Are you agreeing to people just to please them? Are you doing things that you don’t really want to do, but you have trouble saying no?
You’re living out someone else’s life or doing things that they like just to what? For them to like you or to be happy with you.
Now I want to tell you a story. It’s about a little boy, and this little boy was an amazing drawer. He loved to draw, obsessed, and he had this little red pen and this black binder with all these sheets of paper of his drawings. There’d be animals. There’d be humans, there would be landscapes. He loved it all. And he lay in bed and he’d just be eyes close and he’d just be dreaming about his future. About having this art studio and have the light shining in and have all these artwork hanging up. He’d be painting, he’d be drawing and have these exhibitions that people plopped to and really appreciated the art that was he doing and he loved it.
However, his parents had a different idea about life for him. His parents wanted him to become a doctor. And every time the doorbell would ring for a family gathering, the little boy would come downstairs and they’d all be great and they’d be sitting around and now talk about how proud they’re going to be of him becoming doctor. How good his grades have been, and congratulating him and talking about his future as a doctor. How much joy and this is going to bring to other people’s lives by healing them, how much money he’s going to have, how proud the family’s going to be for him. So, the boy would sit there and smiling and nodding and going, “Oh yes, yes.”
But really in his head, all he can think about is his drawing. All he can think about is that future, that art studio. But when push came to shove, when it was time to … When he finished school and go to uni or college, he ended up studying to become a doctor, and they were gruelling years for this guy. He would sit in class, he’d go home, he’d study. He really did not enjoy it, but he got through it. He became a doctor and he really was hating it. He’d wake up every morning, not enjoying his life, having to go to work.
Then he’d go to family gatherings and he’d tell a different story, say, “How’s work going? How’s becoming a doctor?” “Oh, it’s wonderful. I love it. I love being a doctor. It’s amazing. It’s such a good job,” and he’d go on about all these amazing stories that he has been a doctor. But in reality, he was really depressed, not engaged, not living any kind of passion and not enjoying life.
Unfortunately, this is an all too common scenario. And whether it is working a job that you don’t like just to please your parents or to please your partner or it could just be pretending to like certain activities or discussion topics to get the other person to like you, or to be more popular. You’re really just projecting a fake version of yourself to have them like you, to have them to be included in the circle. To please them you’re projecting this fake person onto them, which is really just, I said it’s lying to them, and that’s really lying to yourself.
So how do we stop being a people pleaser? Well, there are five key things that you need to do.
And the first one is to have a better relationship with yourself. So we all need to have better relationships with ourselves. But what do I mean by this in this context? Well, you’re pleasing people, being a people pleaser means you’re not being your authentic self, right? You’re being this fake projected version to have people like you. So what you really want to try and do is to deep dive into you, right? What are your passions? What do you love to talk about? What do you like to do?
And when you do this, you can create and devise a plan that’s going to give you the ideal life that you want, the ideal version of yourself, what you love doing. And once you do that and you start walking that path, you will start naturally attracting the people that had the same interest issue, that will like you for who you are. That you can talk and have those discussions with that you love to talk about, right? That is you not having to please people. And then when you want to do things like help someone, you’re doing it because you truly want to help them, rather than getting them to like you.
Now on the flip side, if you’re looking at being someone that you’re truly not, right? Doing things like the doctor, maybe in a job because it’s what your partner likes or it’s what your family likes. Or saying yes to activities or talking about topics that you don’t really want to talk about because you want people to like you. You aren’t really aligned with what you really like. Well, you’re not going to be happy, certainly not as happy as you are if you’re just living your true, authentic self, your passions. I think we can all agree with that. So that’s the first thing that you need to do is really build on having a better relationship with yourself and living out your true passions.
Now the second key thing is confidence. Having self-confidence, confidence in yourself is believing in yourself. It’s being comfortable with being your true authentic self. So you can see why this is important because no longer you need to be trying to please everyone and anyone and just other people that aren’t.
