Navigating Life with Ease – What People Pleasing Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome. This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old, stressful way of looking at life and towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships, and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life With Ease with Michaela Ellis and Claire Downer.

Hey, Claire.

Hello. How are you?

I am well. How are you?

Yeah, good, good, good, good.

I have a word for you. Two words, actually.

Two words of.

Yes. Yeah, let's chat about people pleasing.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, you're not going to get a word in now, whether I'm trying to please you or not, quite frankly, because. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, it's been a thing for me, definitely at various points. What.

But.

But it's not so much a thing for me now, but it is for my partner, Bruce. He. He's more of the people pleaser. And. And so what I observe about it, which I know is my perspective on it, is that sometimes he's so desperate to please me that he doesn't actually ask me what I want. Because. Because he's so. He's so in his head about it and trying to get it right that he doesn't do the most obvious thing, which is to come and say to me, do you want. Do you want this or do you want that or do you want me to do that? And then he kind of. He kind of stands there waiting for the. The pat on the head. Bless him. Yeah, it's. It's all in your head, isn't it? Like it is. It's all in our heads as people pleasing. It. It can't be anywhere else because I think what we do is we make up a thing, we think the other person wants us to do or be or whatever, and we tangle ourselves up trying to do that. And then the resulting. The resulting reaction from them is devastating because it's nothing like what we thought it was going to be. We thought they were going to literally crack open a bottle of champagne because we've done this wonderful thing for them. And. And really they're not that. They're not that bothered. And it's a. It's an exhausting entanglement of the mind, I think, just. Just trying to keep on top of what. What's going on in other people's heads. How are they feeling? What's going on for them? Am I pleasing them? Am I doing it Right. And whether that's in your business, whether it's in your work or whether it's in your relationships, it's absolutely exhausting. And it's all made up. And I think it's probably for most of us, it's, you know, I think for me, being brought up by people that were pretty critical, like, you know, it's definitely how to stay out of the firing line of that, you know, when it's. When it can feel very dangerous to be, you know, under the firing line of criticism. Yeah, that's my little starter for 10 or minutes, actually. Yeah. Doing it for you. Around it. Yeah.

I've. You know, I notice how for me and seeing others, too, how we've. We've been conditioned to do things to. You talked about staying out of the line of fire, and I see a lot of it. Yeah. It's either it's like this or that. Right. This. Staying out of the line of fire, trying to keep ourselves safe or going the other way and trying, you know, like, doing so. How do I say?

Yeah.

Or it's like kind of going the other way, going overboard. So it can look like retreating and not engaging at all. Not speaking your mind, not, you know, hiding, avoiding in. And that is people pleasing in some way. I'm kind of seeing like this in City. I saw it with something, and it may be a crossover of proving myself right. Of proving yourself worthy or okay or, you know, that kind of thing. In the end, I see that it kind of always goes back to being accepted, being safe, that kind of thing. And there's this whole array of ways that we do that really.

It's all.

It may be things that we may not even call people pleasing, but it is because we're in some way looking for acceptance or not to be seen. Yeah. You know, depending on what the situation is. Right. You know, making ourselves really small, because that will please too. So. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of saw there was something that I was doing and I was creating. It was an offer, and I kept calling it a simple offer. And it didn't feel simple. It felt hard and heavy and not hard, but it felt heavy and draggy and. And then I real. I. I kind of looked at it, and it's just like, what is this about? And it's like, oh, my God, I'm. I'm like trying to prove myself here the. You know, that I'm okay enough, you know, and to. To have me be in, you know, in. In. In the cool kids group accepted. Right. And it's like Flip that. I'm. No, thanks. Well, how about I just do my own thing? So it was just as soon as I dropped a couple of things, it's like, oh, my God, I feel like a weight's been lifted off. And it was so surprising at how when we're trying to do something or. Or, you know, it's like, I can totally do that. I can totally satisfy that. But it didn't feel like. It just didn't feel good. And it was surprising how dropping one little thing made everything feel different. And then I started to kind of see. It's like the little things that I might do throughout my day to have things go smoother, you know, to please. And it's like, it may not be a big deal. And it's like, what else can I drop that I'm doing? Because, you know, not to be mean or not to be lazy or, you know, because there's. I know Rob, he's so easy going about me and meal making all. You know, he's away for many hours of the day, you know, traveling 45 minutes or whatever to work. So it. I'm here, I work from home, so it makes sense that I would have more time. I could have a meal or have some ideas or that kind of stuff. He's so easy about whether I do or I don't yet, like, put a meal together right, or just say, hey, there's leftovers in the fridge. You could have this or that or this or put that together.

