Permission Goals: Start Living Your Perfect Life Today

by Benjamin on April 27, 2011

Permission goals are goals you believe to be part of your distant future, when in fact you could easily get started on achieving them right away.

I recently sat down with a pen and paper (long cylinder shaped object, flattened tree shaped object) to make my way through the Ideal World exercise by Paul Myers.

It’s not for the faint hearted. Luckily I discovered just doing the first few exercises to bring immediate benefit and to somewhat map out a personal plan of action.

To start, Paul asks you to write down the answer to several questions to determine the future you want.

Where would you live?
Who would your friends be? What kind of people would you like to spend your time with?
How would you spend your time, if you could be doing anything at all that you wanted?
What would you eat? Wear? Listen to?
Would you work? If so, what would you do? If not, what would you do?
What do you want to learn? To know? To be?
Where would you like to vacation? What would you do?
What else would be a part of your perfect life?

What I like the most about these questions is that they’re not airy-fairy up in the air notions. They don’t assume all you need to make you happy is world peace.

Paul asks questions relevant to today, which in turn will provide you with answers that are relevant to your situation today. Although I am an advocator for minimalism, I am well aware that ‘things’ and material possessions are an important part of all of our lives. Don’t touch my House DVDs.

After you have answered the above questions in as much detail as you can (seriously, dig deep into your future fantasy bank) Paul asks you to go back to your list of questions and take a look at how many of them don’t cost any money at all. These he calls ‘Permission Goals’.

When I looked my list up and down I was certain I couldn’t see anything that would constitute as a permission goal. Everything seemed so big and important that I assumed that particular part of the report didn’t relate to my situation.

I was wrong.

I eventually realised that half the items on my list were in fact permission goals. I needed no additional money or skills to achieve these goals.

So, What Are My Permission Goals?

In one of the questions I mentioned that I wanted to spend some time in the mornings looking out of the windows of my New York City apartment onto the city below. In this fantasy, I was drinking a class of orange juice.

I don’t normally drink orange juice for breakfast, but I thought, “That’s a permission goal!”. Having orange juice at breakfast is now on the PG list.

In another of the questions I mentioned that I wanted to work a couple of hours a day on my laptop on the tables outside a cafe, either in NYC or anywhere else around the world. Why can’t I start the trend in London? It’s on the PG list.

I wrote in a question that I want to jog around Central and Prospect parks in NYC. I may not be in the city that never sleeps just yet, but I live in London! There’s tonnes of great places to jog around here. So I am going to start jogging in London. It’s on the PG list.

I wrote on a question that I would like to improve at guitar, so I have given myself the PG of learning two new songs a week.

I wrote under the ‘What else would be a part of your perfect life’ question that I would enjoy watching sports. I’ve never been a huge fan of sports, but recently I’ve been getting into football (soccer). So my PG to begin straight away is to watch a greater variety of sports more often.

Once more, I wrote under the ‘What else would be a part of your perfect life’ question that I would class myself as an entrepreneur and successful writer. So my PG is to already class myself as an entrepreneur and successful writer. This is certainly an exaggeration on my current ability (at both) but it’s a very good motivational push in the right direction.

What are your permission goals?

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