Why Waiting for Clarity is Killing Your Progress | Leadership Development | Author Jillian Reilly

Jillian Reilly Transcript

 [Roger Kastner]

We’ve been taught that discovering our purpose is an inside job. The truth is, it’s not. You won’t unlock your purpose and your potential alone.

Most of us are led to believe if we just search within ourselves more and reflect harder, then we’ll figure it out on our own. 

But in this conversation, Jillian Reilly, a global change maker, public speaker, and author of The Ten  Permissions, challenges that belief. 

She tells us why we’ll only discover who we are by engaging with the world, in relationship with other people, and by giving ourselves permission to act before we have all the answers.

I’m Roger Kastner, and welcome to What Do You Know To Be True?

If you’ve been searching for your next step towards clarity of purpose, this conversation might change what you do next.

So, let’s dive in.

[Roger]

Hey, Jillian, thanks for joining me. I'm really excited to be speaking with you today.

[Jillian Reilly]

Oh, Roger, it's a thrill for me to be here as well. Thank you for having me.

[Roger]

Yeah, of course. I'm excited to learn more about your superpower of willingness to act without the answers, because I know there's a depth of experience and wisdom that really can put some teeth into that superpower. Your background in activism and leadership, making change happen in places where hope was not running high, is amazing.

At 23, you left the United States to support the first elections in South Africa post-apartheid. Later, you helped people with HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe, and you've coached leaders in the UK. Your willingness to tell your stories and share your wisdom as a facilitator, a public speaker, and now as the author of The Ten Permissions, Redefining the Rules of Adulting in the 21st Century.

I need that. I need help with adulting in the 21st century.

[Jillian]

We all do. I wrote the book for me.

[Roger]

The best research is me-search. Absolutely. You are hoping to help people be brave, resilient, and willing to do the thing without waiting for someone else to give them permission.

And oh my goodness, don't we all feel like we need permission to do things today. Is there anything else that's important for us to know about you?

[Jillian]

Oh, I think you've just offered the best kind of encapsulated summary of my work. I'm looking forward to unpacking it with you. Yeah, it's been a 30-year career of helping people navigate profound change, and it's taught me so much.

I feel honored that I've been able to be with people and communities in the times that I have, and it's really taught me a huge amount. But I'm hoping the book and everything else that I do might find some way of finding further expression in the world.

[Roger]

I love the intentionality behind that. So your book, The Ten Permissions, I'm curious about what's the core idea behind it, and what pulled you to write the book in the first place?

[Jillian]

Yeah, the core idea is that we need to give ourselves permission to navigate our adult lives very differently in a fluid world. A lot of our kind of default programming as adults was shaped in a previous century in a fixed world that was predictable and linear and hierarchical. And so much of our sets of strategies and expectations and time frames and milestones is built out still in many ways around that world, where you set a course from as young adulthood, and you followed it.

And if you were good, and if you worked hard, you earned security and status. And the reality is in a fluid world is operating very, very differently, that we aren't being rewarded for the same things, that the strategies aren't paying off the way they used to, and we're living that in real time right now. But are we allowing ourselves to truly explore other ways of living our adult lives, of working, of learning, of leading for this fluid world.

So I offer up 10 permissions, 10 kind of provocations to think very differently about what your adult life might look like. And, you know, ways of essentially becoming more adaptive, more creative, more resourceful in a world that's really calling upon us to be change and risk ready, in ways that previous generations never had to.

[Roger]

I'm curious about your experience and your, like what parts of your journey, the experiences that shaped you the most show up in these permissions?

[Jillian]

Oh, like all of it.

[Roger]

My next question.

[Jillian]

Yeah. Let me start with probably the most relevant piece of that, which is my work in helping people navigate change, which is what I spoke about. And, you know, I feel like that's the dominant theme of our lives right now is how much change we're having to kind of find our way through, make sense of, adapt to quickly.

