Create Your Environment for Success with Permission, Protection, and Power!
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What’s the one thing that stops everyone from learning a new skill? Fear of failure! We worry that we might look foolish or feel inadequate, or others might laugh at us.
Interestingly, the fear of failure takes on exaggerated importance the older you get and the more you feel good about things you’ve mastered. We forget the fun and adventure of learning something new and instead remember the uncomfortable feelings of being a novice.
Here’s the good news: developing natural skills is much easier and far less scary when you apply Permission, Protection, and Power (three skill development concepts that are part of Perceptual Style Theory™).
These are actions you can put in place to create a safe and nurturing experience while learning and practicing natural skills.
Permission is the encouragement to perform a natural skill. Permission can come from the outside or the inside. It comes from the outside by people who have influence and authority in your life—parents, friends, partners, grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, clergy, employers, etc.
Let’s say you showed an aptitude for singing as a child, and your mom noticed that you really enjoyed it. By asking you to sing a song for her or making time to sing with you, she provided Permission for you to continue.
Permission comes from the inside when you give yourself Permission to try a new skill.
Maybe you decide you’d like to turn your enjoyment of planning into a career in event planning. So, you set aside time to research options, and you set aside time to practice. You give yourself Permission to give it a try.
Permission is the encouragement to try and the recognition to temper judgment while you are practicing.
Protection provides shelter from catastrophic failure, the type of failure that disintegrates your self-confidence and resolve. Catastrophic failure results in a “never again” label on the skill you were trying to learn.
Failure is a necessary and important part of learning. None of us master a skill the very first time we try it. We are going to fail. The key is to make the impact of the failure small so that you can learn from it but not be crushed by it.
If you learned to ride a bike as a child and your parents first gave you a bike with training wheels and then held the seat and gently guided you while running next to you as you tried to ride without them, that was Protection. It took more than one try, but you were protected from a significant fall or running into a car or wall while you were trying.
When you provide Protection for yourself, it’s about starting small and working up to the fullness of the skill you are working on. Mistakes are part of the learning process, so making small mistakes keeps you on track far better than really big mistakes.
Let’s say you want to improve your public speaking skills. Applying the concept of Protection, you’d start out with short presentations for small groups and work your way up to larger groups and longer presentations. You wouldn’t start out with a Ted Talk.
Protection is not about preventing failure; it’s about ensuring that any failures (mistakes) are learning opportunities and not so hurtful or embarrassing that you stop trying.
Power provides recognition and reward for a skill well done. None of us will continue to perform a skill if we don’t experience a benefit from it. Without Power, it’s a one-and-done – learn it, use it, abandon it.
The benefit you experience from a skill can come in many forms – a sincere thank-you, recognition for a job well done, applause from an appreciative audience, feeling pleased with yourself.
Power makes us feel valued, worthwhile, and proud of our accomplishments. It’s the reward for learning a new skill.
the time to celebrate small steps towards the goal.
Allow yourself to accept compliments from others along the way. And acknowledge the self-satisfaction you feel when you experience your skills improving.
Power is about enjoying your new skills and feeling good about them. It’s about smiling on the inside and giving yourself a pat on the back.
So why not try a new skill right now? Or perhaps continue to develop one you’ve let slide? There’s no better time than right now to invest in yourself. And with Permission, Protection, and Power…you’ve got this!
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About Lynda-Ross
Lynda-Ross Vega is a partner at Vega Behavioral Consulting, Ltd. She specializes in helping corporate leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals with interpersonal communications, team dynamics, personal development, and navigating change. Lynda-Ross is co-creator of Perceptual Style Theory, a revolutionary behavioral psychology theory and assessment system that teaches people how to unleash their natural strengths and build the life and career they dream of.
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