The Soulful Leader Podcast
The Soulful Leader Podcast
Stop Asking the Room, Ask Yourself
What if you’re not broken—you’re just waiting for permission you can only give yourself?
Stephanie and Maren sit down with Jillian Riley, author of The Ten Permissions, to rethink how we lead, parent, and make choices in a world where old formulas no longer fit. Instead of chasing the “right” answer, they explore how to
- use experiments over equations
- build the capacity to choose
- recover quickly when things don’t go as planned
We were all taught to “ask before you act”, which follows many of us into adulthood, slowing decisions and shrinking our sense of agency.
Jillian offers practical ways to shift our old programs and assumptions and shows how permission unlocks creativity, collaboration, and momentum
This conversation is equal parts candid and hopeful.
If you’re navigating career pivots, raising teens in a fast-changing world, or leading teams that feel stuck, you’ll walk away with tools to act, learn, and iterate—without waiting for someone else to say it’s okay.
Listen, share with a friend who needs a nudge, and if this resonates, subscribe and leave a review to help more people find the show.
Find The Ten Permissions at 10permissions.com, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Reach out to Jillian to join her community and explore these practices together.
About Jillian Reilly
Jillian Reilly is a founder, author, and keynote speaker. Having spent her 30-year career working in social, organizational, and individual change across Africa, Asia, and Central Europe, Jillian’s focus is on helping people unlock their ability to navigate change and accelerate growth and learning. Jillian’s book, The Ten Permissions, guides readers in permitting themselves to update how they operate in the 21st century and design lives that fully leverage the possibilities of this disruptive world.
Jillian is a TEDX speaker and podcast host who has been published on international affairs in the Washington Post, Newsweek and the LA Times. Her memoir, Shame: Confessions of an Aid Worker in Africa, chronicles her early career in international development and the profound lessons it offered on the failings of the aid industry to drive growth across the developing world.
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Hi, welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. Boy, have we got a really interesting one for you today. We have an outstanding guest, and we're going to talk a little bit about permission. Now, this isn't about giving your permission slip to your teacher. You know, may I go to the bathroom, please, or raise your hand. This is really multidimensional about permission. And I know myself as a therapist, we don't give ourselves permission to rest or receive. We often, you know, try to forge ahead and make things happen. And when things don't work out or when things aren't going the way we would like them, we tend to think, there must be something wrong with me. I'm broken. I need fixing. And so this is her line. She says, we are not broken, deviant or deficient. We don't need fixing. We need permission.
Maren Oslac:So, I think it is actually about that permission slip. And the reason I say that is because we're so conditioned to ask for permission when we're younger. And then nobody, nobody teaches us how to move to the next stage of our lives where we give ourselves permissions. And I love that our guest name is Jillian Riley. And what I love about Jillian is she doesn't leave it at the flatland of like, okay, check the box. I know now that I need to ask myself permission. She actually goes through and there's 10 permissions. So, she takes it to deeper and deeper levels. And it's so robust and so fulfilling. And I know when I was reading the book and talking to her too, that's what I get all excited about our conversation that we had, is like there were all these 'AHA' moments about giving myself permission and also creating a world. She's all about like creating a world in which we're raising children and helping the younger generations to give themselves permission. So that as we go into this unknown, how... how do we... how does one navigate the unknown?
Stephanie Allen:You have to...
Maren Oslac:Go ahead... yes
Stephanie Allen:And for for most of us, you know, she's a parent herself, so she talks about, you know, parenting her children, but for most of us, we don't even give that to ourselves. So to look at the parts within ourselves that are fighting against doing something, we're holding back, or we are afraid for or we're conditioned in some ways to not even go for it. And that is what our world is needing right now. If we... and it not going ahead and trying to, you know, run over everybody, but to give yourself permission to truly love and be loved, to succeed, to go for the dream that you've never had, to, you know, take on a new a new ideal or a new way of living or being, to really allow yourself means we need to find ways to give ourselves permission. And that might be giving ways to your own inner children as well, inside yourself.
Maren Oslac:And from a leadership perspective, when we hold back, like Stephanie was saying, and we we don't give ourselves permission. So we... we hold back and we hem and we haw, we eliminate any creativity. And so solutions come from creativity, from imagination. So we end up being stuck, and our organizations end up being stuck until we give ourselves permission. And we we talk about all of these very cool aspects of it in our interview. So the two of us are gonna shut up, and we're gonna let you enjoy our interview with Jillian Riley, author of The Ten Permissions.
Stephanie Allen:In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it?