And in my own experience of helping people through very different contexts, but similar, you know, profound amounts of change, whether that's in velocity or intensity, you know, that requires a very active practice of what I describe as self-permission, like really getting explicit about, okay, is what worked for me in the past still working? How is the situation calling upon me to make a different choice? Am I allowed to, am I comfortable with that?

So it's sort of, you know, my whole career in the world of human change taught me that in order to be more change and risk-ready, you really need to have a very explicit conversation with yourself about a lot of what your default patterns are and whether or not they still serve you. And then almost green light yourself to start repatterning. And the reality is that in this world where we have to be incredibly adaptive that, you know, practice needs to be one that is, you know, common amongst us and, and quite intentional, because if you slow, if you're slow, if you hesitate, if you're afraid, if you kind of look at this world and go, Ooh, it's scary.

I just want to go back to the known. You're going to spend your life feeling very anxious and potentially ultimately very irrelevant. And then on a personal level, I, you know, have experience in that process of sort of stepping into the unfamiliar of saying, look, I need to do something different.

I want to do something different. So the book is very much a combination of my professional experience, my personal experience, and you know, what I've learned it takes to sort of be your own change manager and drive that process rather than being driven.

[Roger]

Yeah. I love that calling out about being your own change manager, because it was very apparent when you're talking about the conversations that we have with ourself, the thing that we're the, the, that default dialogue that we have that most people have going on in their head of, you know, like how, how are people going to perceive me are, you know, will I be accepted? Am I, you know, being seen and heard and recognized?

Like there's that kind of conversation going on and you're really talking about flipping that script about changing into a different conversation. What do you do or how would you suggest to someone who spends a lot of time in that, you know, thinking about what do other people think about me to what do I want to think about me? How do I want to like provide self leadership for myself?

[Jillian]

Yeah. Well, first of all, it's a practice. It's not a, it's not a fix of a specific problem.

And that's the first thing that's really important to me, because I think a lot of people come into personal growth and personal development, often getting attached to an issue or a problem that they want to solve. And they judge the success of the exercise through whether or not that gets resolved. And I think often it doesn't, because the thing that they choose is often pretty high stakes, right?

It's a job, it's a relationship, it's a where do I live kind of thing. And what I would love people to do with this is actually treat it the way they might, if they wanted to start to get fits or something, you know, they might go and just start really small, keep the stakes pretty low. You know, you're not going to go out and run a marathon the day that you decide you want to start training, you're going to start doing small things.

So I think we need to see this as an ongoing practice of sort of driving our own adaptability, our own neuroplasticity, if you will. And that can start with very small choices. So I talked to people about starting on a weekend, you know, which is a lot of time where you have to make choices.

And a lot of time where we often sort of just don't make any choices at all. So, you know, I want people to start low consequence, even high pleasure, start with what you want on your pizza, start with what you're going to have for lunch, start with what music you're listening to, and become aware of the conversation in your head, as you said, that probably instantly looks outwards to what will people think, how am I perceived, starts to kind of repattern that through little micro permissions that might go, I don't care.

I love anchovies. I don't care if other people think I'm weird, or whatever it is. But for me, it's an ongoing practice that starts small, that creates a conscious awareness of the dialogue, and can be captured through a journaling practice, if that makes sense for you, a note taking practice, just a heightened awareness, and then starts to repattern that through very small kind of, I'm going to try this, I'm going to see how it feels.

And I'm going to come back around again. So that kind of, you know, action, reflection thing that a lot of us are familiar with in other realms of our lives, or other sort of change exercises that we might be

[Roger]

have taken part in, I think is relevant for us to the image I got in my head, when you're talking about journaling of giving yourself permission to try to do something different, think differently about something, you know, going from anchovies to pineapple on your pizza.

And I know for some people, that might not be a small thing. But, you know, trying that thing that, you know, giving yourself permission to try something different, to think differently about it. And then as you know, my experience with change is people love to see progress.

And so being able to track and be a journaling or, as you know, we're both parents, and we've had to take our our young ones a while ago, through potty training, there is the sticker, you know, like when they did it, right, they got a sticker on the chart. Like, could we create something for ourselves of our own ability to work outside to push the edge of our envelopes by giving ourselves stickers to think differently?

