You Don't Need Anyone's Permission
What to do when your identity is tied to your career.
Last Chance to Apply for Pursuers of More!
Eight of the ten seats are spoken for - professionals who are excellent at what they do and quietly itching to do something more with it.
Here’s the strange part I keep noticing: nobody’s in crisis. They’re successful. The pull toward more rarely comes from things falling apart - it comes from things going well and still feeling like something’s missing.
If you’ve felt that and couldn’t quite name it, this room is being built for you.
There are two seats left. Apply here.
Last week, HBO premiered a documentary series about Burning Man, The Man Will Burn.
I’m not here to review it.
But watching the first episode got me thinking about the place itself - what it is, what it means, and what it actually does for the people who go.
I went for the first time in 2018.
My friend Mike had been on me for years at that point. He kept saying, “Jordan, this really is the place for you. You will love it.”
Now, Mike wasn’t off in his instinct. Say what you will about Burning Man - and plenty has been said - it is a place of wonder and awe, experimentation and art.
To put it succinctly (which is hard): it’s a temporary, fully functioning city that exists for one week in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Roads, addresses, a postal service, bars, cafes, a DMV, status, communities, cliques, trends - and a very long list of rules. A whole civilization, built to code, gone in a week.
And, like any city, it tends to attract a certain type of person.
The people I went with, the people I already knew going, and the people I met out there all had a striking similarity:
They were looking for a place where they could ditch their work identity and fully inhabit their “true” identity.
This is not what I expected to learn going to “The Burn” (that’s what those in the know call it).
In fact, I didn’t really expect to learn anything.
I expected to party for a week, get really dirty, get really tired - but also get inspired by the art and the music and the way of life out on the Playa.
And then there it was again - everyone I met, quietly leaving their work identity at the gate.
But what did that mean for me?
They were looking for a place where they could ditch their work identity and fully inhabit their “true” identity.
I walked away from that first Burn knowing something simple: you don’t need anyone’s permission to do your thing. You can just go and do it.
That’s hard for most of us. We spend our lives running someone else’s checklist - how we’re supposed to work, parent, create, live. The shoulds.
So what happens when you land somewhere with no expectations on you at all, beyond a few rules everyone agreed to just to keep the peace?
A lot, it turns out.
You get more creative. You dance how you want. You wear something absurd, or nothing at all. You take a new name - plenty do. You get to set down the whole identity you walked in with, because no one out there is asking you to keep carrying it.
But here’s the part people miss: it isn’t a vacation. You still have responsibilities out there - to your camp, to the people around you, to the work of keeping a city alive. You don’t get to drop those. You just get to meet them as whoever you actually are.
That’s the thing. Not freedom from your obligations - freedom inside them.
So why am I telling you all of this?
Because, despite what most folks believe, Burning Man is really no different than the rest of life. It isn’t the exception. It’s the mirror.
There is no list of shoulds dictating how you’re supposed to work, or parent, or create, or live. And wherever you think you’ve found one - well, maybe there’s a separate question worth asking: Where did this come from? And why am I still following it?
Does this mean you need to escape? No.
Does it mean you need to quit anything? No.
But it does mean you can start doing things your own way and see what unfolds - without waiting for anyone to say go.
For me, in 2018, the should I finally set down was that I should be anything other than my creative, entrepreneurial, risk-taking, and often rule-breaking self.
What’s one you could quietly test this week?
Jordan Nahmias is the founder of Unstuck Consulting, an executive coaching practice for lawyers and other professionals. A former entertainment law partner in Toronto, he helps high performers navigate burnout, career transition, and identity.
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