It’s not serving. It’s not aligned to your authentic self. There’s no insecurity there. You’re confident about who you are and you will go after what is it that you want. You live who you want to be. And once you’re confident, you will start naturally attracting the right type of people into your life who believe in you, who support you for you, for who you are. You no longer need to be going out and being desperately trying to please people, right? Because you are confident. So it comes with the first key step of really understanding who you are and your passions. And from that, you start building confidence. Now if you want to know how to build confidence, check out this video here. I did a whole video on it. That’s going to give you the tactics of how to do it.
The third one is to know your values. So I would suggest to actually think about what do you stand for, right? So what are the things that you value? Is it family? Is it enjoyment? Is it loyalty? One of the values that you have in your life, these are the cornerstone to the decisions that you make. So it’s good to know what these are. It’s good to take the time to actually write these out and just do a sort of a brain dump of your values. And then really understand what they mean to you. And the deeper work you do, the more you focus on that, then when you’re in the situations when you’re trying to build this authentic self, this is kind of the backbone of the decisions that you make in key moments. Whether you say yes to someone or whether you say no to someone, you know that you’re doing things that are aligned to the values.
And why do we do that? Because they’re the things that are going to make you happy. They’re the things that will enable you to pick the right career or start the right business. Or as I said, say yes or no to someone. As a coach, when I’m coaching people when say that a lot of the time they’re in a job that they don’t like and they’re trying to figure out what it is that they love. One of the first things we do is go through their values, and we look at the values and how can we build and how can we design something around these values. And if you can do that and you can start that foundation of going out and living that authentic self, making the right decisions, making the right choices.
Now, number four is to have goals and to get organized. So how to stop being a people pleaser, having goals. So now that you can work out what your passions are, remember there’s the passion finder toolkit. I’ll tell you about that, how to get that in a second. Once you’ve figured all that out, then you can start setting goals that are aligned to your true authentic self, being in alignment to yourself and start scheduling. Start organizing your days, your week, that goes towards what you truly want, not what your parents want, not what your partner wants. Not saying yes to things when you really don’t want to do them. You’re purely just doing it to be liked.
None of that crap, right? You’re organized. You’ve got a map, a roadmap, a plan, a strategy of how to get to where you want to get to that’s aligned to yourself, that fires you up, that you’re passionate about. And then once you do that, you’ve got these goals. You then are in a position where you can say, “Yay or nay,” right? You can say yes because you truly want to help that person or because you truly want to do it, it’s aligned to the goals. Or you’ll say no when it’s not. You’re saying no because the activity or whatever it is that you’re agreeing to is not aligned to the goals and what you’ve got scheduled in. Okay? So having the goals and then scheduling and mapping it out is a crucial part of it as well.
All right, number five. The key thing to stop being a people pleaser is to set boundaries. So what I recommend you do is actually make a list of what you’re not willing to do. So now that you’ve done all these other key things, these steps, you should have a pretty good idea of what is not authentic and what is. What activities you’re doing that aren’t aligned to your true self. What are you saying yes to when you really don’t want to say. So it’s kind of like doing an audit and writing out the things that aren’t aligned to you anymore. And then set those boundaries. Actually write out, “I am not going to do this. I’m not going to agree to this. This is when I’m going to say yes, and this is what I’m going to say no to something.”
So establishing those boundaries on yourself and having rules in place will ensure that you are no longer pleasing people for the wrong reasons. You are no longer doing it for them to like you, right? Or for them to be happy for you. All right? You are not projecting that fake version of yourself anymore, because you’ve got these boundaries in place of what you’re willing to do, what you’re not willing to do, and what is authentically aligned to you.
All right, so now you know how to stop being a people pleaser. You’ve totally got this. I hope you can see now how important it is to be that true authentic self. Stop pleasing people for the wrong reasons, projecting that fakeness onto them, no more.