[Jillian]

Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, that's all of the, you know, all of the fitness apps, all of the, you know, they all offer rewards, they all say, Hey, you're doing well, because in any of those realms, we recognize that we're building up a capability that it is not a before and after. But I think our historic understanding of learning as adults, and shifting our behavior as adults was normally attached to a specific outcome, which normally was hugely consequential, because that was the only reason you would do something, right? Otherwise, the status quo was just fine.

So we're not in the realm of personal development, used to necessarily that similar sort of intentionality, because maybe we didn't have to, you know, the world rewarded us for remaining largely fixed, it was fine, you could put your head down and be the same person for 50 years. And as long as you were hardworking and loyal, you rewarded for that. But that's not the case anymore.

So, you know, in my bio, I described myself as working at the interface of personal development and social disruption, because I think this moment is calling upon something in us to be a little bit more intentional about, as we're talking about it, you know, being our own change managers driving our own sort of growth. And that's not something that's been normalized in the past, you know, personal development has been seen as a sort of fluff thing. You know, for people who wanted, you know, it can often be coded as female, it can be coded as nice to do.

Everybody else was off collecting their paychecks. And I think now it's a moment where if you're not driving your own growth, your own ongoing adaptation, you will be the last one to respond, you know, often, whereas others who are more willing to go after the change, more willing to respond positively to the unfamiliar, will probably be way out in front of you. So, you know, to me, it's a it's a moment for us to kind of step up to take accountability for our own growth and change.

[Roger]

Going to the title of your book, like, no one's going to no one's going to point you in that direction. No one's going to give you permission to do it, you have to give yourself permission to do it. Yeah, love that.

[Jillian]

Yeah, it's not something that somebody is going to come and put it on your plate and say, Hey, Roger, you know, it's time for you to sort of, you know, step out of your comfort zone. Nobody ever does that for anything, do they? And as I say in the book, it's not that I think that people are have a person that they're waiting for.

It's not that they're consciously waiting for permission, per se. But they're not used to giving it to themselves. So this is about stepping up that inner dialogue to a level of kind of, okay, let's go.

We're going to move through this.

[Roger]

So that's a good good place to go into your superpower of willingness to act without having all the answers. What does that mean for you?

[Jillian]

It's meant in the course of my life, that I've been willing to go to places that other people would consider completely off limits, that I've been willing to put myself in places that I think other people would consider dangerous, because I felt like there was a compelling reason for me to make the decision to, you know, cross some sort of barrier to enter some sort of conversation without knowing whether there was an obvious upside to it, or what it would get me. But I absolutely knew that by going there, I would learn something, it would stretch me.

To me, it's a very different mindset of not, I only act because I'm absolutely certain that there's a firm upside towards, I'm going to put myself in a variety of different situations that I believe will enhance my, you know, general capabilities in some way. And I'm going to trust that process. And for me, yeah, it's, it's, it started early.

And it's only kind of compounded as I've gotten older. So yeah, it's a growth accelerator.

[Roger]

I'm always interested in about what or who inspired the superpowers that we have. Can we go a little deeper and tell us who, who or what inspired that willingness to act without having the answers?

[Jillian]

I've thought about it a lot. I really have, because I am a complete black sheep in my family. I mean, I'm the only one, I was the only one with a passport.

You know, I was odd, putting this book into the world and talking more about it has put me more into contact with the young part of me that just wanted to make sure that I didn't end up like my mother, who was very much stuck in a story that she didn't write, that she felt no control over. And my father, too, to some extent, I mean, they were very much that boomery sort of did well, financially had all the things. But, you know, we're very much sort of housewife and, you know, ambitious salesman.

And I don't think had a lot of room to discover who they were, or as I say, in other situations, you know, they did everything they were supposed to do, and only what they were allowed to do. And I felt that very strongly from her. And I think on some deeper level, there was a part of me that was just like, I'm out of here.