Help yourself.

But he really appreciates when I put something together. So it's like there's this line between sometimes it can feel like people pleasing and sometimes it's just. I'm just feeling love and I want to do it right. Like, anyway, I'm seeing all these little. And it's like, wow. When it just comes from a place of. Of care. And yeah, I want to do that. It just feels good. There's no, none of this happening. When I agree to do something or offer to do something, it's like, yeah, this. And it feels good to do, but when I'm doing it out of obligations, like, oh, I should, because. And then it's like I can feel the tension and that. It's like, okay, that's, you know, people pleasing. Or we could throw all kinds of words at it. Sometimes the line, you know, obligation, blah, blah, blah. But I'm just noticing how wonderful it feels when I just do something because I. I want to do that. Feels good.

Yeah. Yeah, here's. And it's a feeling like if, if we're already in the good feeling and we're not doing it because we think we're gonna get, you know, a nice pat on the head or some, you know, well done from somebody and therefore feel better about ourselves fundamentally. Excuse me, that it's got, it's not got that heaviness to it. So you're right. The exact same action can be coming from two completely different places. And it, and, and I'm seeing like you're saying it's really. There's lots of bits to it, isn't it? Because there's the piece where we're saying, there's the piece that says when I've got X or get to X I'll feel Y, which is us saying when I've got the pat on the head from the person I'm trying to please, I'll feel whatever better about myself or less self doubt or whatever, whatever included or whatever it is. And then there's the other piece which is where we're trying to give the other person a thing or do a thing so that they feel we're trying to control their feelings as well so that then we, it comes back to us and we can then feel better because they're feeling better. And it's like it's really, really entangled. But like you said, if you just do something because you care about somebody and it's just that what make, that's what makes sense in the moment, you know, I mean my office is next to the kitchen, so I quite often go in and tidy up to the dishwasher. I mean it could be a mild sort of procrastination perhaps, but the dishwasher. Because this bit of my website looks really tricky and can't do it. So the other thing that came, came through for me when you were talking before and I don't know where it came up, but something around imposter syndrome almost and that imperfectionism and connecting it to like for us in business, like further out into the world and that kind of. Oh, can I put this, like you were saying, keeping people, keeping you small. Like can I put this video out? Can I put it, you know, can I say this post, put this post on social media, write this article, whatever it is, put myself out there if I think I've got to please everybody and there isn't going to be some Marty pants who's gonna write something offensive on our video or our post or just something weird, which I think it's mostly for me. It tends to be just something Weird for people, offensive. But that isn't there. There's that. That or that. That's another, like within our relation, our close relationships, it's playing a part. But for, for business owners, I think probably paying quite a big part in terms of wanting to get it right. And that voice saying, well, this is a pile of rubbish and nobody's gonna like it. You're not going to please anybody with this. It's crap.

You can say that.