Maren Oslac:Deep inside, you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you. That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac. And this is the Soulful Leader Podcast. Yay! So welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. We have an amazing guest with us today. And we're gonna jump right in. Her name is Jillian, and she has written a book recently called The Ten Permissions. And I would love to hear a little bit about Jillian. What what what kind of inspired that book? And we'll get into kind of like all what it's about stuff. And I would love to hear a little bit of the background about what inspired the book.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, I mean, I... the book is kind of 30 years in the making, I think, because both from my own personal story of sort of stepping off the path that had been laid out for me by my family, by my you know, culture, my community. I took a decision very early on in my life to sort of find my own way and follow my own path. And that took me into the world of change and social change, international development, organizational change. So I feel like I've spent a lifetime sort of helping people navigate change and doing the same myself in my own life. And, you know, I think we're at a moment where we are navigating really profound change. Everyone I know feels like they're, you know, kind of making or managing change, whether because they want to or because they have to. And it just felt like a good time to make a contribution to a conversation around how we can thrive in a world that feels like just hugely accelerating and very profound change.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, absolutely. I... I loved part, there was a part in your in your book when you're talking about it's not change that we fear, it's the discomfort.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah.
Stephanie Allen:And that really resonated with me. And there's a lot of discomfort these days. You know, it just seems like it's never going to end. And I, you know, I think this book is very timely in the way of supporting... how do we get through that? Like what is your... what is your take on this with the discomfort and the uncertainty and the in the change?
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, I mean, I started this during COVID. You know, everyone was either making sourdough or banana bread or writing a book, and I decided to do maybe all three at different points, but I didn't really know what I was starting. I think even at that point, I knew that, you know, this was a "Sea Change". There was something, and you know, whatever you want to call it, an inflection point in terms of a sense that, you know, how we'd always operated would never be the same again. And I think for a little while we thought there was an aberration and we might return to some version of what we'd known in the late 20th century. And I think now we're all kind of settling into an acceptance of uh to use a cliche, new normal, where as you say, it feels precarious, it feels uncertain. A lot of our go-to ways of thinking about how we lead our lives are now, feel like, you know, they're evaporating in front of us as strategies that we feel confident will reward us, you know, linear career paths. The whole concept of a corporate career is now being, you know, discussed as will that continue to exist? Should kids go to college? I mean, things that we didn't even question when I was growing up are now up for grabs. And so the pressure on individuals to make choices, choices that previously were considered a no-brainer are now for you to decide. And so, you know, I think there's the discomfort of having to make choices, and because in many ways I think we're raised to outsource our choices to everything around us. And you know, one of the lessons of my own experience in change is particularly when we're making what I describe as 'Novel Choices". So never done it before, don't know anybody else who's done it. I sort of describe it as being the first or the last. Now that's part because you've got to be very comfortable and confident and back yourself. And in my own experience of change, um, that's not something that the average human wants to do readily, but I think we're gonna be called upon to do it ever more moving forward. So, how do we do that? How do we get more comfortable with that?
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, I mean that that's such a real key because I know in my own heart I go, oh, okay, when can I just rest? When can, you know, when is this? It's gonna stop. It's gonna stop soon. Like all this change, it's gonna stop. And having that realization that I better get on board. I better find some ways to do this. Because, you know, if if we don't find ways, Jillian, if we don't find ways to really manage these changes, what are the outcomes? And if we constantly keep putting, you know, like you mentioned, like you keep looking outside ourselves for answers. And if we continue to keep doing that, what's going to happen?
Jillian Reilly :Right. I think that's genuinely one of the biggest shifts that we're being called to do to make right now. And the challenge being that we were not prepared for that. And my sense of mission and purpose around the book is a little bit to contribute to preparing another generation to do that, because, you know, I think as young people, as children, we are actually encouraged to look around, encouraged to look around and say, may I, is it okay? And understandably so. I'm not suggesting that that's a completely inappropriate expectation, but I think in a world where we have to decide what's right for us, where there are choices and consequences as opposed to right and wrong, um, we need to prepare people to feel more confident with, okay, I'm making this decision, and I don't have the comfort of predictability on my side. I have to step into it and treat it as a process of exploration and discovery rather than a process of executing on a familiar equation. So, you know, I talk a lot about living in a world of experiments rather than equations, and what does that make you feel? Well, of course, it makes you feel unsettled. So yeah, I think we're w in this in between right now, and and I think younger people are gonna spend much more time, obviously, in this world, and so they won't necessarily feel what we are, but I think we're grieving a lot right now. Mostly a familiar formula for you know what I describe as 'if then'. If I do this, then it's gonna be okay. If I go to college, then I'll get a job. If I work hard at my job, then they won't fire me. None of these things are true anymore. So we don't have formulas, and I think that leaves us feeling very insecure.