I didn't have a lot of female role models who inspired me. In my immediate circle, I had teachers, you know, there were women who kind of, you know, guided me. But in terms of a, yeah, let's go.

There really wasn't much. And so I think to some extent, I kind of had to break things a little bit in order to get out. It wasn't a subtle sort of, hey, I'm just going to try a few new things.

It was like, no, I'm getting on a plane.

[Roger]

So yeah, I think it was more a push than a pull. And thank you for sharing this. It sounds like it was a push from within.

[Jillian]

Very much so. Yeah. I think to almost to a fault, there was something happening in me that I had a very difficult time putting words to in terms of I'm just going to go, I'm going to explore, I want to see the world, I want to be a part of things that matter.

I'm sensing a set of values and desires that I have no way of pitching to my parents, that will make them go awesome. You know, I think they just felt very confronted by my desire for something very unfamiliar to them. And you know, this was the early 90s.

The world was very different. We did not have internet, social media, you know, it was still fairly insular. So yeah, it was very much an internal sort of brewing to go and, and explore.

[Roger]

That takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage when everyone around you might be asking why and you're asking why not? I'm curious about the relationship between your superpower and courage.

[Jillian]

Yeah, I mean, why I felt at a fairly young age, able, willing to listen in and act on it without a lot of external support. I don't know. But I did.

And wow, am I grateful because if I could do that at 23, you know, it put me in good stead to kind of just keep going. One of the lines in the book is when other people don't know you is when you're starting to get to know yourself. So I think making ourselves familiar and acceptable, which of course we all do.

And at different times of our lives, we might feel more willing to step into spaces that other people will go. But, you know, to some extent, when you start to play around with that a little bit, in big or small ways, to challenge that, I think begins to remind you that maybe there's more room than you think there is to do things or be things that other people might not get. But that's okay.

Because other people getting you is kind of overrated, actually.

[Roger]

Well, it keeps you it keeps you where you are. I mean, I know there's some people on our lives that have really good intentions for us. But they they want to keep us safe.

They want to make sure we're doing the right things for ourselves. And that's usually where we're at today. Yeah, keep us stuck.

[Jillian]

Totally. Especially the people who love you the most. And I'm confronting this now because I'm a mom.

So hey, how would I feel if my, you know, he's only 17 right now, but I'm trying to hold very lightly. And all I can say is my own experience of not trying to kind of go, you know, and keep him in a space that feels safe to me is just, you know, it's more of a backing off, and more of a creating space than it is, like anything more than that. I don't think there's some big magic.

I don't think you need to sit down and be wise. And I think it's really just often not saying the thing you want to say, or when you realize it, I feel like it's this kind of in and out process of like, and then like, okay, okay, okay, okay, you've got to figure this out. And it might be versions of you that I just I don't get but that's your becoming.

That is your becoming.

[Roger]

Oh, I love that word becoming. This idea that we're just constantly unfolding. We're not deficient.

We're going from the acorn to the oak tree. And that's gonna you know, there's going to be moments where it's very difficult to do that. But if we stay the acorn.

Yeah, we weren't we weren't made. We weren't acorns to stay acorns. I don't know where I'm going with that metaphor.

But I think it works.

[Jillian]

But I'm so with you. I don't want to stay an acorn.

[Roger]

No, no. I mean, acorns get buried by squirrels. It's become oak trees.

In a prior conversation, you shared with me that you wrote this book for the youth of today who are coming into the world that has been, you know, maybe not created for them, but it's the world they're in. And allowing them to know that they need to, you know, give themselves permission to adult in a new way in the 21st century. And yet, there's an element of this that I could see as a parent of someone who's about to go on that journey, where this, this book, this body of knowledge can be helpful for them.

But how much of it is a reminder for you to let them become the oak tree? Yeah.

[Jillian]

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the key audiences for me right now is parents, because I recognize that, you know, I'm not thinking a lot of 17 year olds are going to pick up the book per se. It was more that when you know, my editor said, have that reader in mind.

