Giving Ourselves Permission

9th November 2019

Last week during an Evening Talk, an attendee asked a very interesting question. She asked, “I am thinking of changing vets but what is the etiquette involved in doing so?” Her concern was the complexity involved in changing vets and was concerned if in doing so, would she step on toes and be black listed from local vets or something like that.

I have always found it bewildering how pet owners would consider changing vets to be complicated. Some are concerned that the medical history will not be passed. Some thought that once you have registered your pet with a vet, it will be permanent. Others have thought it to a complicated process. A few was even concerned that they did not have a choice to change vets.

The answer could not been further from the truth. I am going to let you in a little secret… It is ridiculously easy to change vets. It is so simple that you need not even do anything but just register with the new vet of your choice. It really is that easy. Your new vets will request your pet’s clinical history from your vets and that is as complicated as it gets (not at all!).

I suppose a bigger question for me if why do pet owners feel it iscomplicated to start off with. I feel it could be that in the current society, there is a lot of fear based systems that may have conditioned us to live ‘safely’, not rock the boat and change too much. For example, traffic lights indicate to us when to cross the road and when to wait. It is always interesting to watch someone waiting for the green man to come on at 2am in the morning when there have been no cars driving past for the past hour.

I feel, more than ever, we have to learn how to give ourselves more permission than before to try new things. To allow our thoughts be shaped by nature and our surroundings. We should not be fearful of asking questions, trying new activities, shifting to a different routine and challenging ourselves to think different.

There was a time in our lives when we thought all was possible. When we were children, we allowed our imaginations to run wild, transforming a box into a car and multiple boxes into a castle. We played make believe and if adults told us something cannot be done, we would certainly find a way to prove that it could. As we grew older, society gave us rules to follow, our teachers taught us structure and our sense of wonder grew less and less. We started to develop beliefs and thoughts that govern the way we perceive events and how the world worked.

We have to remind ourselves of the inner child in us sometimes. It is so important. Our mental models are not so much views and beliefs that we hold tightly as they are views and beliefs that tightly hold us. We need to give ourselves permission to be great, to be the best version of ourselves.

Live your life with no fear. Imagine what you would accomplish…

Back to Blog