Maren Oslac:Yeah, I oftentimes Stephanie and I will talk about it of the unknown, because essentially what you're talking about is living in that unknown, and we're not trained to live in the unknown, we're trained to obey somebody else's or live somebody else's way of doing things. And that's why one of the reasons that I love the book is you come from this place of we were given these permissions from the outside world. And what does it look like to take the permissions and own them ourselves? Yes, and give ourselves permission to do things rather than, and and I agree with you, it's not... children do need to be learned to ask permission, and then where is that threshold where we stop asking permission of the outer world, recognizing and respecting the rules while also pushing the boundaries and and you know finding that for ourselves?
Jillian Reilly :Yeah.
Maren Oslac:So I love that. If you could speak a little bit more to maybe what do you find is kind of that is, or maybe is there, is there a magic place where you can move from asking permission from the world to giving permission to yourself?
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, I think as you just said, I mean there are explicit rules that shape the way that you know communities interact, the way that systems function. And we all need to respect those. I think there are then underneath those a lot of implicit and unwritten rules, which nobody's agreed on and aren't written in stone, and don't necessarily contribute to the functioning of the collective, but just have become part of its way of operating. And I think in a lot of cases, the you know, interpersonal interactions, individual choice, we might have more room than we ever even claim to make individual choice, but because we are existing in these spaces where we believe there's an implicit injunction against that, we don't even test it, we don't even activate our own agency to ask for it or act on it. I was talking to a teacher the other day who of university students or college students, where her experiment was to bring them into a room where the furniture could move around, and there were far fewer students than there were places, so everybody scattered around, and she sort of said, you know, and they were all disengaged and sort of in their own spaces. And when she said to them, Uh, why don't you move this room around to make it work for you? And they were kind of like, well, can we? And she was like, yeah, and then they got up and looked, and they saw that the furniture actually had wheels on it, and the sides flipped down, and everything was actually far more fluid than they'd had even gone to look for to notice. And a few of them said, oh my gosh, I've been in this same room for a really long time, and I never even looked. And I thought, what a perfect metaphor for how we enter into a variety of things, whether it's rooms or relationships or roles, where we kind of don't even activate our sense of choice and our options because we assume a sort of passive role within that space. And I think in many ways, again, we've been sort of conditioned to believe that that's a sign of good manners, that that's a sign of good behavior, that you don't impose yourself. But actually, it's just engaging and co-creating, and you can do that with great respect to other people and great respect to the community. So, you know, I think in many ways we're moving out of a time when that sort of obedience, if you will, was rewarded and required to work within large systems where you executed on a set of commands and a set of you know ways of working. And now we're being called upon to be more entrepreneurial, to be more creative, to self-lead. And that's going to require a very different set of behaviors.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, I think we're definitely conditioned from our childhood to ask permission, which again is a very good thing. And then we get, as we get older, it's so pervasive that we just default to not asking ourselves permission, but looking outside ourselves in the world. And I often use the example of breathing, of like inhaling and exhaling. We often, you know, one of the trick questions I always say, which is better, inhale to inhale or to exhale? And yet we need both. So there's nothing wrong with asking permission outside yourself, but when do we start to ask ourselves inside permission? And how do we ask ourselves permission? In what I mean, how is like, are we even able to create space within it to even say, oh, what would it be like if I asked myself if I gave myself permission to receive right now, or gave myself permission to rest, or gave myself permission to ask a question, what would that be like? How would that then you know change my world?
Jillian Reilly :Right. And you, Maren, you asked about an age, and I don't think there's a golden cutoff, but you know, I talk to 15-year-olds, 14, 15, 16-year-olds. And when I say, you know, you are the authority in yourself by virtue of being a human, you know, you are your own authority, you know you, you are you. It's like that's hugely transgressive. What? You know, you have a self-knowledge, you have an essential will that is yours. And you know, I've had so many teenagers come up to me afterwards and be like, oh my gosh, nobody's ever said that to me before. So what would it take to begin to engage with teens? And I do believe we could start earlier, but just start there, who, you know, very soon will need to navigate a world of infinite choice and huge responsibility for self and start to thoughtfully engage them as you've just described, Stephanie, and sort of, you know, making some choices and backing them and potentially failing, potentially screwing up, potentially getting lost, potentially getting hurt. Okay, cool. What I've seen, and you know, it's my generation of parents, who've done exactly the opposite. In the face of what they perceive as a chaotic world, they're doubling down ever more on, you know, managing them. And then we wonder why we have quote unquote snowflakes. It's like because we're not preparing them for the world, and then we're sending them out in it with a very old playbook that doesn't work, and then we're wondering why they feel overwhelmed. It's like because they're not prepared and we haven't prepared them.
