71. How Waiting for Permission Undermines Women’s Power
For so many high-achieving women, desire is often postponed in favor of staying adaptable, agreeable, and comfortable. The survival brain gets loud, and society teaches us to wait for permission to pursue what we want, even when it’s something we care about deeply.
This episode is a call to stop waiting and start deciding. Desire is not an indulgence. It is your internal authority guiding you to what you’re meant to create and experience. When you give yourself permission to desire more, you lead differently.
Tune in this week as I explore what happens when women stop asking for permission and start trusting themselves. We’ll also look at both historical and modern real-world examples of women who redefined leadership by trusting their desire, and how desire leads to leadership expansion when you stop negotiating it.
Interested in working with me? Book a free 1:1 consultation here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why high-achieving women wait for permission and how it holds them back.
How desire leads to leadership expansion when you stop negotiating it.
The difference between living in survival mode and leading from desire.
How trusting your desire reshapes your identity and authority.
Why desire is not indulgent, but the most powerful form of self-leadership.
Real-world examples of women who redefined leadership by trusting their desire.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
If you haven’t already, please follow the podcast and leave a rating and review to let me know what you think. Find complete instructions here!
Watch my TEDx talk: Reclaiming anger: A woman’s birthright
Episodes Related to how waiting for permission undermines women’s power:
Full Episode Transcript:
I want to say something that might land deep. When women stop asking permission and start trusting themselves, power doesn't argue. It rearranges. It shifts. And if you've felt resistance lately, pushback, discomfort, subtle questioning, it's not because you're doing something wrong. It's because you're no longer negotiating your desire. You're no longer asking, is this okay? Is this reasonable? Is everyone comfortable with this? And that changes everything.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's episode. I wanted to do this special episode on what happens when women stop asking for permission and why it's so powerful, and also why oftentimes we are always waiting for permission so that you understand yourself and so that you can interrupt yourself. If you are a people pleaser, if you notice yourself always asking for permission, especially at work or at home, I want you to really listen to this episode. It is short and punchy, but it is full of things that will help you change your life forever. And if you have people in your life that could use it, share it. Text it to them, let them know they matter to you, let them know what this episode means to you.
All right, let's start from the beginning. I talk to hundreds of high-achieving women all the time. They're brilliant, capable, and respected. And that pattern is always the same. They don't lack ambition. They don't lack desire. They lack permission. This is why I'm doing this whole episode on permission, right? They lack permission to trust what they already know. They've been taught to wait until desire is logical, safe, responsible, approved, backed by evidence, co-signed by everyone else. And the moment they stop waiting, the room changes, not because they got louder, but because they got clearer.
So I want you to hear this and notice yourself, where in your life are you waiting for permission? Are you waiting for yourself to feel less guilty? Where are you waiting for somebody to give you permission to move forward, to do that thing, to invest in yourself, to go after your dreams? Where are you waiting for external approval to give yourself permission?
Here's the truth that no one says out loud. Desire-led women are disruptive, not because they're aggressive, not because they're unreasonable, but because they're self-authorizing. A woman who truly trusts herself stops asking, is this allowed? Will this upset someone? Do I have enough proof yet? And systems built on women adapting feel that shift immediately, not as rebellion, but as reorganization.
I did a whole episode on how desire is a decision, and this is continuing in this episode and why giving yourself permission to follow your desire is so powerful. Here's the reframe that changes everything. Desire isn't a feeling, it is a decision. The women who change their lives aren't less afraid. They don't have more certainty. They don't magically feel ready. They decide to believe themselves. And they stop treating their desire as optional, and they start treating it as sacred. And once you do that, you stop asking for permission to want more. You stop waiting for somebody to come rescue you.
Why desire feels threatening? This isn't about men being threatened. It's about systems being unfamiliar with women who no longer manage everyone else's comfort. Unconflicted female desire exposes something important: how much power relies on women staying adaptable, agreeable, flexible, quietly accommodating. That's not an accusation. That's literacy. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. I want you to just take a pause and notice the women in your life, the women at work, the women in your family, how they are the glue to everything, how they get everything to work perfectly, how they manage people's emotions in order to get stuff done.
