In this reflective monologue, the speaker shares how a lifelong habit of people‑pleasing—rooted in a childhood lesson to "not need" anything—led to hidden resentment (the Chinese concept wei qi) and a disconnect between outward performance and inner feeling. Using a detailed anecdote about organizing a 15‑person family trip, the speaker illustrates the invisible cost of constantly saying yes to accommodate others, which manifests as quiet resentment and a mismatch between spoken agreement and bodily resistance. The talk explains how this pattern extends into marriage, work, and parenting, noting that loved ones often sense the performer’s inauthenticity. A turning point is described through small, incremental practices: pausing before responding, asking clarifying questions, and allowing silence, which help differentiate genuine willingness from fear‑based compliance. The speaker emphasizes that the goal isn’t to become a chronic no‑sayer, but to cultivate the ability to say yes only when it truly aligns with one’s desire, thereby offering the “real version” of oneself to others. The monologue concludes with an invitation to a free 30‑minute “Saturday Reset” session to practice these boundary‑building skills.
Chapters
So when I was a kid, I didn't know exactly when it started. I learned that the way to keep the peace was to not need things. Not to not have them, to not need them. See, to make myself easy, to read a room before I walked into it, to know what was needed and provide it before anyone had to ask. And I got very good at it. So good that when someone finally asked me what I wanted, I didn't know how to answer not because I was uncertain, because I genuinely stopped asking. See, I remember a group of 15 of us, 4 families, were going on this trip. And if you've ever tried planning one of these things, you know how hard it is just planning for 2 people, let alone 15. That's 15 different opinions of what to do, what to eat, where to go, where to hang out. And before, I would try to accommodate everyone because I'm genuinely okay with doing anything, because the point of the trip for me was to be together, chill, have some time to hang out and learn more about what's happened with everybody over the course of the last year, whatever, however long it was that you guys been knowing each other and haven't been able to catch up. And so these trips are fun because you get to meet everybody. And I tried to say yes to everything, but you know what, with 15 people, there's always somebody wants to do something that the other one says is shit. Or, you know, one person wants to do something and, and the other one is thinking, oh, there's not enough time. Or one wants to rest longer, the other one wants to use every second of the day from 5 AM to 10 PM, while some people just want to chill, hang out, and chit-chat and not have to see everything wherever you go. And there's an invisible cost in doing all this and trying to prep trips like this and being the one to organize and just kind of fall and try to accommodate everyone. See, that invisible cost In Chinese, it's called wei qi. You know, there isn't an exact English word for this, but it's similar to resentment that builds quietly. The way you smile at someone even if you're furious because you feel underappreciated, used, or wrong in a way. You know, I spent all this effort planning this trip, and because there was something that didn't go the way you thought it should go, they have something to say, and both sides end up feeling this strange amount of resentment, or wei chu. You know, I wrote a check for this trip and we all spent this money, but I didn't get to do the thing that I wanted to do, right? And so I'm sure a lot of us have ran into this. Fortunately, I've learned that to just stop planning and just go and go with the flow, and hopefully somebody just picks something. And, you know, reality is, if we're open-minded and we just enjoy what's going to happen, um, this is not people pleasing. This is just being excited and genuinely curious about what life can bring to us. And so a lot of people feel this wei chi, that they've given so much and the other person doesn't realize it. And then maybe the other person might even complain about it, how you didn't do something right. That's way true. Then it costs you even more because the way you say, "I'm fine," when you're not. This is a transmission problem. You say yes with your mouth, but your body says no. And people know, you know, you see a change in somebody's face, or you can feel the energy when all of a sudden this happy occasion, this time where everybody's supposed to be having a great time, a transmission gets sent out that there's something off. And so rather than try to people-please, what we can do is let people know what we're thinking. See, what I eventually understood was saying no didn't make me unlovable. That was a conclusion a child made in a specific room. That conclusion traveled everywhere into your marriage, your business, your friendships, all uninvited because that's what you noticed. Because depends on your family structure, your family of origin, if anything you wanted to do, your parents overrode it because they wanted to take you somewhere else to see something different. And then you learn to just stop giving your opinion. And so you just say, "Okay." Or it could be for any part of your life, anywhere. It's not just stuck on these travel. I'm just using that as an example. And, you know, my daughters said something to me once that I've never really been able to unhear since they said it. They said, Dad, we couldn't feel the difference between when you were actually okay and when you were performing okay. When you were performing okay. See, they were teenagers. They'd been reading my transmission their whole whole childhood. Not my words, my transmission. And every yes I gave from fear, they felt. Every time I managed my emotions instead of expressing them, they felt. And every time I performed okayness to keep the room calm, they felt. The performance. See, people pleasing doesn't just cost you, it costs the people who love you the most, because they needed the real version of you and you gave them the managed one. See, what changed for me was not a breakthrough moment. It was a series of small interruptions. The first time I said, "Let me come back to you on that," and didn't immediately feel the urge to fix the silence. It gave me time to think about what's being asked of me before. See, I remember a real good buddy of mine back, oh, I think I was in my 20s. Buddy Jack. I called Jack up and I was like, "Hey, can you do me a favor?" And the first time in my life I heard back was, "Uh, maybe. I don't know. Can you ask me what the favor is first? Can you tell me what it is?" See, I didn't realize back then, for me, my answers would always been, "Yes, what do you need help with?" But when I got the response back that said, 'Hey, depends. What do you need?' I thought that was the most honest answer I've ever received because, see, Jack had this ability to ask you what you needed and then decide, rather than my reaction would have been just said, 'Okay,' and then when whatever it was they asked hit me and it's something that I didn't want to do, I didn't have to backtrack and try to say no and unravel it, right? And so if you stop the urge to fix any silence and you stop to think about what it is that they're actually asking and whether or not you really can help, that's the difference. So, you know, the distinction is you don't need to become someone who never accommodates. You need to become someone who can tell the difference between a genuine yes and a fear-based one. The 90-day reality is this reflex took decades to install. It doesn't change in one weekend, but it does change through reps, through body checks, through building a new autopilot one small moment at a time. See, the goal is not to become someone who says no to everything. The goal is to become someone who says yes when you actually mean yes. And here's the thing about people pleasing that took me the longest to understand: the people I was trying so hard not to disappoint The ones I kept the peace for and said yes for, managed myself for, most of them would have preferred the real version of me. Hmm, what do you mean by preferred the real version? See, they didn't need the performance, they needed the person. So join us Saturday, 10 AM Pacific Standard Time, in the Reset Room for the Saturday Reset. Free, 30 minutes. We'll work with this together. The yes that costs you something every time is waiting to become a choice. See you guys Saturday.
