Review of "The Permission Mission" by Dr. Cindy McGovern

​Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

"Have you turned down the opportunity to give a presentation even though you know the topic like the back of your hand? To take a relationship to the next level, even though it’s going really well? To apply for a promotion because it’s possible you won’t get it? To travel with a friend to a country you’ve never been to because you’re afraid? Did you look back with regret? Can you imagine how your life might be better or at least different if you had said 'yes' to any of those opportunities?"

That excerpt perfectly illustrates the premise of this book: what if you finally gave yourself permission and said 'yes' to the things you've been keeping yourself from?

The Permission Mission by Dr. Cindy McGovern is a motivational self-help book built around one central idea: too many people, especially women, live by “rules” and voices they absorbed from parents, teachers, culture, and past criticism instead of trusting their own judgment. McGovern calls those inherited voices “backup singers,” and her goal is to help readers stop waiting for outside approval, reclaim their own voice, and step into the “spotlight” of their own lives. The whole book is organized around a G.R.I.T. framework: give yourself permission, realize your desire must become stronger than your fear, in-power yourself, and take a step forward.

The first half of the book explains where that hesitancy comes from. McGovern opens with personal examples of staying quiet, over-accommodating others, and following “good girl” expectations, then argues that many of the rules we obey are not laws at all, but social expectations we keep enforcing on ourselves. She connects that to childhood conditioning, imposter syndrome, gender stereotypes, perfectionism, and negative self-talk. Her repeated message is that the reader’s life should not be narrated by old voices from the past, and that worth is not something earned from others but something already possessed.

In the second half, McGovern pushes readers to identify which “backup singers” still control them, trust their intuition more, treat grit as the loudest voice in the room, and practice concrete forms of self-authorization: asking for help, walking away from toxic situations, saying no, negotiating, acting instead of asking, refusing to overexplain private choices, speaking up, and taking incremental risks. The chapters are short and coaching-oriented, and many end with exercises like journaling, naming the old voices, rewriting outdated rules, practicing “no,” and choosing one immediate action step.

If you really needed a kick in the butt, a jolt of motivation, and permission to chase that thing you know you've been holding back on, then this book might be for you! That's especially true if you're female. This book has a very heavy lean in that direction.

This book actually has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as Unapologetic Wealth by Marcia Dawood. They essentially propogate the same message and approach them in very similar ways: that women have been held back and held down by patriarchal society, culture, and gender expectations, and that they have an opportunity to be successful if they could only be convinced and commit to it. McGovern approached the issue as women needing to give themselves permission to be successful. Dawood appraoched the issue as women needing to be unapologetic about seeking success.

The problem that kept arising in our minds while reading both The Permission Mission and Unapologetic Wealth is: what about the dudes? What about men?

Is everything all sunshine and rainbows for men? Men don't have struggles and problems and obstacles too, especially now that affirmative action and other policies and initiatives exist to help women?

There's a statement in here about how women take things harder than men—how they take failure harder than men. Really? Cause men have significantly higher suicide rates than women. Men account for nearly 80% of suicides. You're telling us that women take things harder than men? That men are just these unshakable pillars of advantage and privilege? That bothers us. It's actually wrong. It's at least not nearly as true now as it was decades ago.

That is one of the recurring weaknesses of this book. At times, it frames men as if they are standing on some golden escalator while women alone are trudging uphill barefoot through broken glass. That is just too neat, too simple, and too selective for us. Men absolutely deal with social conditioning, pressure, insecurity, rejection, failure, loneliness, and silence too. In many cases, they are taught not to cry, not to complain, not to ask for help, and not to admit weakness, which can be catastrophic in its own way. You think men don't struggle with asking for help? Men are told to suck it up. Boys are told from a young age that crying is for girls. They are often accused of being pussies, wusses, and cowards whenever they show apprehension toward doing anything. Women are not. And who is required to register for the draft? Who is more often to be deployed to war when the call goes out? It's men.

That does not mean McGovern is wrong about everything. Not even close. She is clearly speaking to a female audience and to patterns that many women really do experience. Fine. Fair enough.

One lingering weakness we noticed about this book is how redundant and repeptitive it often sounds. It often reads like a rehashing of what we already previously read. McGovern has a strong core message, but she returns to that same well so many times that it occasionally feels like she is remixing the same song rather than writing a new one. The G.R.I.T. formula gets repeated almost like a slogan, the language of “permission,” “backup singers,” and stepping into the “spotlight” keeps circling back, and even the transition from the end of Chapter 6 into Part Two basically restates the same motivational framework all over again. By that point, we already got it: trust yourself, mute the old voices, stop waiting for approval, and take the step forward.

Anyway, there's some GREAT content in this book. We loved the examples the author provides about Dove, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Diana, Stevie Nicks, and others, because those examples help keep the book from becoming too abstract or preachy. The Dove “beautiful” versus “average” doorway example is one of the stronger ones because it is so simple and so revealing. It gets right at the heart of the book’s argument that so many people, especially women, have internalized a smaller, sadder view of themselves and are still living by it.

The same goes for the stories about Elizabeth Taylor and Princess Diana feeling pressured into marriages that were not truly their own choices. Those examples work because they are not just about fame, glamour, or celebrity gossip. They reinforce the larger point that even women the whole world viewed as iconic, beautiful, and powerful could still be steered, boxed in, and pushed by expectations from family, institutions, and society. That is when McGovern is at her best, when she stops talking in generalities and gives us recognizable lives and choices that embody the message.

Our favorite example of this book is how the author is able to incorporate the words of the Cheshire Cat from from Alice in Wonderland to reinforce a truth that hits at the very center of McGovern’s message.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where . . .” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“. . . so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”


In other words, if you do not know where you want to go, then almost any road will do. That is such a smart choice because it ties perfectly into the book’s constant emphasis on intention, voice, and direction. You cannot give yourself permission to pursue your life if you have never really stopped to define what you want that life to look like in the first place. In that sense, McGovern is not just urging readers to be bolder. She is urging them to be clearer. Clearer about their goals, clearer about their values, and clearer about which voices deserve to guide them and which ones need to be politely escorted off the stage. That spoke to us: having a goal, a vision, and knowing what you're trying to accomplish makes getting there a lot easier.

Check it out on Amazon!