And I want you to be able to see it neutrally, right? How women are adapting, how they are able to get stuff done. This is a big reason why systems are the way they are. There is comfort in a woman doing a lot of things and filling in the gaps and the glue to things, right? As women, we oftentimes are so focused on getting things to work that we forget ourselves.
And I want to give you some examples of history and some modern-day examples to really show you what is possible when you start giving yourself permission and when you stop waiting for other people to give you permission. I'm going to give you lots of different examples, again, to really underline this point. I told you this episode was going to be short and punchy, but it is going to be powerful because these examples, I want them to activate you and I want you to see what's possible for yourself.
So, we're going to start with Elizabeth I, self-trust as sovereignty. Elizabeth ruled England in the 1500s, a time when a woman's authority was expected to pass through a man. Marriage wasn't romantic. It was a power transfer. She was expected to marry to rule through someone else. And she said no, not because she rejected partnership, but because she knew giving her authority away would cost her sovereignty. That wasn't rebellion. That was self-trust. And when she trusted herself over tradition, an entire nation reorganized around her authority. There's a reason during her reign it was called the golden era. She was a phenomenal leader and she said no to the status quo, and she gave herself permission to lead the way she trusted herself to lead, the way she knew was powerful for her.
I'll give you another example. This is more quiet conviction, right? Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is where she led with her own authority, and it doesn't need to be loud. This is what I want to open up for you as you give yourself permission to show up more and more activated and engaged. It doesn't need to look a certain way. Before she was the Supreme Court Justice, Ruth was told again and again there was no place for her. She didn't perform outrage. She didn't rush visibility. She trusted a quiet, steady desire that fairness belongs in the law, even if it took decades. She was dedicated and committed to this desire, to what she knew in her bones to be true.
Her power came from consistency, from patience, from believing her work mattered, and even when progress was invisible. Desire doesn't have to land loudly to be absolute. Desire requires dedication. Desire requires decision after decision. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg did that, right? She did that in her life. And that's why she created such a powerful legacy for herself and others.
All right, I'm going to give you a more modern-day example of this again. These are real examples to just see what is possible. We have real examples, but oftentimes we are too focused on the dangers, the fears, the reasons why we can't versus what is actually possible. And what do I have examples of? This is really about flooding your life with people, women who are giving themselves permission, who are going after their desire in a tenacious way, who are creating possibilities for themselves that seemed impossible to so many others.
Okay, Reese Witherspoon, choosing creation over permission. So for those of you who don't know Reese Witherspoon, she's an actress. She's been acting at a very young age. And Reese realized something early in her career. Complex female stories weren't being told, not because women didn't have them, but because the industry didn't value them. She could have waited. She could have waited for the industry to change. She could have waited for somebody else to show up, right? Oftentimes, women that I talk to, they're like, I want more women on the board because then I could speak up, right? They're waiting for permission from someone else, from another authority, from other folks that are going to give them safety, right?
And Reese could have done that. She kept auditioning. She could have kept hoping that there are going to be all these beautiful roles for older women someday. But instead, instead of waiting for the system to shift and change, instead she trusted her desire and built what didn't exist. She didn't fight the system. She stopped waiting for it. And in that she created a new system. She created a billion-dollar production company where she told stories about women and where she created possibilities for herself and other women. This is a powerful legacy. She chose creation over permission. She wasn't waiting any longer. She gave herself permission to create what she wanted and needed. This is powerful.
All right, let me give you one last example and I want you to really let yourself lean into this and notice what is possible if you stopped waiting for permission and gave yourself that permission.
Last but not least, Taylor Swift. I think some people love her, some people don't. Most people I know love her, but let me talk about her and how public self-trust under pressure was such a big thing for her. Taylor Swift became one of the most successful artists in the world and she didn't own her own work. The industry told her this was normal. You don't own your own music, right? But she disagreed, so she re-recorded her entire catalog.