And for me, it came alive when I started to imagine somebody with a lot of runway in front of them. Like, that's when it got very exciting for me, in part, because I've spent a lot of my time, as I say in the book with stuck adults with people sitting in stories that they're trying to extricate themselves from. And what I got really excited about was like, okay, what if we didn't have to do that?

You know, what if, at a younger age, we did equip ourselves? And guess what, this world is almost requiring it. So it's not like some, you know, it's not me, sort of going, I'm off, I'm out.

It's young people all over looking at a landscape that's really unfamiliar, that's changing all the time, that does not require or reward a put your head down and carve a straight path mindset, that needs and enables something totally different. But absolutely, as a parent, as an older person, allowing that, supporting that, enabling that, like, go out, you're okay. As long as you can support yourself, you're fine.

Like, that's my attitude, especially for a young graduate, like, just get out there, start learning, you know, just be able to feed yourself and put a roof over your head. It doesn't all have to be this, you know, seamless ascent, that starts with a glittering job, and then goes from there, it can feel and look a little bit more. And I do think in very, you know, kind of spatial ways of what it would be like if you were in the woods, which is what the world feels like right now, you would find your way, you wouldn't be like, cool, I'm off.

There I go. As if there was a really clear paved path that you just had to follow. There isn't.

I think it's challenging for all of us. And I'm not pretending to have answers to do this, and you'll be fine. But I am saying it's calling upon us to show up differently.

And that requires a very explicit conversation with ourselves about letting go, allowing for something new, green lighting, some things that might feel weird, and risky, but that's okay. Especially at a young age, when they've got so much time to try things out and learn and grow, and we've got to allow them to do that.

[Roger]

So well said. So Jill, in this moment, what do you know to be true about willingness to act without having all the answers?

[Jillian]

That it's more necessary than ever. Because I think that we have fully moved out of a, what I describe as if then world, which was if I do this, then this will happen. You know, a world of requirements and guarantees.

So if I do this, I'm pretty much guaranteed this outcome. If I go to college, I'm pretty much guaranteed a job. If I learn how to code, I'm pretty much guaranteed.

If I go and work at Microsoft, I'm guaranteed a glittering career. There are no guarantees. There never were, but we could allow ourselves to believe that they were, and we could allow ourselves to believe that we had control over all these outcomes by virtue of our behaviors.

You know, if I'm just, if I work 12 hours a day, they won't fire me because I'll be a top employee, right? And I think there's a lack of control right now that we feel by this kind of unraveling of a lot of the social contracts that have made us feel like we know what to do. And so we've got to prepare to learn to thrive in what I describe as the what if world, which is, it's just small bets.

It's just best options. It's your next best choice. It doesn't guarantee anything, but you've got to make it.

You've got to learn as quickly as you can. You've got to be on your toes. So yeah, it's beyond a sort of mindset for the explorers of the world.

It's all of us tapping a little bit more into that sort of mindset.

[Roger]

I love that juxtaposition of the if then to the what if. The metaphor going on my head is we can no longer sit and coach. We need to be flying our own plane.

But I don't want to advocate people to go and really go fly planes. You know, if you're sitting in coach, stay in coach. But you know what I'm saying?

[Jillian]

I know what you're saying.

[Roger]

Personally, like we should be in the cockpit, not kicking back and, you know, row 32 and wondering when we're going to get served beverages. What did you believe early on about your superpower that you've come to learn to not be true?

[Jillian]

I think at a young age, I felt very powerful. I would show up in rooms where I was the only one who looked like me. I moved through my early career like I was flying because I was willing to go just about anywhere.

You know, my boss at the time, I was 24, 25 years old. And she sent me all across Africa to start new programs to go and do things. And I did it.

And I think there was an inherent sense of power for me that came with that, that Ooh, look at me, you know, I'm willing to do this, and I'm willing to show up in these spaces. 

[Jillian]

You know, I still think it's a superpower. That's the way we're describing it. But I see it not as power over other people, which I didn't exercise, you know, with great zeal, but I definitely think at a young age I felt like, you know, I was this very powerful actor in the room.

