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APX-VI-0006

“I've been waiting for permission to pursue what I actually want.”

No one is coming with a permission slip. The waiting is the trap. Authors do not ask the story to write itself, they pick up the pen and begin. What you're waiting for is not approval. It's courage.

Your Practice

Name exactly what you've been waiting for permission to do. Then ask: whose permission, specifically? Write down the real reason you haven't started. Then take the smallest possible first step today, not next week, today.

The Architects

“It's not enough to just live in the world as it is, to take what you're given and follow the things that adults told you to do and that society tells you to do.”

Aaron Swartz, Interview footage in the documentary The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)