Again, she didn't wait to get all of her masters back. Of course, last year, I think she got all of her masters back. In fact, I know she did. She did a big celebration about it because she was also tenacious in getting it back. She was going to go after that. But at the same time, she wasn't waiting for permission to get it back. She was like, I'm going to re-record this entire catalog. In some ways she devalued her masters because she recreated this, but then she owns this. So actually she was valuing herself. She faced criticism, mockery, public scrutiny. And what unsettled people wasn't her ambition, it was her refusal to doubt herself out loud.
Oh wow. I'm like, I didn't realize I'd be so emotional saying that, but like that's huge, right? That is, you know, having that unconflicted desire for something that you care so deeply about. That is so powerful and yet so many women ignore that voice. And yet so many women allow that external voice to be so loud in their heads that they shrink themselves down. And this is why this work and this podcast is so important to me because it doesn't need to be this way. And we have so many examples and I believe we're going to have so many more examples as we see more empowered, self-trusting women that are on their own self-empowered leadership journey take up more and more space. And this will become the norm.
But what would be possible for you if you refused to doubt yourself out loud? If you refused to be someone who didn't, you know, entertain their negative thoughts about themselves, right? Who would you be if you gave yourself permission to fully and audaciously go after what you want and desire, even under pressure? Because pressure is coming. These systems, the systems that we're in, are not used to this.
So I shared all of those because it's different eras, different personalities, different industries, different strategies, but the same through line. They stopped negotiating their authority. And when women do that quietly or boldly, systems collapse. They evolve. You choose to step into your power instead of waiting for that power to be given to you. The cost of saying no to things that you desire that you care about, the long-term costs are numbness. It is that dampening of aliveness and creativity.
And it is this slow burn, right, that women don't feel right away, but over time, they'll be like, wow, I talked to so many women. They're like, it's been five years and I realized how disconnected I am to myself. They actually don't say those words, right? It's something more like, I feel lost. I don't know why I'm doing all of these things. I don't understand why my life is the way it is, why I make these decisions, right? That's what happens. That is the result and byproduct of dampening your desire. It is that disconnection from what truly matters to you.
So I'm not here to convince you. I'm not here to tell you the truth, right? The women who advance in leadership, in life, in impact, are the women who decide to trust themselves. They stop outsourcing authority to safety. They stop waiting to be chosen. They stop treating desire like a liability. They hold it as sacred. So, you're not waiting for desire to get louder. It's waiting for you to decide. Your authority is already there. Your power is already there. Your permission is already there. And when you decide to step into it, power doesn't fall apart. It reorganizes. It evolves. That's not rebellion. That's leadership.
And that's what I want to invite you into as you question for yourself, what if I gave myself permission? What if I stopped waiting for permission to feel a certain way? What if I just decided that I'm worth it? That my desire is that important. All right. This was a much more emotional episode than I thought it would be, but I want you to take it home to yourself. I want you to take it seriously. I want you to give yourself permission to see what's possible in your life when you give yourself more and more permission and trust yourself deeply.
All right. I will see you next time. Over and out. Have a beautiful week ahead and go do beautiful things with your desires.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's episode. I wanted to do this special episode on what happens when women stop asking for permission and why it's so powerful, and also why oftentimes we are always waiting for permission so that you understand yourself and so that you can interrupt yourself. If you are a people pleaser, if you notice yourself always asking for permission, especially at work or at home, I want you to really listen to this episode. It is short and punchy, but it is full of things that will help you change your life forever. And if you have people in your life that could use it, share it. Text it to them, let them know they matter to you, let them know what this episode means to you.
All right, let's start from the beginning. I talk to hundreds of high-achieving women all the time. They're brilliant, capable, and respected. And that pattern is always the same. They don't lack ambition. They don't lack desire. They lack permission. This is why I'm doing this whole episode on permission, right? They lack permission to trust what they already know. They've been taught to wait until desire is logical, safe, responsible, approved, backed by evidence, co-signed by everyone else. And the moment they stop waiting, the room changes, not because they got louder, but because they got clearer.
So I want you to hear this and notice yourself, where in your life are you waiting for permission? Are you waiting for yourself to feel less guilty? Where are you waiting for somebody to give you permission to move forward, to do that thing, to invest in yourself, to go after your dreams? Where are you waiting for external approval to give yourself permission?