I was a director of a multimillion dollar program when I was 27 years old. And I think I thought I could influence outcomes in a way that I have subsequently accepted that I couldn't, I can't. Which doesn't mean that I shouldn't still, you know, step into those unknown spaces, but because it will teach me, not because it will grant me power over other people or to do specific things.

I don't know. It's a quite a nuanced thing. But for me, it's it's a maturing of understanding my place in the world that, you know, I'm I'm I'm not the powerful change maker that I think at a very young age I thought that I was.

I think it's been very interesting for me in releasing this book and in sort of moving out into the world with this now of kind of what is it that I hope to feel or what is it that I feel when I'm in a room with other people talking about this? And, you know, I think that's where it's sort of coming to life for me now, which is, you know, yeah, the power that I feel is is within me. But even now, it's not to kind of stand on a stage as a guru dispensing prescriptions.

It's more as a hey, we're all doing this. And I've had experiences that other people haven't had. I've been super intentional about the journey that I've walked.

And so I have something to share as a result of that. But that is not, you know, coming from up here. That's coming from being yet another human.

Walking this path. We are encouraged so little to be in conversation with self, to engage with self. You know, there's a whole industry of, I think, a lot of internal work.

But at the same time, you know, a lot of it to me can become rumination or just. Lots of of self observation that doesn't always lead to, you know, a vital, active engagement with the world. I want you to go out there.

I want you to go and explore. And these permissions are green lights to action to to go and see a world that I think probably feels scary right now, particularly if you're a young person. But the only antidote to that is real life experience that reminds you that you have more power within you to confront and engage than maybe you've allowed yourself to imagine.

So, yeah, I think. For me, it's it's the dialogue with self that takes you further and further into new experiences in the world.

[Roger]

And that's a really important distinction, the dialogue with yourself that helps you to go act without having the answers versus the dialogue you have with yourself that makes you just want to sit inside, eat ice cream and watch Netflix.

[Jillian]

Yeah, which, you know, I get. But for me, that's part of where I feel like some of the and I don't have another framing for it other than personal development or personal growth world is skewed very much into this introspection and awareness of self. And I guess my greatest learnings about myself have been with other people and actually with other people who were nothing like me.

When I'm in a room with people coming from completely different countries, backgrounds that I'm able to see myself afresh. Like you can't keep looking at yourself in the mirror and and keep seeing new things. You need new material.

So, you know, one of the things that I talk about in the book is like, let new life in, let new perspectives and let new experiences. And within that, you start to gain new insight into self. But just, you know, the process of of just insular self-reflection.

Sure, it's it's a wonderful thing to build a heightened self-awareness. But that comes into its own. In action, when you are with others, when you are creating things, when you are exploring things, and I think particularly, again, with young people, there's this pulling away from from the world, from relationships, from life, from the messiness of it all.

And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. That's where the good stuff happens.

[Roger]

Yeah, there's there's almost this progression that I'm that I'm coming up with. And I want to make sure I'm not throwing any shade on eating ice cream and watching Netflix. I mean, that's what I was doing last night.

But it wasn't necessarily a form of escape. And I think that's the difference. But I think some of this internal work that we need to do is to understand, you know, the stories that we're telling ourselves that are holding us back or the parts of us that act like self, but really just need to be like understood, develop a new relationship and maybe even dissolved so that we go act, so that we go put ourselves into rooms with people who aren't like us.

So we experience new things. No guarantee on where you'll end up after those conversations, after those actions, but you will be changed. That won't happen by reading.

That won't happen by watching. That will only happen by doing. And it's through those actions that helps you in that process of becoming.

[Jillian]

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I think there's a big difference between being an observer of self.

And being, you know, a therapist to yourself. There's an observation of self and story and a keen observation, I think, is incredible. But I think a lot of people get very caught up in the analysis of why they're doing what they're doing or what its roots are in their past and, you know, apply a label to it, which then makes them believe that they are fixed.