It's our podcast. You can say what, we're there. Heck, we like police who are currently just zooming in as I can see them on the horizon. Yeah, so there's that. There's that. It keeps us, well, it keeps us in imagination, I think, doesn't it? Like just in our heads making up stories about whether or not our partner needs us to do this for us to make them happy or whether we need to write the kind of right kind of person with the right kind of video to make all the millions of people out there happy. Oh, it's just. And what we miss then is that that good feeling thing because actually we may just feel inclined from a lovely space to just do something, write a post, do an act of kindness. And if we just trust that we can't go wrong. Trouble is, of course, the noise, if it's for us in our businesses, the noise comes in very quickly, doesn't it, and says nobody's gonna like that and therefore not like it, like it. It's so, you know, if we write something, create something, try and sell something, that seems, if it's rejected to be about us rather than the thing, rather than that just being real life feedback at the moment. And there's definitely something around this where that there's a, A waiting for it to be perfect before putting it out because just feels too scary, too scary to be rejected. And it's quite ancient, that fear, isn't it? Like, it's not. I mean, it's now multiplied because we've got the Internet where all these things can be put out and judged by literally millions of people as opposed to, you know, as opposed to just the people in our tribe. But we, when we were in tribes, you know, if you were rejected by the tribe, you. You're done off or aren't you, you're out on the savannah in your loincloth with nobody to look after you and support you and help you, you're probably gonna die, get eaten by something. So it's kind of really quite deeply grounded, I think, in our sort of old, old, old DNA, shall we say? Our old. These minds that haven't actually progressed an awful lot since we were running around, apart from we're now living in the world that our poor little brains can't cope with. Yeah. So it just gets in everywhere. Doesn't. Does.

First of all, I'm a little caught on that image of, you know, hanging out there in the cold in a loincloth.

So. Dare I ask?

Not telling. Oh, gosh.

Brilliant.

Yeah.

Huh.

I've lost what. What was coming up. But that's okay. That's okay. There was something I was going to respond with. But it's okay. Oh, yes. It was something that you said about our minds, about that our, you know, our, you know, our. Our brains are. They haven't kind of caught up to all of this technology. It's like, I'm sure at some point down the road there, you know, all of the filth, there's going to be something that's going to filter a lot more things out. Great. Right now all the planet will be gone.

All the other will be long gone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But will it, though? Because, you know, as you're saying that I'm thinking, will the brain progress? Because we're feeding it. It's, it's. We're still perpetuating this way of, you know, this imagination that the world out there is going to judge us and chuck us out. The tribe and it's perpetuated by this nonsense on the Internet. Really is like, will. Will it. I think we kind of stuck in a bit. Well, you know, if. If what we're sharing takes over the world, obviously, Michaela, it will.

Well, there, yeah, there is that human thing, right. That there's something in studying human design. And Rahu, the creator of it, said, you know, it'll take seven years to decondition. And there's some reasons behind that. You know, our cells are all supposed to regenerate in seven years. We. Our body has totally new cells. But it's like, yes, maybe if we are a hundred percent being ourselves through all that time, ourselves truly would be clean and fresh and baby new. But it's impossible. I was gonna say, I've got this mind. This mind.

Yeah.

So as. As we're. It's kind of like, you know, the. The whack.

A mole. Right.

As we like, get a handle on. Oh, right. Okay.

That.

That doesn't need to bother me anymore. I can just let that go, let it pass on through and then something new comes up. Created. Right. And it's just like what? You know, so we're always being conditioned by something. We're always. Our mind is always getting its little claws into something to freaker. To freak us out about. And then we, you know, kind of come up with all these ways or no way, like just understanding what's happening and letting it all float on by and see what comes up from that inner place of what to think, say or do, it's going to feel a lot better.

And then back to the feeling, isn't that. Back to the feeling like really how it feels in your body is, is, is that guidance as to where you are tangled up in your mind? So if you're thinking about doing something, helping someone, putting something out there, and you notice there's an uncomfortable feeling, know that it's not, you know, it's. That's you thinking about whatever it is. If you're thinking, if I do this, I'm gonna get part of my head from the other half and he's gonna think I'm an amazing individual. Or you think, you know, you've got this stuff around. I don't want to put this thing out into the world or ask somebody for something or whatever it is because I think I'm gonna be upsetting people or judged by people. And you kind of know, you, you to go back to the sim, the simplicity, I suppose that, you know, what does the, the doing of the thing itself. Like what, where. Where's that coming from, you know? Very good. Lovely.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. That was a good one. Yeah. Comes a pull up, does that one, doesn't it? Sure does. Thank you, my lovely.

Yeah, thank you. See you next, everyone. A. Yeah. A week of self pleasing, you know, well, not, you know, whatever. Well, because truly, if it feels good, that is.

All right, everybody knows we're both blushing now. I think we should leave it there.

Okay. Indeed.

Yeah, let's do.

For now.

Bye.

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