in a multitude of ways. We create illusions and expectations of how things “should be” and like to think we have much more say in matters than we really do. So when things change it is a big reminder that we don’t have that much control.
If you aren’t familiar with the inner “Drill Sergeant” well it goes by other names too: gremlin, inner critic, saboteur, negative self talk. Most often this inner “Drill sergeant” is a negative inner voice that prevents us from being as successful and satisfied as we want to be in life. This voice is sometimes the voice of fear, doubt, procrastination, a symbol of eroded self-esteem, what ever it is or stems from it represents some form of negative self-talk. 
I have been thinking a lot about permission lately. Mainly how often we deny ourselves permission. Permission to do things that make us happy, permission to not do things, permission to make mistakes, permission to not be perfect and let go. A big way we deny ourselves permission is that dreaded word “should.” So often we are plagued with thoughts of “I should do this, think this, act this way etcetera.” That we never allow ourselves to ask, “What DO I want?” Much less even giving ourselves permission to really follow through with what we actually want.