This is who they are and they will never be anything else. And that's where I think we're not doing ourselves any favors unless we're preparing to go into therapy with a professional. I think that, you know, a very, a very intentional practice of observation, journaling, you know, getting what's going on for you.

Great. But trying to kind of diagnose in a way that then limits your sense of ability to respond or limits your sense of options in how you might be able to respond, I think, is where, you know, we're kind of running into brick walls in terms of the the net benefits of self-awareness.

[Roger]

Yeah, that that really resonates with me in this idea of our identity. And do we describe ourselves as nouns or verbs? Even the conversation we had earlier about becoming becoming the oak tree, the focus is not the noun of the oak tree.

It's the becoming. It's that journey, which I think is the thread throughout this whole conversation, is that it's the journey and what you discover along the way. And speaking of what's along the way, I'm curious, what's next for you and your superpower of a willingness to act without having the answers?

[Jillian]

I'm building out a community around the 10 permissions, people who are actively in a practice of self-permissioning to find new ways forward in their lives. And I sort of started it thinking we all do this by ourselves. And yet.

Why? You know, it's a very isolating process of trying to rewrite these scripts for ourselves. Wouldn't it be easier if I was doing it with you and if we both said, yeah, I get it, you know, it's hard to be a parent right now.

Let's talk about it. And I started it without any clear, you know, vision of the outcome, allowing myself to slowly kind of create it, not putting pressure on myself to know what it would become. So there are a lot of aspects of building out this ecosystem.

I'm hosting permissions parties, which they're fun. And they're, again, socializing a conversation, a joyous and interesting conversation around what does this feel like this becoming? I don't have a grandmaster plan for either one of those, but I absolutely know that they're teaching me a lot right now about how people are responding to this content, what permission means to them, what these 10 permissions mean to them.

I'm on a, you know, very intense learning path right now. And I'm making all sorts of small bets around what's going to help me learn and how I might be able to offer value to people.

[Roger]

So, Jill, are you ready for the lightning round?

[Jillian]

Bring it on.

[Roger]

Yeah. So fill in the blank. A willingness to act without all the answers is the gateway to your greatest sense of possibility and capability.

Mic drop. Who in your life provides a willingness to act without answers for you?

[Jillian]

My husband does. He's he's been an incredible. He's given me all sorts of permission in his own way to kind of go out and explore and give me room.

He's created a wonderful space for me to create. And I'm hugely grateful for that.

[Roger]

Is there a practice or routine that helps you grow, nurture, renew your ability to have a willingness to act without the answers?

[Jillian]

I try and follow my own advice, which is a practice of what I call switching out go to for go new. So I try very small adjustments. I try not to get into a rut too often.

So, you know, it's a tiny little step towards the acting without certainty. But it's just, you know, experimenting with the new as a way of keeping myself. Receptive and responsive to the unfamiliar.

[Roger]

Is there a book or movie you recently consumed that you would recommend that has a willingness to act without having the answers as a theme?

[Jillian]

I am a huge fan of The Big Leap. Have you ever read that? It's Gay Hendricks, I think.

Oh, and the opening of that book has stayed with me for it. It's really struck me because. He talked about sort of an internal thermostat where we are comfortable and how we keep kind of coming back to that unwittingly.

And that for me, in my own thinking around sort of that default operating system, the way that you, you know, keep yourself in whatever your sort of normative state is, often unconsciously, was really. Very. Super interesting for me.

It made me aware of a pattern of thought that I had that was probably limiting me in quite significant ways.

[Roger]

What is one thing that gets in the way of your superpower?

[Jillian]

Oh, I've definitely found with age has come a little voice creeping in that wasn't there when I was younger, which is, oh, my gosh, what if? What if you look irrelevant in this space? What will people think voice, which I used to be able to brush off much easier?

It now kind of niggles or screams in ways that it didn't have before. And I don't think it's uncommon for a woman, you know, in her 50s to start to worry about her own relevance and her own appearance and her own this and her own that. So I've definitely observed, again, a little hesitation, trepidation that didn't exist before.

