No permission needed. All the things I choose for a happier life.

Cashing in on the joys of getting older.

Jul 01, 2026

I’ve been thinking about the language of “giving myself permission” and why it feels so uncomfortable to me. We see it everywhere. I give myself permission to rest, to fail, to be imperfect, to be creative, to say no. It’s so pervasive that I find myself reflexively cringing. Where does this idea of giving yourself permission come from?

The groundwork of humanistic psychology in the 1950s paved the way for the rise of self-actualization and pop psychology. Self-help culture is when it took off. We’re conditioned by invisible rules, not only from external forces like family, religion, and cultural influences, but from our own internalized policing.

Some people are taught as children to suppress their emotions and told that they aren’t allowed to be angry, sad, or disappointed. They go on not knowing how to express their emotions as adults. And then there are others who are perennial people pleasers. They’re so used to seeking the approval of others, that they don’t know how to trust themselves. It’s pretty common to see yourself in either instances or both.

The concept of “giving ourselves permission” can be an inversion tool to take back authority and reclaim authorship, but it also reinforces the belief that we still need approval. The irony of granting yourself that permission implies that it needs to be earned and affirms the idea of an authority structure.

Maybe that’s why it rubs me the wrong way. It strikes a nerve from every part of my being that bristles against patriarchal authority. It can also become a murky de-facto substitution for actual internal work. Like a declaration without an examination of why we need to give ourselves permission in the first place.

So much of how we navigate as adults is rooted in childhood conditioning. More than fifty years on this earth and I’m still working on it. But it’s true that as we get older, we start to care less about what others think. Experience gained through wisdom and years of learning that the sky doesn’t fall every time we are negatively judged, makes the stakes feel less stacked.

Lately, I've begun reframing “I give myself permission” as “I choose.” One implies judgement while the other implies total autonomy. One feels passive while the other is imbued with agency.

There are many heartbreaks and pains that go along with aging, but what is the joy of getting older if not the freedom to stop giving a damn about things that continue to oppress, disappoint, or no longer makes us happy?

Here are some of those things I choose to build a good life. Please share some of yours in the comments. No permission needed.

Saying no to parties and events that I don’t want to attend. I don’t think I can stomach another networking or industry event, ever. And at the risk of sounding boring (but also, who cares), I can now say out loud that I no longer care for parties either.
Letting go of flaky friendships. This is a big one and something that I’m still a bit conflicted over because in most cases, I’m the one who initiates plans with my many of my friends. If I didn’t, who knows if I would see them at all (talk about spiraling into insecurity on all my friendships). But when a friendship takes too much work to maintain and/or is repeatedly met with flakiness, it might be time to let it go. I guess they were fine with it too. Which is the painful part to discover.
Walks with friends > meals/coffee with friends. I wanna hang out with you, but I don’t always want to do it at a restaurant or a cafe. Do you know what a struggle it is to find something to order when you quit coffee and can’t have caffeine or anything carbonated? It’s sad that I can’t partake in cafe culture. I love cafe culture. But I’m so tired of ordering chamomile tea.
Comfort over style. I’m down to three pairs of heeled boots and sandals that I keep in my closet, mostly for sentimental reasons. The rest I’ve given away. Can’t do them anymore, not when I'm constantly imagining myself breaking an ankle or tumbling down a flight of subway stairs.