Here's the truth that no one says out loud. Desire-led women are disruptive, not because they're aggressive, not because they're unreasonable, but because they're self-authorizing. A woman who truly trusts herself stops asking, is this allowed? Will this upset someone? Do I have enough proof yet? And systems built on women adapting feel that shift immediately, not as rebellion, but as reorganization.
I did a whole episode on how desire is a decision, and this is continuing in this episode and why giving yourself permission to follow your desire is so powerful. Here's the reframe that changes everything. Desire isn't a feeling, it is a decision. The women who change their lives aren't less afraid. They don't have more certainty. They don't magically feel ready. They decide to believe themselves. And they stop treating their desire as optional, and they start treating it as sacred. And once you do that, you stop asking for permission to want more. You stop waiting for somebody to come rescue you.
Why desire feels threatening? This isn't about men being threatened. It's about systems being unfamiliar with women who no longer manage everyone else's comfort. Unconflicted female desire exposes something important: how much power relies on women staying adaptable, agreeable, flexible, quietly accommodating. That's not an accusation. That's literacy. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. I want you to just take a pause and notice the women in your life, the women at work, the women in your family, how they are the glue to everything, how they get everything to work perfectly, how they manage people's emotions in order to get stuff done.
And I want you to be able to see it neutrally, right? How women are adapting, how they are able to get stuff done. This is a big reason why systems are the way they are. There is comfort in a woman doing a lot of things and filling in the gaps and the glue to things, right? As women, we oftentimes are so focused on getting things to work that we forget ourselves.
And I want to give you some examples of history and some modern-day examples to really show you what is possible when you start giving yourself permission and when you stop waiting for other people to give you permission. I'm going to give you lots of different examples, again, to really underline this point. I told you this episode was going to be short and punchy, but it is going to be powerful because these examples, I want them to activate you and I want you to see what's possible for yourself.
So, we're going to start with Elizabeth I, self-trust as sovereignty. Elizabeth ruled England in the 1500s, a time when a woman's authority was expected to pass through a man. Marriage wasn't romantic. It was a power transfer. She was expected to marry to rule through someone else. And she said no, not because she rejected partnership, but because she knew giving her authority away would cost her sovereignty. That wasn't rebellion. That was self-trust. And when she trusted herself over tradition, an entire nation reorganized around her authority. There's a reason during her reign it was called the golden era. She was a phenomenal leader and she said no to the status quo, and she gave herself permission to lead the way she trusted herself to lead, the way she knew was powerful for her.
I'll give you another example. This is more quiet conviction, right? Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is where she led with her own authority, and it doesn't need to be loud. This is what I want to open up for you as you give yourself permission to show up more and more activated and engaged. It doesn't need to look a certain way. Before she was the Supreme Court Justice, Ruth was told again and again there was no place for her. She didn't perform outrage. She didn't rush visibility. She trusted a quiet, steady desire that fairness belongs in the law, even if it took decades. She was dedicated and committed to this desire, to what she knew in her bones to be true.
Her power came from consistency, from patience, from believing her work mattered, and even when progress was invisible. Desire doesn't have to land loudly to be absolute. Desire requires dedication. Desire requires decision after decision. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg did that, right? She did that in her life. And that's why she created such a powerful legacy for herself and others.
All right, I'm going to give you a more modern-day example of this again. These are real examples to just see what is possible. We have real examples, but oftentimes we are too focused on the dangers, the fears, the reasons why we can't versus what is actually possible. And what do I have examples of? This is really about flooding your life with people, women who are giving themselves permission, who are going after their desire in a tenacious way, who are creating possibilities for themselves that seemed impossible to so many others.
Okay, Reese Witherspoon, choosing creation over permission. So for those of you who don't know Reese Witherspoon, she's an actress. She's been acting at a very young age. And Reese realized something early in her career. Complex female stories weren't being told, not because women didn't have them, but because the industry didn't value them. She could have waited. She could have waited for the industry to change. She could have waited for somebody else to show up, right? Oftentimes, women that I talk to, they're like, I want more women on the board because then I could speak up, right? They're waiting for permission from someone else, from another authority, from other folks that are going to give them safety, right?