And I'm trying just to sort of, again, not go too deep with it because it is what it is, but I just need to hold it and keep going with it and not let it grow to a point that it feels like a reason not to act.

[Roger]

If an audience member wanted to ask you a question or follow you, where would you want to point them to?

[Jillian]

I would say my website is probably the easiest one. Stop shop for all things me and 10 permissions. So it's just 10 permissions dot com.

From a social media perspective, I personally am probably most active on LinkedIn, getting more on Substack, but that's the stuff that I write myself. And I really am. You know, I'm so early in this journey.

The book's only been out for a month. I'm starting to hear from people and I'm it really like I want to hear. I want people to reach out to me, good, bad or otherwise, and say, this is how I'm making sense of this or not.

This is how it's showing up for me. So I really encourage, if anything around the theme lands, if anything that we've talked about today lands to, yeah, reach out to me. I'd love to have a conversation.

[Roger]

Jill, thank you so much for spending time with me, sharing your experiences with your superpower, sharing what you've learned along the journey and where you're at right now with this wonderful gift that you've given the world, that you've given this, you know, this new generation that's hit in the workforce and that it's really clear you've also given it to yourself. And that's I think those are the best gifts that we can give the world, the ones that are for ourselves as well. It's been there's been times when I've I've I'm hearing you respond to some of these questions, and I know that I've seen these things in the world myself.

But I know from your experience, I'm, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. But I'm going to say it. Your experiences have been that they feel a little bigger.

They feel a little bolder. They're still human experiences, and that's why they're really relatable. But my goodness, it's so, so enjoyable to hear you talk about the experiences that you've had and know that they are relatable, know that there is that human connection in all of those.

And so it just it just makes me feel honored to be in this conversation with you, as well as be right there next to you and knowing what some of those experiences are like, human to human, human to groups in our place in the world. So thank you for sharing all that you did with us today.

[Jillian]

Oh, it's a pleasure. And thank you for your beautiful summary and your, you know, thoughtful questions. And yeah, it is human to human.

And we're all in this together, regardless of, you know, where we come from or what our perspectives are. So thank you for creating a platform to continue to amplify that sentiment.

[Roger]

And just to add on to that, I think the more that we can show up as authentic, as brave, as vulnerable, it feels like that is what is not only right for us, but almost in contract with others. Yeah, almost in like I'm doing my part for this community. I show up more me more without those negative voices leaning into my authentic self and other people do that.

We know what that's like when we're able to have those moments. Like, I think the moment we're having right now.

[Jillian]

Yeah.

[Roger]

Amazing things come from that.

[Jillian]

Yeah. Agreed.

[Roger]

Thank you again. Oh, thank you. This has been wonderful.

[Jillian]

Yeah. Thank you, Roger. Amazing.

I get it. It's not easy to get that approval.

[Roger]

It's a negotiation, right? I'm already cleaning out the cat box. What else do you want?

Anyway. Can can she hear me? Did I close the door?

OK, thank you. This has been awesome. Laura is going to love it.

I know I love it.

[Jillian]

You know, she's the one whose opinion I really want to know. So you need to get back to me on that. Let's see where we go.

There's no hard stuff. It's more of a having hungry teenagers. Banging on my door.

And that's that's a real thing that's worse than a whistling guinea pig.

[Roger]

They they don't whistle. See, my secret for booking 90 minutes is so we can have moments like that.

[Jillian]

Yeah, I love it. You padded out with some human connection.

[Roger]

Thank you all for being in this conversation with us, and thank you, Jillian, for sharing your wisdom and perspectives on the power of giving ourselves permission to discover our possibilities.
 
 The question I’m asking myself now after the conversation is

-        Where in my world am I hesitating and I need to give myself permission to experiment and take action?  

 What Do You Know To Be True? is a Three Blue Pens production. I’m your host, Roger Kastner. 

We are recording on the ancestral lands of the Duwamish and Suquamish people. 

To discover the ancestral lands of the indigenous people whose land you may be on, go to native-lands.ca

Be well, my friends, and, love you, mean it!