Maren Oslac:I...gosh, there's there's actually so much that I want to say. One of the things that I heard you say is there's a amount of self-knowledge. And we I think you know, when we think about starting with teens, and I a lot of our listeners either have teens or they work with teens. And I have to come back to starting with us because our generation was not taught, my generation was not taught to know ourselves. And that's what I heard you say is we weren't taught to know ourselves. And so we don't have necessarily the skills to then teach our children or their children, you know, we've passed that on through the generations of don't know yourself, do what you're told, you know, listen, don't be... don't be listened, don't be loud, you know, listen, speak when you're spoken to, and all of the things that I was raised with. And so that is something that I struggle with is who am I and what right do I have? And so if I'm struggling with that, and I'm passing that on to the people that I come in contact with, it makes sense that what you were saying of we're raising a generation of children that are, like you said we are calling them snowflakes, and they just don't have the tools. So I love what you're doing in bringing attention to it. And I would encourage our listeners to not just look at it from okay, we need to help the next generation. Oftentimes the best way we can help the next generation is by addressing it inside of ourselves and looking inside of ourselves for where is that true for me?
Jillian Reilly :Beautifully put, and I completely agree with you. You know, my work, my emerging work is with parents. I'm a parent, I have a 17 and a 14-year-old. It's tough, it's weird. You know, you don't know what to reward, you don't know what to applaud. I 've wrote a Substack post about it just a few days ago. It's like my kid comes home with a good grade. Am I supposed to be like... yes? Or kind of look at it and go, well, that's great. I mean, that that's nice, of course. I'm pleased, but I'm under no illusions that it's a reflection of a sort of fitness to succeed. I think we need to do our own work around the way that we are straddling worlds and the reality that it makes us feel out of control to step into a way, a different way, and a sort of not knowing, which you know, it genuinely feels very fragile. But if you can, for me, I kind of try and play around in some of the lower consequence moments, and I think that's where we start around choices that are not, you know, what are you gonna be when you grow up? But, you know, what do you want to eat? And again, I know that there's gonna be a whole group of people who are like, oh, we've been raising these young people to decide if they want fish fingers every day and what they want to wear, and it's led to these entitled young kids and yada, yada, yada. I think that especially when we're talking about teens, we need to work out how to help them activate their agency, you know, learn to take some risk, make decisions, deal with consequences. And all of this can be done within a realm that doesn't have to feel like, you know, um, it's a radical departure from any of the common sense values that any parent would bring into their household around, you know, the kinds of respectful and caring and thoughtful young people we want to put out into the world. We are very afraid. My generation of parents is very afraid that the old formulas for success don't work anymore, and we don't have a new one, and we feel very lost because we can't hand them a okay, honey, get straight A's and go to a good college, and then everything's gonna be fine, and I can sit back and relax. We don't have it, and if we think we do, and I think a lot of parents do are doubling down on that right now because it's all they've got, you know. I think we're in for a real wake-up call very soon.
