Who Are You Waiting For?

Sunday Magazine

The permission slip you may have been carrying all along.

“Who are you waiting for?”

It’s a simple question. Yet for many of us, it’s surprisingly difficult to answer. Perhaps you’re waiting until life feels less busy;

Until you’ve saved a little more money.

The children are older.

You’ve lost a few kilos.

You’ve gained another qualification.

Someone notices your potential.

Until you finally feel… ready.

It’s easy to believe that one day we’ll wake up and confidence will quietly arrive, suitcase in hand, announcing that now is the perfect time to begin. But life often proves otherwise.

When we were children, asking permission made perfect sense.

“Can I ride my bike?”

“Can I stay up a little later?”

“Can I have another biscuit?”

Permission kept us safe. It taught us boundaries, and it helped us understand the world.

Somewhere along the way, though, many of us stopped asking our parents ... but never really stopped asking.

The questions simply changed.

Can I leave this job?

Can I wear that dress?

Can I say no?

Can I start the business I’ve been dreaming about for years?

Can I finally choose myself, just this once?

The permission slips became invisible.

A friend of mine once told me about a woman she worked with, Sarah. Sarah had quietly thought about applying for a leadership role for nearly three years. Each time the position became available, she’d read the job description, close the laptop and convince herself that she wasn’t quite ready.

She needed another course.

More experience.

Better timing.

Someone else would probably be better.

One afternoon, while making coffee in the staff kitchen, a colleague looked at her and said almost casually,

“You know you’re already doing half that job, don’t you?”

That was it. No motivational speech, or life-changing seminar. Just one sentence over instant coffee. Sarah applied and she got the job.

Years later she still says it wasn’t the interview that changed her life. It was someone else seeing something in her that she’d struggled to see in herself.

We tend to think that our biggest decisions are made in dramatic moments. Standing on mountain tops. Listening to inspirational speeches. But more often, our lives change on ordinary days over coffee, walking the dog, driving home from work, or someone says something that lingers. A sentence quietly rearranges the thoughts in our mind, and suddenly the future looks different.

This isn’t really an article about confidence, or about permission. It’s about the stories we quietly tell ourselves, that sound so familiar we mistake them for facts.

“I’m not experienced enough.”

“It’s probably too late.”

“Someone else would do it better.”

For many women, building self-confidence isn't about becoming a different person, it's about learning to trust the person they already are.

The strange thing about these stories is that they arrive in our own voice. Which means we rarely question them. If someone else spoke to us the way we sometimes speak to ourselves, we’d probably invite them to leave.

Research into career decisions has found an interesting pattern. Women are often more likely to wait until they feel they meet almost every requirement before putting themselves forward for an opportunity, while men are generally more willing to apply even when they meet only a few of the criteria.

There isn’t one simple explanation for this. Culture, confidence, workplace expectations and life experience all play a part.

But perhaps the most important takeaway isn’t about the workplace at all. It’s about how many of us have quietly learned to confuse readiness with certainty. As though we’re expected to know exactly how everything will unfold before taking the first step.

Most meaningful things begin long before we feel completely ready.

The first day in a new job. The first chapter of a book. The first small step towards a dream you’ve carried for years. Very few of them begin with certainty, and almost all of them begin with courage.

The invisible rules

Perhaps the most interesting question isn’t why do women lack confidence? Perhaps it’s:

Who taught us we needed permission in the first place?

Nobody usually sits us down and hands us a rulebook. And yet, many of us somehow absorb a collection of invisible rules along the way:

Be helpful.

Be considerate.

Don’t be too demanding.

Don’t make people uncomfortable.

Put other people first.

Be ambitious, but not so ambitious that anyone thinks you’ve forgotten your family.

Be confident, but not intimidating.

Look after everyone else.

And, if there’s any energy left over…

Look after yourself.

These aren’t bad qualities. Kindness, consideration, generosity and caring for other people are some of the best things about us. The trouble begins when being a good person becomes confused with being a person who never puts herself first.

When “I’m happy to help” quietly becomes “My needs can wait.”

When “I don’t want to disappoint anyone” becomes “I won’t do what I want in case someone is disappointed.”

And when “I’m just being sensible” becomes a very convincing disguise for fear.

The dress in the wardrobe

There is probably a dress in your wardrobe right now that has been waiting for you.

You bought it because you loved it. Then you tried it on at home, and perhaps thought:

I’ll save it for somewhere special. Or: It’s a bit much for me.

So it hangs there. Waiting for a woman who is slightly braver, slightly more glamorous, or perhaps simply less concerned about what everyone else thinks.

It isn’t really about the dress, is it? It’s about all the little ways we postpone ourselves:

The book we want to write.

The trip we want to take.

The business we want to start.

The course we want to enrol in.

The friendship we want to repair.

The life we keep saying we’ll get around to living when everything else is sorted.

But everything else is rarely sorted.

There is always another load of washing.

Another deadline.

Another reason to wait.

The women who lend us courage

This is where women can be extraordinary for one another, because sometimes we don’t need someone to solve our problem. We need someone to interrupt the story we’ve been telling ourselves:

“Why not you?”

“You’d be brilliant at that.”

“Apply.”

“Wear the dress.”

“You don’t have to wait until you’re ready.”

“I’ll help you.”

Most of us have experienced the power of someone believing in us at exactly the right moment.

