Dr. Jeffrey GladdenFounder & CEO of Gladden Longevity

Breaking Free from Old Habits: Embrace Authenticity

14 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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In this personal‑development monologue, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden examines how many women internalize the "good girl" role, using people‑pleasing as a learned strategy to earn love, acceptance, and a sense of worth at work and home. While this approach can provide short‑term validation, it eventually becomes ineffective, leading to feelings of being stuck, loneliness, and resentment. Gladden argues that outgrowing these outdated habits requires recognizing that continual compliance masks the true self, preventing authentic connections. By shifting from external approval‑seeking to honest self‑expression, individuals can foster deeper, more genuine relationships and alleviate the emotional pain caused by living a false persona.

Chapters

Or in the case of a lot of women, we continue to act out what we were told was expected of us as a good girl. And that works for a little while and we feel rewarded, we feel connected, we feel like, yeah, I'm worthy at work, I'm valuable in my home. But at a certain point, those old strategies don't work anymore and we end up feeling really stuck and really lonely and really resentful. And so this is as much a conversation about outgrowing old strategies and learning how to kind of be in a new way. Because if pleasing people and if doing what they wanted me to do was how I learned to get love and acceptance, at a certain point, pleasing other people and being who they want me to be prevents them from knowing the real me and prevents us from having an actual connection based on who I really am and what I really want. And that ends up feeling very lonely.