People-pleasing starts as a survival reflex in childhood, when saying no meant losing love or safety. The speaker uses a three-brain model and dog-training anecdotes to show how fear-based yeses create hidden resentment, then teaches REWIRE, a six-step method to interrupt the habit by tying new responses to existing triggers.
Chapters
I used to be so good at saying yes that I forgot I had a no. I don't mean I was indecisive. I mean I was so trained to accommodate, to sense what the room needed, to make sure no one was uncomfortable, that by the time I was in my 30s, I genuinely couldn't tell the difference between what I wanted and what I thought was expected of me. And the part that's worst is I called it kindness and compassion. I told myself, I just care about people. Why not avoid conflict when not necessary, right? I just wanted everyone to be okay. All of that was true, but underneath it, there was something I wasn't saying. I was afraid. Not realizing, or even hiding from myself, that I was afraid of what happened when I said no. Afraid of disappointing someone. Afraid of the silence after a boundary. Afraid that without the yes, I wasn't worth keeping around. And today I'm gonna show you how that works, where it comes from, why insight alone never fixes it, and what actually does. See, people pleasing is not a personality type. It's a survival reflex installed before the age of 10 in most people. The gut brain has learned yes equals safe and no means danger. That program still runs. You're just trying to avoid conflict and you call it being nice. Maybe you came from a really noisy and volatile home. Maybe You came from an extremely quiet home. All of it, regardless of your childhood situations, is where it came from. It controlled you from the 3 brains. Your head brain is in charge of logic. It's what we think controls our life, the decisions that we make. And what happens is your head brain try to override it with logic. Then we have our heart brain, right? Our head brain and then our heart brain. Our heart brain, it keeps craving connection, approval. It's where love comes from. It's where connection comes from. It's where compassion comes from. But it's also the fear of disconnection, the fear of not belonging. That's where that comes from. It's how do you appease others so you can stay part of your tribe. Then lastly, besides the heart, then we have our gut brain, right? Our gut brain, it fires off before the head even knows there was a choice. And where it comes from is a moment, usually early, when saying no cost you something real— love, safety, approval. The gut brain filled itself with all these different stories so that it automatically reacts to keep your safety because your gut and your heart brain are communicating that in order for me to belong, be— for me to have value, I need to cooperate with everyone. So no is not an option. Yes is what's safe. And the 3 fears being a pleaser protects is rejection, conflict, the feeling of being too much. The problem isn't the protection, the problem is running it in rooms that were never actually dangerous. So you're protecting yourself from something that's not even there. When I ran the Elite K9 Academy dog training facility, dogs didn't respond to commands. They responded to the handler's internal state seconds before the command was ever given. See, our bodies send transmissions of fear, stability, anxiousness, safety, and the dogs are monitoring them all the time. So when you see a dog go apeshit crazy at another person or another dog Sometimes it's reading the other dog, but it's also reading the handler. So when the handler is getting anxious, so when an approaching dog or approaching human is coming and the handler is getting anxious, the dog gets anxious too because it thinks that the handler, the owner, the person walking the dog is getting nervous because of the approaching dog, when in reality the owner was being anxious that my dog is gonna lunge at the person that's coming. Toward me. And then what typically happens is the owner, the parent, the handler's anxiousness gets transferred to the dog through the leash. The dog then lunges, and once he lunges, the handler ends up grabbing the dog and trying to calm it down by petting it, saying, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay." The problem is the dog doesn't understand the English language. It just understands that you're petting them. And so that this is a good thing. And so the next time the dog lunges or another dog approaches, this dog is gonna lunge again. And the more he does it, the more it's gonna happen. So what happens is the human and the dog, they're communicating through their nervous system, through the transmissions that the handler is sending to the dog. It's syncing of the nervous system is what dogs do, what other animals do, because they don't have the human language. Isn't that very interesting? See, I didn't realize the 3, 4 years of, of time that we spent training almost 1,000 dogs and being one of 3 licensed training facilities in the state of Texas for police and guard dogs, that I would learn that dogs are so much more intuitive than humans. That humans reflect all this energy that we never really stop to think about and notice. See, it's the same as when, you know, a couple's been fighting and you walk into a restaurant and you see two people and they're just radiating and transmitting this energy where you can just feel it in the room, that you know that something's wrong in this room. And you're— because our bodies, we send these transmissions, these vibrations through the air, and every animal in the room knows what's happening, that something's off. Think of a time you felt that. How about a time where you're sitting there and you notice, you feel like somebody's watching you, and then you turn around and you look and there really is somebody watching you? See, that's the same thing. That's the transmission. That we send out. Because we need to sync our vibrations and become attuned with each other. And so when people do people pleasing, the people you say yes to, they're reading your transmissions too. They can feel the tightness, the override, the fine that doesn't mean fine. And when you say yes from fear, even if the words sound kind, the people closest to you They can feel it. They can feel the resentment that builds. They can feel the performance. They just don't always name it. And your yes from fear teaches people that you're available without limits. Your yes from choices teaches them who you actually are. I want to do something with you right now. Not explain it. Do it. Alright, now think of someone in your life who asks things of you. Could be a partner, a boss, a parent, a friend. Think about that person. Now imagine them asking you for something, something you'd normally say yes to. Something where your first gut response is actually no. Think about that. Now feel that in your body right now. Where did it go? Or where did it go tight? Did it go tight in your chest, in your stomach, in your jaws, in in your shoulder? Where did it go tight when you thought about this thing you said yes to something you wanted to say no about? See that tightening? That is your no. Your body said it before your brain had a chance to override it. That signal's been there every single time. You've just been trained to ignore it. So I've got this great framework we teach here at The Five Second Reflex. It's really easy to remember. It's REWIRE whatever reflex is. In this case, you can say yes too quickly. So first, rewire. What you need to do is recognize or notice The tightening before the yes. That's the trigger. Now name it out loud internally. There it is. And then we engage instead of overriding it. Stay with it for 3 seconds. Just let it be there without acting on the old program. Then we witness. We witness or notice what the tightening is protecting. Is it rejection? Conflict? The old classroom where no wasn't safe? Then interrupted. This is where the pause lives. Physically just pause and breathe and buy time. Let me come back to you on that. And then you reflect. What would the answer be if you weren't afraid? Not the perfect answer. The honest one. And lastly, you want to encode. Practice the sequence deliberately. Not in the hardest conversation first. Practice on small low-stakes moments. Build the rep. And that is The REWIRE Method. Immediate change. Drop REWIRE in the comments and we'll send you a copy of the REWIRE Method framework PDF to you for free. My gift to you. Then of course, to make the change stick, we use the stacking principle. Attach the body check to an existing trigger. Every time someone asks you for something, Put one hand on your chest internally before you answer. Stack it. 90 days, new reflex completely locked in. And here's what I want you to take away: people pleasing isn't who you are, it's what you were trained to do, and when you were too young to know it was happening. You've been running that program for decades. You're not going to untrain it in an afternoon, but you can start. See, this Saturday at 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, we're working with this live in the Reset Room, free at our Saturday Reset. 30 minutes, not a lecture, A Reset. Link is in the description. The yes that costs you something every time isn't generosity. It's a habit that learned to call itself kindness. And you're allowed to change it. The yes that costs you something every time isn't generosity. It's a habit that learned to call itself kindness. And you're allowed to change it.
