In this conversational video, Speaker A and Speaker B explore why founders often make choices that don’t align with their true desires. They identify people‑pleasing, control, security, and approval‑seeking as three core mind patterns that drive such decisions. The dialogue highlights how these patterns lead founders to act inauthentically—making choices to avoid uncomfortable feelings or imagined future scenarios rather than following their genuine wants. Authenticity, presence, and the practice of slowing down are presented as antidotes: by recognizing there is no actual lack of safety, control, or approval, founders can tune into their head‑heart‑gut compass and make decisions that truly reflect who they want to be. The speakers also hint at a follow‑up discussion that will delve deeper into reviewing past decisions and the role of courage in honoring authentic choices.
Chapters
Is there another big failure pattern around people pleasing in this category? I imagine there is, right?
Oh yeah. Yeah. And the way I'll connect the dots of that is not only do I want to control how I feel, I also want to control how other people feel.
Right.
Especially how they feel toward me, mostly because that affects how I feel. So, I want to control how you feel about me so that I don't have to feel things that I don't want to feel when you feel upset or angry. Also, there's— it's just, it's a common pattern of like a way we learn to be loved is to please others.
I don't want to sell my company because the return's not big enough for the investors, or my employees won't make enough money, or therefore, even though I like probably really want to sell it, like, you know, what I want is to sell it to be done, I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep hanging on. And I have like all this— 100%. And it's not the obvious people pleasing, right? It's not like the— it's like Sort of subtle people pleasing.
This is why I think the notion of authenticity is so important with this stuff, because all of these are flavors of, I will be inauthentic to avoid feeling something, or avoid— you know, it's like, yeah, I, I don't want my investors to be disappointed or to think I'm a sellout or a loser or, you know, whatever. And maybe I'm afraid of what that would mean in the future, and so now I make a decision That my mind says is a good decision because it allows me to avoid these imagined future scenarios. But really, it's, I'm just trying to avoid some feelings I don't want to feel. And yeah, people pleasing is one common pattern of that. Like, and it's part of, it's really mostly part of approval seeking is another way to say it. It's the reason I want other people to please others is because I want them to like me and think well of me. And by the way, like our intellect is largely informed by a lifetime of what other people have said to us. Right. It's like our parents' voices internalized, right? That's some of the other, you know, tricky part of listening to your thoughts, you know, that say you should do this, you should do that, is you kind of end up then indexing on what other people think you should, you know, you should be doing instead of, again, like Your authentic wants feel to me like the most clear compass for what you— for your authentic truth, whereas your intellect can kind of trick you based on fear.
Yeah, I thought you were going to tie it back to control, security, and approval, which are like the 3 most common mind patterns that probably— maybe that's the answer to the most common patterns where people make decisions that they don't truly want because they end up Prioritizing one of those 3 things instead.
Yeah, they, they believe that they are lacking in safety, control, freedom, or approval, and then they make decisions that they think will make them feel free or have control or safe or approved of. That's a nice simple way to describe it.
Versus slowing down, tuning into their authentic wants. And then, you know, and we could probably do a part 2 of this.
Importantly though, Just in that one, in the slowing down, what's available is recognizing no lack of safety, no lack of control, right? You don't need to control anything that you don't or can't control. No lack of approval. You don't need external approval, right? Right. Again, in presence, in a state of presence, you recognize you don't need any of that. There's none of that is lacking or missing. And therefore, it wouldn't occur to you to make decisions to optimize for that because actually, you know, there's no lack.
Right. And then, you can just choose whatever it is that feels right to you across the head, heart, and gut.
Yeah. Yeah, which is a more nuanced way of saying just kind of what do you really want to do?
Right. Yeah, I love it. Well, I think there's a part 2 I want to do on this next week. So, I'll Which I think is about kind of looking back on decisions. I think there's a lot of like— there's a lot— decisions are an interest. There's just such an interesting category of thing that people get charged up around. And, and I think we've sort of done the first version.
I'll plant one more seed for our— for that future discussion, which is I do sometimes ask my clients, who do you want to be? And when you're being that way, then what occurs to you to do? And I do think that that can also be a useful frame, like, okay, I want to be courageous and, you know, passionate. Okay, well then what, you know, if you're being like, you step into that being, I'm courageous and passionate, and you feel that, then what occurs to you to do? And, and I do think different choices occur to us when we're being different ways.
Yeah, yeah. And I think part of next week is also talking about courage because I think If you can get yourself to this point of presence, you can see what you want, there's still like a courageous element to actually honoring what you want that I think is, is worth talking about.
Yeah, and there's a connection between authenticity. I really love that question of like, what, what, how is fear stopping you from being fully authentic? And that's to me a good guide to when courage really serves you.
