Permissionless Living: What Solo Travel Taught Me About Creating a Life on My Own Terms
I spent three years asking friends if they wanted to come to WrestleMania with me. Three years of “maybe next time,” “that sounds expensive,” and “why would you even want to go to that?” Three years of adjusting my dream to fit other people’s schedules, other people’s budgets, other people’s ideas of what a worthwhile experience looked like. And then one day in 2014, I stopped asking. I booked the flight, packed my bag, and went alone, and that trip didn’t just take me to WrestleMania; it completely rewired how I thought about my own life. That’s when I began to understand what I now call Permissionless Living.
*There is a pretty good chance that this post contains affiliate links. By clicking one of them, we may receive a small commission (for which we are deeply grateful) at no extra cost to you. See our Privacy Policy for complete details.
Resources & Recommendations
- WayAway* – Book your flight right now!
- Booking.com* – Yes! Traveling is still part of my life, so you´ll find the best accommodations here and make your travel dreams come true!
- GetYourGuide* – The same goes for this one! Find exclusive and unique sightseeing tours worldwide and make it your dream vacation!
- American Express* – Your path to freedom, airport lounges, flight miles, and more benefits!
Pin Now
What Is Permissionless Living?
Permissionless Living is the practice of making choices based on what you actually want, rather than what other people have approved, validated, or decided is reasonable for you. It sounds simple, but most of us have been quietly trained out of it since childhood, taught that wanting too much is selfish, that big dreams need to be justified, that the right move is always the safe, socially acceptable one.
The invisible rules sound like this: “You can’t just do that.” “That’s not realistic.” “Who do you think you are?” “What will people think?”
Solo travel is one of the most powerful ways I know to start dismantling those rules, not because you have to travel alone to live freely, but because it puts you in a situation where the only person you have to answer to is yourself. And for a lot of women, that’s the first time they’ve ever really experienced that.
Solo Travel Is Permissionless Living in Motion
When you travel with other people, you’re constantly in a low-level negotiation, which hotel, which restaurant, how long to stay somewhere, whether the upgrade is “worth it,” whether your idea of a perfect day matches theirs. None of that is bad, but it means you’re rarely just asking yourself what you actually want and then answering honestly.
Solo travel strips that away. The question becomes just: what do I want today? And then you get to go do it.
I’ve traveled to Japan, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Dubai, Tokyo, Okinawa, and dozens of other places alone, and the most consistent thing I’ve noticed is that solo travel builds a muscle you can use everywhere else in life, the muscle of trusting your own preferences without needing someone else to cosign them.
Booking the Experience YOU Actually Want
One of the things I had to practice early on was giving myself permission to choose the experience I wanted, not the “responsible” one or the one that would be easiest to justify.
When I traveled to Penang, I stayed at Lexis Suites Penang*, which has a private pool and a steam room on my balcony overlooking the ocean. Visiting three Disneylands in a row, Tokyo*, Shanghai*, and Hong Kong*, and feeling like a child again every single time. Or, a club-level executive suite with a view of Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong*, including afternoon tea and a cocktail hour, the full experience. And I remember sitting in the lounge at sunset and thinking, “I’m allowed to create beautiful memories for myself.” Not because someone else was watching. Not because I needed to prove anything. Just because I wanted that experience, and I could make it happen.
That shift, from “can I justify this?” to “I want this and that’s enough”, is the whole foundation of Permissionless Living. And it shows up in travel decisions the same way it shows up in life decisions: the career pivot, the business idea, the investment in yourself that nobody in your circle quite understands.
No Guilt, No FOMO, No Negotiation
Three days at Hong Kong Disneyland* because I genuinely love it? Done. A weekend in Okinawa* because something just said: “let’s go”? Booked. WrestleMania in Las Vegas*? Across the Pacific, alone, no apology required.
The old version of me would have asked: ” Is this practical? The permissionless version asks, “Would this create an experience I’d remember for the rest of my life?” That’s a completely different filter, and it leads to a completely different life.
You don’t have to wait for everyone’s schedules to align or convince anyone that your version of a perfect trip makes sense. You can just go, and figure out as you go that you’re more capable than you thought, more resourceful than you gave yourself credit for, and more deserving of the experiences you’ve been quietly putting off.
Your Time Becomes Yours Again
One of the most underrated aspects of solo travel is how it changes your relationship with time. When you’re not working around someone else’s vacation days or energy levels, you can extend the trip, change the plan last minute, stay somewhere longer because it feels right, or pivot entirely when something better comes up.
It’s a small thing, but it retrains your brain to stop treating your own desires as inconveniences to be scheduled around other people’s lives. Your calendar stops being a compromise document and starts being an actual reflection of what matters to you.
Solo Travel Builds Trust in Yourself
The biggest gift of traveling alone isn’t the places you see. It’s the evidence you collect about yourself. Every time you figure out a tricky transit connection in a foreign city, navigate a situation you weren’t expecting, make a decision on the fly, or simply sit alone at a beautiful restaurant and enjoy your own company, you’re proving something to yourself: I can handle this. I can trust my own judgment. I can create joy without waiting for the right conditions.
That evidence stacks up. And eventually, it becomes the foundation of a whole different way of moving through your life, not waiting for permission, not shrinking your desires to make them easier for others to understand, not putting your dreams on hold until everyone else is ready.
Pin For Later
From Solo Travel to Freedom Architecture
Permissionless Living isn’t just a travel philosophy. It’s a life design approach, and solo travel was the first place I practiced it in a way that actually stuck.
Once I stopped asking permission to book a trip, I started noticing all the other places I’d been asking permission without realizing it. The career moves I’d been hesitating over. The business ideas I’d talked myself out of. I’d scaled back the income goals because they felt “unrealistic.” The version of my life I’d been treating as too much to actually want.
This is what I now help women build: their Freedom Architecture. A life designed around what they actually want, with the practical structure to support it, whether that means solo travel, leaving a corporate job, building a business, or all of the above.
If you’re in that place right now where you know there’s a version of your life you’re not living yet, where you’re tired of the invisible rules but not sure how to start dismantling them, my Life Design Guide is a good first step. It walks you through the exact questions I use with myself and my clients to get clear on what you actually want, what’s been holding you back, and how to start building a life that actually fits you.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to start. You just need to decide that what you want matters.