Maren Oslac:Yeah, I know Stephanie and I have talked about this before. We both know teens that they won't... they refuse to make decisions. Talking to a young woman, went to dinner with her and her older brother, who is in his 20s, she's in her teens and he's in his 20s, and went out to dinner and she kept asking him, what do I want to, what do I want to eat? And she wouldn't make a decision. She's like, I trust him. She trusted him to make the decision for her. She didn't trust herself. He knows what I like. What should I eat? What should I over here? You know, and Stephanie's had a similar experience. It it is hard for both generations, all the I should say, all the generations, right? Because how do we step into that agency? And I love that what you had said about it needs to be done in ways that don't feel like they're the end of the world. So after I had dinner with this, young woman, I kind of, if I lived closer to her, I would be doing this regularly of like taking her to restaurants and be like, order everything, let's order it. Let's do it. Like, let's do something, to how do we start to move past that freezing in the face of a choice because the future is completely unknown. We can't rely on what we used to do, it's changing so quickly. So we have to be able to, you know, not live in the old fixed mindset and really start to embrace that that curiosity that you were talking about.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah. And you know, intentional choice is I think the term superpower is overused, but I'm gonna use it again. Because I truly believe that. And my 30 years of working in change taught me that. Because when you come down to the face of having to make or manage change, as I said a little while ago, you will be making novel choices. You're gonna be making new ones, you're gonna be making ones that maybe take you into a space you haven't been in before. So you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, is this... wow! Now, if you can't even make a routine choice, what do I want to eat for lunch? Then it when it comes time to make a new one, which is okay, you know, my what I studied to do is now obsolete. I need to figure out how to pivot all of my training to do something else, you will literally crumble in the face of having to step into new spaces. And I think a lot of for me, the book is about almost, you know, I talk about kind of personal change management as a core skill that yeah, go out to lunch and literally like not only make a choice, but force yourself to make different ones. Like, don't just always get a cheeseburger if that's what you always choose. Like, be like, okay, today I'm gonna get a Caesar Salad and and just experience that because Stephanie, I think that comes back to the discomfort of what if I don't like it? What if, you know, I don't know what I'm doing with it? And the more that you start to kind of, as I talk about in the book, discern discomfort from danger, I'm okay, I might not have felt good, but I'm still here. And maybe I have more tolerance for those moments, or at least I can recognize them and know that I'm still safe. Like those are just such key capabilities. And they are things that we can practice. They are a practice, they are, you know. So I think that's sort of a lot of where I want to take the conversation with the book is that it's not about fixing something that you perceive as being wrong in your life, it's about developing a capability to continually navigate change and make it in your life because you're going to have to.
Stephanie Allen:I think that's wonderful. And even like the part of have giving yourself permission to be between, you know, like I think we get very polarized. It's like, well, if I do or if I don't, you know, am I right or am I wrong? Am I good or am I bad? Or what if I, you know, if I really mess up or I really fail? And like you said, it's you know, to discern between discomfort and danger, that is so key. It is so key because I think we put everything in the category of danger.
Jillian Reilly :Abpsolutely. Everything and everything ever more, ever more. I mean, I can't tell you how many times that and I want to bring it back to the kind of parenting conversation where parents now see the world as being fraught with danger. It's just everything's dangerous, everything's a problem. Like the the fear factor as it relates to our and and when you try and kind of have rational conversations around it in terms of okay, I know it might not be great, and they might, you know, end up hurt or lost, you know, all the things that every human probably should be at some point in their lives, but they will come back from that a you know, with a wider base of experiences. And that's what we are depriving our kids of is this kind of experience based adaptability. So the only way to gain this is to earn it. It's not a passive knowledge that you imbibe. It's an earned capability through experiences that begin to reward you. So if we never allow them to do those things, if we are... if we're always watching, if we're always controlling, they never earn those things. And I think that's part of what we are seeing and what we are experiencing right now. I have big conversations with my peers around tracking our kids. I'm one of like literally two people who don't. And I mean, it raises a lot of eyebrows. And I'm just like, well, I need to train them to communicate with me, to have good risk you know, capabilities, to make smart decisions. If I'm playing big brother all the time, you know, it shifts the dynamic.
Stephanie Allen:Well, it's ultimately sharing that you don't trust them. So, you know, when we're constantly hovering or constantly tracking somebody, it erodes that self-confidence and that self-reflection to say, well, and I see this all the time instead of just saying, hey, look, I trust you. And you know what? You're gonna make mistakes, and we all do, and I'm right here for you. I got your back.
Jillian Reilly :Right. That's right.
Stephanie Allen:If we can start to create that space for them, hopefully they'll start to create that space within themselves to then go, okay, you know, to self-reflect within themselves.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, that self-awareness, Maren, again, that sort of knowledge of self. And, you know, then you get, well, the world's a so much more dangerous place. I'm like, okay, I'm not entirely convinced that statistically it is. But let me tell you what, as a young woman who left St. Louis, Missouri, went to Chicago, started riding on the L, you know, was surrounded by every nature of human who had experiences that if my parents had known about them, they would have been shocked and horrified, you know. But that's what you did. And by doing that, you, you know, gained that muscle, you gained that capability. So if you're never allowed to do that, then as you've just described, Stephanie, how do you develop that self-trust? How do you get that confidence of I'm okay, I'm okay? It's a really interesting moment where we, I think, are struggling a little bit to confidently allow both ourselves and our young people to move into an unknown, trusting ourselves and allowing ourselves to surrender a little bit to the realities of what we're dealing with.
