Permission to Glow summary

There’s a distinct difference between someone with a career and someone with a vocation. If you ask the first what she does, she’ll offer you her job title and explain a few projects she’s working on. She might be content and even successful – but a certain spark will be missing.

By contrast, someone with a vocation won’t just be sparking – she’ll be shooting out fireworks as she chats about her role and why it’s important. And even more than that, she’ll humbly express gratitude for what she does. It’ll be crystal clear that she’s doing exactly what she should be with her life.

If you grew up in the ’80s, you might have had a VCR – a videocassette recorder that let you tape shows off the TV so you could watch them whenever you wanted. The VCR’s remote had a pause button. This wonderful little button meant you could pause at any time to grab a drink, visit the restroom, or even make a phone call, then pick up exactly where you left off.

Pausing is a powerful tool. It lets you step away from distractions, reflect, fact-check, and then resume in a more grounded mindset. When you choose to pause, it creates a space between a stimulus – like a piece of information or someone else’s behavior – and your response to it. By pressing pause, the first of the permissions, you give yourself the chance to choose how you’ll respond.

You can deny your feelings all you like, but the truth is, they’re always present. They’re in the tone of that email you sent, or what you said when your star employee resigned, or in your body language when your lover told you he’s going on holiday without you.

Social conditioning has trained us to think that mastering our feelings means not feeling at all. But this is impossible. As humans, we experience emotions, every minute of the day. So, to comply with society, we keep our feelings locked away and pretend they don’t exist. But when we do this, we miss out on all the valuable information our emotions are trying to tell us. That’s why the second permission is to welcome and experience every one of your feelings.

A person who’s fully expressing themselves is like a flash of lightning – powerful and dazzling to everyone who beholds them. If you see someone in this state, you might wonder why you struggle to also unapologetically offer your unique gifts to the world, as you follow your true path.

What’s most likely stopping you is fear: fear that you’ll overshadow others, or fear that you’ll be reprimanded for standing out. But just because someone has embraced their true path doesn’t mean they’re no longer afraid. They just know that fear is part of the journey – a travel companion they’re willing to accept. And so, they embrace the third permission.

In the ’80s, there was a popular cartoon called Voltron. Voltron was a huge robot which defended a distant planet from alien invasion. But Voltron wasn’t a single unit. It was made up of five individual robotic lions – each with its own special talents. In every episode, when the aliens inevitably got the upper hand, the lions combined into Voltron, to obliterate them.

This cartoon carries an important lesson; when you combine your light with others, you become an unstoppable force. That combined force can achieve far more than a single light. That’s why you’ll never embody your full potential if you try to do it alone.

Putting the four permissions into practice is a journey from panic to transcendence. Permission to pause leads you out of anxiety and into a space where peace exists. Permission to feel reconnects you to your humanity, so you can gain useful insights. Permission to shine unleashes your potential. And permission to help others shine lets you transcend the self to support others.

But this transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Commit yourself to practicing the permissions every day, with awareness and intention. It’s inevitable that you’ll veer off the path now and then. But by summoning self-compassion, you can begin again from your new starting point.