Wearing whatever I want. I guess cross-body bags is the new side part, according to Gen Z. It’s supposedly outdated. Whatever. I’ll carry them anyway.
Accepting that my apartment will never look like a magazine spread. Our aging kitchen really needs a renovation. An old armchair in the living room could use replacing. My adult child is living in their childhood bedroom again and still sleeping in a bunk bed. None of it is ideal, but house stuff is expensive.
Quitting shows by episode 3 and books by page 50 if I’m not into it. Life’s too short to waste on books and shows that don’t captivate you.
Fangirling over whoever I want, unabashedly. I’m 56 years old and a huge fan of BTS. I don’t really care what you think about k-pop. They’ve pulled me through some dark times over the past 8 years.
Not feeling guilty about purging gifts that don’t give me joy. Gifts can be wonderful, but gifts can also become clutter (see last week’s newsletter).
Not feeling guilty about doing nothing. It took all of my adult life to get to this point, but I’ve finally made it. I don’t feel guilty when I do nothing! And I don’t have to be productive every single day. Actually, let’s reframe this: I’m not laying on the couch doing nothing, I’m actively resting.
Not feeling guilty about not cooking. Lord, there’s a lot of letting go of guilt on this list. I used to feel guilty that my spouse did all the cooking. My mom would pull me aside and quietly ask why I didn’t cook at all. We have reasons (which is no business of anyone’s, really) and fair equity of splitting chores our way that works for our household.
Accept that I no longer know what's happening in tech or the corporate world. Keeping employable meant that I had to stay on top of software, trends, best practices, industry news, blah blah etc., to stay relevant. It was exhausting. Now, I barely know what vibe coding is and I have no idea how product designers do their jobs anymore.
Accept that I might never be a successful artist. I don’t know if I’ll ever live up to the “artistic potential” that was frequently bestowed on me as a child. It felt like so much pressure growing up. Now I draw and paint and make weird things with no agenda or idea of where it’s going. I’m still trying to define what success means, but I may never make it as an artist with “credentials.” That’s fine with me.
Be delightfully mediocre at things. No performance reviews, no metrics. I do things because I want to, not because I need to prove excellence to anyone, even to myself.
I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. No notes.

Ok, your turn.

A roundup of links

To read:

How To Quit Doomscrolling When the World Is on Fire (The Conversationalist)
Doomscrolling and despair? They go hand in hand. But community and collective engagement are the best antidotes.
The Scientific Case for Reading on Paper, Not Screens (Time)
My oldest kid was always looking for pdf copies of their text books on the web to avoid buying physical books. I always questioned whether that was the best way to absorb the reading material and offered to pay for the books instead. But hard to argue with a budget-conscious college student. And then, what do you do with the textbooks when you’re done? (we still have some music theory books from college on our shelves!) My concerns, apparently, are valid and here’s scientific research.
Come for the Books, Stay for the Power Tools (NY Times, gift link)
Libraries are such an underutilized community resource! We visit the Brooklyn Central Library to borrow books every three weeks, but I also use my library card to get free entry to museums and gardens. I had no idea that some libraries are also lending out power tools, American girl dolls, and prom dresses!
Is A24 Still Cool? We are entering an era when anything Big Tech-associated smells bad, and even the most beloved brands are getting smoke-bombed. (The Hollywood Reporter)
I saw all this noise on Threads the other day about A24 being canceled and was like, what now? A $75 million dollar research partnership between A24 and Google Deepmind. Oh.
The Images That Define American History A visual chronicle of the national experience, from Iwo Jima to Emmett Till to January 6 (The New Republic)
None of these images will be new to most of you, but I bet you’ll get goosebumps seeing some of them again like I did.
How to Tax a Billionaire (Mother Jones)
So many of the issues that are plaguing this country would be solved if billionaires just paid their fair share of taxes. It’s infuriating.
Why Summer Jobs For Teens Are Vanishing And Why It Matters (Forbes)
NYC public schools finally let out last Friday (it always feels so late compared to the rest of the country) and per usual, there’s always a fluttering of messages on parent boards about summer jobs—or in this case, the lack of. Like everywhere else in this horrible job market, teen summer jobs are at an 80 year low.

What we’re watching:

The Boroughs (Netflix)
After one season it’s already been canceled. It’s a fun premise, kind of like Stranger Things but in a retirement community, however the end just got garbled with weirdness.
The Four Seasons (Netflix)
I do love a good series about long-lasting friendships and the characters are supposed to be my age, so what’s not to love about this series created by Tina Fey? But I watch mostly for Colman Domingo, who incidentally spoke at this year’s graduation of the college my kid attends. The way I squealed when I found out, lol. I can listen to him speak for hours.

Till next week – JP
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On life after relevance

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