Maren Oslac:So if as our our listeners are listening, I know that they're probably leaned in like, yes, this describes my life, or possibly because I don't have children. And what I'm hearing you say, it actually's happening inside of me. Like I'm experiencing that. And so as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, okay, where can I give myself permission to do some to move outside of my own comfort zone, out of what I've been trained to believe? Um, so my question would be if our listeners are looking for something either for themselves or possibly for their children, or you know, a lot of we have a lot of teachers that listen to us. So is there something that they can be doing, something very practical that they can start doing today or tomorrow to actually start to open that that doorway of curiosity and close, start to close the the doorway of fear, I would say.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, yeah, and that's a beautiful way to put it because I do believe that curiosity is an antidote to fear, and then the action that will arise from curiosity, because I don't see curiosity as a passive state, I see it as an a green light to go looking, a green light to new experience, a green light to new knowledge. So, you know, that's a great place to start. And, you know, one of the things I talk about a lot is... your weekends. I call them like permissions playgrounds because the time is yours. It's easy during the week to feel subject to, you know, sets of responsibilities and authorities outside of you. The weekend is a space where you have choice, and yet we can often get into our sort of default operating mode and not come alive to that choice and and not come alive to the patterns that are fully within our own capability to repattern. So, you know, enacting that sort of repatterning on a weekend might feel a little bit less risky than it will in other realms of your life. And again, that can be a pleasurable experience. You can start to exercise that agency by what you decide to do on a Saturday afternoon when the question, the curiosity, as you've already pointed out, first turns into self. What do I want? What do I feel like? You know, what is piquing my interest right now? What is my body telling me it needs? Then being willing to respond to that, just even if it's a small thing, it doesn't have to be a massive undertaking.
Maren Oslac:But I think getting into that cycle, being willing to be wrong, like, oh, whoops, I didn't quite get that correct. Because I... oftentimes what we'll end up doing is being like, well, that didn't work for me. And so then I just shut that whole thing down instead of being like, okay, that didn't work. Part of the reason is because I haven't been trained to know myself.
Jillian Reilly :Right...right.
Maren Oslac:We assume that we know ourselves. We haven't been trained to know ourselves, and so we try a little bit and then we hold back because we're like, oh, that wasn't right. I'm so bad, you know, like and then the... Stephanie has something she likes to call the itty bitty shitty committee, which is the the internal...
Stephanie Allen:...to give yourself permission to like turn off the itty bitty shitty committee. It's like give yourself permission instead to go play and learn in self-discovery.
Maren Oslac:And be like, okay, that was completely wrong. Like you said earlier, like, okay, I ordered the salad. I always order the hamburger and I ordered the salad instead, and I really don't like it. That's okay.
Jillian Reilly :That's okay.
Stephanie Allen:It didn't blow up the world.
Jillian Reilly :It didn't blow up the world. Well, I think Stephanie, you talked about yeah, I obviously talked about like binaries of right and wrong. And I think that for me is a good example where it's not we're not here to kind of land on a new formula or to find the right answer. We're here to extend our base of experience. And by extending the base of experience, you open new things up.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, just to open one's mind, open one's heart, open one's willingness to like explore and be a human being. I just think we're so stuck. And I often will say, you know, what is the worst thing that'll happen? Like seriously, if I make this choice, what is the worst thing? Well, I might feel a little uncomfortable. I mean, really, that's probably the worst thing is like I might be a little uncomfortable, but that little uncomfortability actually might be, oh my God, it might be actually amazing. Like it leads me to an all-or if it doesn't lead me to a whole new wonderful experience, then I've learned something. I'm like, okay, ike Maren was saying, it's like, okay, I don't really want to have that, I'm not gonna make that same choice again. I'm gonna choose something different next time. Or... or I'm going to speak up and ask for more directions or more details so that I can really understand if this is really aligned with my with my values, with my needs, with my longings. And I don't know, I think we think too much.
Jillian Reilly :And experience too little. You know, I I was talking to a neuroscientist the other day about permissions, and she was talking about experience-driven neuroplasticity, which is essentially what you just said. You know, the more you experience, the more you train your brain to be more adaptive, more plastic, because you are basically feeding it with more and more data through which to draw from when it comes time to make each and every choice. You're you're expanding your data points for your brain to work with. And, you know, I've it's something that I've been playing around with for a long time because my own experience of leaving, you know, the comfort of home and heading out into the world was like one giant experience-driven neuroplasticity experiment. Um, so if you were just to, with curiosity and care, treat every single experience as good simply because it is like feeding you with new data. And you don't need to decide if it is your thing or not. You don't need to categorize it into a you know binary bucket of this is right or wrong. It just has to be more experience, in which point you walk away, you pay the bill, you walk away and go, okay, that was interesting, moving right along. Um, and then the more you do it, the more you get the reward of kind of realizing that, oh, it's fine if I didn't like the movie. Or I didn't, that that day trip wasn't everything that I hoped it would be, but what the heck, I got out. So I think there's a you know, the the benefit of experience starts to evidence itself in you the more that you you know move out of your head and into the world and out of your head and into your body. Um but that's a practice, it it doesn't happen magically.