Perhaps it was a teacher who saw something in us. A boss who gave us an opportunity before we thought we deserved one. A sister who said, “You know you don’t have to keep doing this, don’t you?”

Or perhaps it was a woman we barely knew. Someone who said something kind in passing and carried on with her day, completely unaware that we’d remember it for years.

We often talk about women supporting women as though it requires grand gestures. But it doesn’t:

Sometimes it's a recommendation.

An introduction.

A shared contact.

A coffee.

A message.

A child-minding offer.

A vote of confidence.

A sentence.

“I believe you can do this.”

Sometimes confidence isn’t born entirely inside us.

Sometimes we borrow it from somebody else until our own grows.

And perhaps that’s one of the most generous things we can give another woman.

Not an answer.

Not a solution.

Just a little more belief in herself.

So, what would you do if you knew nobody would judge you?

Here’s a question worth sitting with. If you knew nobody would judge you, what would you do differently?

Would you ask for the promotion?

Leave the job?

Start something?

Stop something?

Wear the dress?

Say no?

Say yes?

Take the afternoon off without producing a twelve-point justification for it?

Sometimes the things we’ve been postponing are so buried underneath practicality and responsibility that it takes a little digging to find them again.

Write yourself a permission slip

Perhaps the permission slip you’ve been waiting for was never going to arrive.

Perhaps you’re the one who has to write it.

Not in some dramatic, burn-your-life-down-and-move-to-Italy kind of way.

Just one small step.

1. Name the thing.

What have you been saying “one day” about?

Write it down.

Be specific.

“I want to start my own business” is a dream.

“I will spend one hour on Saturday researching how to register the business” is a beginning.

2. Find the rule.

Ask yourself:

What am I telling myself I need to have, know or become before I’m allowed to do this?

More money?

More confidence?

More experience?

A different body?

Someone else’s approval?

Once you’ve named the rule, you can decide whether it still deserves to run your life.

3. Ask the uncomfortable question.

If I knew nobody would judge me, would I already be doing this?

The answer may tell you more than another year of thinking about it.

4. Make the smallest possible move.

Don’t try to leap across the entire gap.

Take one step.

Send the email.

Make the appointment.

Research the course.

Open the document.

Tell someone you trust.

Put the dress on.

You don’t need a five-year plan to take a five-minute step.

And here’s something worth remembering:

Confidence rarely arrives before action.

Confidence usually follows action.

5. Borrow belief.

Think of the woman who believes in you.

The one whose voice you can hear saying:

“You’ve got this.”

“Go for it.”

“I knew you could.”

If your own confidence is having a quiet day, borrow hers.

You can return it later.

6. Become someone else’s permission slip.

Who is the woman in your life who is waiting?

Maybe she’s thinking about applying for something.

Maybe she’s starting over.

Maybe she’s convinced she’s too old.

Maybe she’s convinced she’s too young.

Maybe she simply needs someone to say: “Why not?”

Be that person, because you may never know what happens after you say it.

You don’t have to become fearless

There’s another myth worth putting to bed, that brave women are fearless women.

They aren’t. They worry and second-guess themselves. They make mistakes and wonder what other people will think.

They just don’t necessarily interpret fear as a stop sign. Sometimes fear is simply evidence that something matters.

You can be nervous and go anyway, be inexperienced and learn, or imperfect and still be worthy of the opportunity.

You can change your mind. You can begin again.

None of these things require permission.

And perhaps that’s the real permission slip

Maybe we’ve spent too much time believing confidence comes first. That one day we’ll wake up fearless, certain and completely ready.

We’ll finally feel qualified, finally feel brave enough, and finally feel like the sort of woman who does things like that.

But perhaps confidence isn’t what comes before the leap. Perhaps it grows because of the leap.

Perhaps the woman you are waiting to become is created, little by little, by the decisions you make today.

So if there is something you’ve been waiting for permission to do ...

Here it is.

Wear the dress.

Send the application.

Book the course.

Start the business.

Make the phone call.

Take the afternoon off.

Ask for more.

Say no.

Say yes.

Begin again.

And if you need someone to believe in you before you can quite manage it yourself ... find her.

Or better still - be her.

Because the world doesn’t need more women waiting quietly for permission.

It needs women who are willing to give one another a little more courage.

And perhaps, every now and then, be willing to give themselves more courage

A thought to carry into the week

If you catch yourself saying, “Maybe one day ..." pause and Aask yourself:

“What’s one small thing I could do this week?”

Not the whole plan or the perfect plan.

Just the next step. Big changes rarely begin with big moments.

They begin with small decisions, made by ordinary people, on ordinary days.

Sometimes over coffee. Sometimes in the staff kitchen, or sometimes while standing in front of a wardrobe, looking at a dress that has waited long enough.

From Love to Give

At Love to Give, we spend a lot of time thinking about encouragement.

Sometimes it arrives as a handwritten card.

Sometimes it’s a gift left on someone’s doorstep when they’re having a difficult time.

Sometimes it’s a friend turning up with coffee.

And sometimes it’s simply someone saying:

“I believe in you.”

We’ve always believed that small acts of kindness can carry much further than we realise.

So perhaps this week, give someone a little encouragement.

And if the person who needs it most happens to be you…

Well, you have our permission.

Actually - you never needed ours. 💛