On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In his recent release, The Art of Doing, Jesse Lipscombe shares simple and straight-forward tools that can help transform our lives. Here’s an inspiring excerpt:

I’m sure all of us, at some point, have fantasized about stumbling upon a genie in a bottle. I know I have. What would your three wishes be? Would you wish for a billion dollars? World peace? Good health?

If only life worked that way.

This is just another example of how we keep looking outward for ways to fulfill our dreams when we should be looking inward. You and only you are the magical vessel you need to find to achieve your goals. And the coolest part about this realization is that you’re not locked into the whole three-wish paradigm. You can grant yourself as many wishes as you like. You simply need to give yourself permission to do it first.

For some of us, that’s the hardest thing in the world. It has been ingrained in us from our very beginnings that we have to look externally for permission.

Parents are the first people to give us permission, and the first people we have to ask for permission when we want something. If we wanted a second helping of dinner, we had to ask. If we wanted to watch TV or stay out late, we had to ask. Learning to give ourselves permission is a process that happens as we grow. The more we practice doing it, the easier it becomes.

We live in a world that promotes hustle culture, where working every waking hour with few breaks is seen as the norm. We complain about our co-workers, our bosses, and the fact that we never have enough time off or don’t get paid what we’re worth. We lament that there is never enough time. What we fail to do is give ourselves permission to change it all.

I like to put it this way: A person wouldn’t ask a professional hockey player how to fix their car, so why would you ask anyone else to “fix” your life? Granting ourselves permission—permission to do something new, to act differently, to change our circumstances, even to disappoint others or fail at something—is the key to being the genie of our own bottle.

Source: The Act of Doing, pp. 107-109