And Reese could have done that. She kept auditioning. She could have kept hoping that there are going to be all these beautiful roles for older women someday. But instead, instead of waiting for the system to shift and change, instead she trusted her desire and built what didn't exist. She didn't fight the system. She stopped waiting for it. And in that she created a new system. She created a billion-dollar production company where she told stories about women and where she created possibilities for herself and other women. This is a powerful legacy. She chose creation over permission. She wasn't waiting any longer. She gave herself permission to create what she wanted and needed. This is powerful.
All right, let me give you one last example and I want you to really let yourself lean into this and notice what is possible if you stopped waiting for permission and gave yourself that permission.
Last but not least, Taylor Swift. I think some people love her, some people don't. Most people I know love her, but let me talk about her and how public self-trust under pressure was such a big thing for her. Taylor Swift became one of the most successful artists in the world and she didn't own her own work. The industry told her this was normal. You don't own your own music, right? But she disagreed, so she re-recorded her entire catalog.
Again, she didn't wait to get all of her masters back. Of course, last year, I think she got all of her masters back. In fact, I know she did. She did a big celebration about it because she was also tenacious in getting it back. She was going to go after that. But at the same time, she wasn't waiting for permission to get it back. She was like, I'm going to re-record this entire catalog. In some ways she devalued her masters because she recreated this, but then she owns this. So actually she was valuing herself. She faced criticism, mockery, public scrutiny. And what unsettled people wasn't her ambition, it was her refusal to doubt herself out loud.
Oh wow. I'm like, I didn't realize I'd be so emotional saying that, but like that's huge, right? That is, you know, having that unconflicted desire for something that you care so deeply about. That is so powerful and yet so many women ignore that voice. And yet so many women allow that external voice to be so loud in their heads that they shrink themselves down. And this is why this work and this podcast is so important to me because it doesn't need to be this way. And we have so many examples and I believe we're going to have so many more examples as we see more empowered, self-trusting women that are on their own self-empowered leadership journey take up more and more space. And this will become the norm.
But what would be possible for you if you refused to doubt yourself out loud? If you refused to be someone who didn't, you know, entertain their negative thoughts about themselves, right? Who would you be if you gave yourself permission to fully and audaciously go after what you want and desire, even under pressure? Because pressure is coming. These systems, the systems that we're in, are not used to this.
So I shared all of those because it's different eras, different personalities, different industries, different strategies, but the same through line. They stopped negotiating their authority. And when women do that quietly or boldly, systems collapse. They evolve. You choose to step into your power instead of waiting for that power to be given to you. The cost of saying no to things that you desire that you care about, the long-term costs are numbness. It is that dampening of aliveness and creativity.
And it is this slow burn, right, that women don't feel right away, but over time, they'll be like, wow, I talked to so many women. They're like, it's been five years and I realized how disconnected I am to myself. They actually don't say those words, right? It's something more like, I feel lost. I don't know why I'm doing all of these things. I don't understand why my life is the way it is, why I make these decisions, right? That's what happens. That is the result and byproduct of dampening your desire. It is that disconnection from what truly matters to you.
So I'm not here to convince you. I'm not here to tell you the truth, right? The women who advance in leadership, in life, in impact, are the women who decide to trust themselves. They stop outsourcing authority to safety. They stop waiting to be chosen. They stop treating desire like a liability. They hold it as sacred. So, you're not waiting for desire to get louder. It's waiting for you to decide. Your authority is already there. Your power is already there. Your permission is already there. And when you decide to step into it, power doesn't fall apart. It reorganizes. It evolves. That's not rebellion. That's leadership.
And that's what I want to invite you into as you question for yourself, what if I gave myself permission? What if I stopped waiting for permission to feel a certain way? What if I just decided that I'm worth it? That my desire is that important. All right. This was a much more emotional episode than I thought it would be, but I want you to take it home to yourself. I want you to take it seriously. I want you to give yourself permission to see what's possible in your life when you give yourself more and more permission and trust yourself deeply.
All right. I will see you next time. Over and out. Have a beautiful week ahead and go do beautiful things with your desires.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Enjoy the Show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, RSS, or wherever you listen to podcasts!