Stephanie Allen:And the more you do it, the more it becomes natural.
Jillian Reilly :Like everything.
Stephanie Allen:Yeah.
Jillian Reilly :Like everything. And I I think, you know, I in all of my work with change, it was so often, you know, as I referenced a few minutes ago, here's a problem, let's fix it. And I'm like, no, because that just puts you into a certain way of corrective thinking, which rarely, to my mind, opens you up to creative possibility. And what I'm playing around with is more of developing a sort of fitness, a sort of muscle for trying things, for allowing yourself to develop a greater um range, a ranginess that will allow you to bring things in and not be so afraid, allow you to gain more self-awareness and confidence. And that has nothing to do with fixing a problem. That has everything to do with finding out what you're capable of. And I don't think most of us have any clue what we're capable of because we never even try, we never even get close.
Maren Oslac:Yeah. You know, Einstein said that in imagination is more important than knowledge. And whenever I think about that, here's one of the greatest minds of our century. And he says imagination is more important than knowledge. And we have as a society have idealized knowledge, which is very fixed. And when you try and fix something, whether it's making it permanent or trying to fix a problem, imagination gets tossed out the window. Yeah. So the creativity comes from curiosity, it comes from not trying to make or fix something as if there was a problem. So we really do need to get beyond the binary right wrong in order to open possibility. And I love the permissions that you talk about in the book because one of the things that I found for myself is that they are their tools for us to use to move past that binary thinking, the right, wrong thinking, and open possibility in our lives, in our children's lives, in our students' lives, and you know, in society in general. And what an antidote that would be for every place, all the things that are going on for us in our world right now.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, thank you. I mean, I love that tools for moving beyond the binary because it is, I do think that's what permission is. I think we are so conditioned with right and wrong, so conditioned with good or bad, so afraid of being wrong, so afraid of being bad, because those are things that are legacies of how most of us have been brought up. Um and again, we we're not supported to shift that. Instead, we're then moved through academic systems that are all about right or wrong answers, that are all about knowing, that have almost nothing to do with imagination, because those are just for like the RD students. So, you know, I think I think we're in this interesting moment where suddenly knowledge, you know, is not as valuable as it was a little while ago. You know, we're on the cusp of a super interesting moment where that knowledge that, as you say, we've treated as the gold standard is now at everybody's fingertips. So what are we gonna do now? Is it an opportunity for us to step into imagination like never before? I'm sort of hoping it is.
Stephanie Allen:I love that. I hope it is too. I hope it is too. Yeah, it's time to move inward and to listen to the voices inside that are holding you back, that are keeping you limited or small and discovering the potential and the possibilities that are really already within you.
Jillian Reilly :Well, and some of what I'm saying is, gosh, you know, we've been delivered this moment where I'm not sure, Stephanie, that we have a choice anymore but to do that. So, you know, when I talk about the book, I say, well, when I started to write it, the those tools, this approach felt somewhat aspirational. Wouldn't it be nice? Now it's like, I'm sorry, it's strategic. You have to, because so much of that sort of, you know, what I describe as putting on a suit and sleepwalking, stepping into ready-made roles and allowing them to shape your choices, your behaviors, your trajectory, it's disappearing. And without that self-knowledge, without that sense of curiosity and imagination, I'm afraid there's going to be many, many people who simply will be left behind because they're unwilling to take the permission that this moment is giving us to say, okay, um, maybe it's your opportunity to be more human. Are you willing? Are you allowed?
Maren Oslac:Yeah, I love that. And I think that there are already people that are feeling left behind.
Jillian Reilly :Absolutely. And I see them all the time.
Maren Oslac:So if you would, um, I would love to, you know, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are wondering where they can find your book, where they can find out more about you, because we haven't gotten into Jillian's story, but her story is fascinating. So um, your book has some of that story in it. I would love for you, if you would be willing, to share where to find the book and how to reach you if people are interested in finding out more.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, so my website's a good sort of stopping place to find out all things 10 permissions, um, 10permissions.com. You can order the book there. It's available now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and a few other digital um online booksellers. Um in terms of reaching out to me, I just you know would really want to encourage it. I mean, I feel so, you know, there's the book, which is for individuals and their own individual journey as we've been talking about, but there's another piece of this for me, which is wanting to kind of um create and facilitate community because we're we don't have to do all this on our own, and yet we are. There's so many people, as you said, feeling left behind, feeling lost, feeling like their life doesn't look the way it's supposed to, but they're not sure how to make it look the way they want it to or the way it's supposed to. And I would say that's everyone from 21 to 41 to 61 kind of sitting there going, but but wait. Um, and I, you know, I say in the book, this is about individual permissions, but it's about social permission to accept the fact that we need to operate differently in a world that is requiring us to, you know, be so much more fluid and adaptive, and that helps to do it with other people. It helps to feel like you're not the only one sitting at your computer, sort of going, Oh my gosh, I'm just you know, I don't know what's right, I don't know what's wrong, I don't know which path to take, I don't know how to be a parent, I don't know how to, you know, be a good leader, all these things where I think people are really sort of um racked with self-doubt. Like it's okay. You can find other people who are asking themselves the same questions and maybe in those spaces begin to support each other to come into self and to share with each other.
Stephanie Allen:It gives hope, doesn't it? You know, I think we can become very hopeless and helpless, and that's you know, to when we do come together and we start to delve in and giving ourselves permission, having those practices, and then being with others who not only are living it, but hold that space for us to live it too. That's hope.
Jillian Reilly :Yes, it is, and my goodness, do we need it? Because I mean, you've read the book. I started off with saying, you know, cynicism and despair have kind of become a currency right now, and I think that's highly problematic because it limits our sense of agency. We begin to believe that we don't have choices, or at least not any ones that are good, and I don't believe that I'm not willing to buy it, I won't buy it for myself, I won't buy it for my sons. I won't, and I'm not gonna believe that they're going out into a world that is doomed to kind of disappoint them. So the only way for them to tap into that, the only way for me to tap into it is with hope.
Stephanie Allen:Yes, yes, I think coming back to the teenager style again is I, you know, when I think of my my family teenagers, I think about myself as a teenager. It's either I don't want to, you can't make me, and I'm you know, I'm gonna do my own thing anyway, or why bother? What's what's the point? And so when we have hope and we have that practice of learning how to give ourselves permission, the teenager in ourselves as well as in our our currency, our current, you know, um society is now has a space to really drop in and choose a whole new paradigm, which will unfold a whole new world, which is what we're needing because we don't know what it's gonna look like. We need to like drop in and create something that is going to be nourishing and beautiful and hopeful.
Jillian Reilly :Yeah, and I love that dropping in and creating that. And what if we were to believe that they actually could, that they will, and all we need to do is make space for them. I love it, you know, instead of this sort of like sitting staring at our phones hoping that you know they don't get, it's like why what what if we were to believe that they were unbelievably powerful and they were, you know, had such limitless potential instead of oh my gosh, if I don't find the safest container for them, they will, you know, be wrecked by this world. It's like I often over the past two years, as I've written this book and as I'm now bringing it out into the world, and I get this sort of like I think as you're talking about, go back to your teenage self, go back to that young woman who got on a plane to South Africa, who didn't have a clue what she was stepping into, but was willing to do that. So, you know, I'll say to myself now, buckle up, Jill, you can do it. She did it, you can do it. You know, there's so much beauty in that youthful willingness to go out and explore. And I think we would do ourselves and the next generation a great favor by letting them do it more.
Maren Oslac:Yeah. Well, thank you so much because for me, this has been a conversation about hope from beginning to end and holding space for the potential of a future for all of us that is much greater than, you know, what I think a lot of us are seeing. So I just want to thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your vision and your platform for allowing that to happen, for helping to make that happen.
Jillian Reilly :And right back at you. You know, it's such an honor and a privilege for me to come into the lives of other people who have their own platforms that are you know putting ideas and emotions and beliefs into the world that help each one of us, whether we're listening to this driving somewhere or you know, sitting in a comfortable chair to believe, to be reminded of who's in the world right now, making their way, finding their way, bringing their best contribution out there. And I think you guys are a beautiful example of that. So thank you for the invitation to join your conversation.
Maren Oslac:Thank you so much. And as a reminder to all of our listeners, the show notes will have links to the book. And you can find us at www.The Soulful Leader Podcast.com or on our project page, which https://tslp.life. And we will see you all in two weeks. Thanks for joining us.
Stephanie Allen:And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen,
Maren Oslac:and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website at the www.TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast.com. Until next time.