Breaking Free from People Pleasing: A Guide to Embrace Your True Value

Are you tired of constantly seeking approval and putting other people's needs before your own? Discover how to break free from people pleasing and finally embrace your true worth. Have you ever found yourself saying yes when you really wanted to say no? Maybe it was something small like a TV show that you didn't really want to watch, or a restaurant you didn't really want to eat at, but you found it was just simpler if you just tried to please them. On the surface, this type of people pleasing might not seem like a problem. I mean, isn't that what nice people do? What's so bad about trying to keep the peace? Well, in a word, everything. That's what we're going to talk about. Even though people pleasing might seem like a great idea to let you get out of a little bit of a conflict or to help you avoid some discomfort, it leads to a landslide of repercussions. Resentment, depression, loneliness, and a feeling of emptiness. People pleasing makes others your focus. And over time, this behavior degrades the relationship you have with yourself and your own self worth. The problem is that many of us confuse people pleasing with kindness. And these are really easy to confuse because on the outside the behavior looks the same, yet inside they vastly differ. And the main difference is motive. Kindness comes from a place of love, acceptance and trust. People pleasing, that comes from the dark side of fear, control and manipulation. So confusing kindness from manipulation is kind of like confusing your true self with your ideal image. And so to build self worth, we really need to stay in our true authentic self and stay away from investing in the ideal image. So that ideal self, that's the one that you're trying to be, that's the one you're trying to put forward, that's the fake nice one, that's the one that looks like so pleasing and so giving and so effortlessly willing to do for others. That's not the real you, not if you don't want to do something. So you want to be looking at the true self. Now the true self is like that you that makes you you, that you inside, the real, vulnerable, true you underneath everything. It's the one that isn't trying to please people. Although you might want to do nice things for people. But the true self is grounded in truth and the ideal is just completely not grounded and lives in fantasy. Self worth is built by collecting more self. What I mean by that is that you build the worth of self. You build more and more, you collect more and more self, which means your worth goes up by investing more in your true self, rather than trying to chase an ideal. Your true self is the essence of who you are. It's the essential nature that you are. It's that piece of you that can't be taken away. It doesn't care about pleasing people. When you're people pleasing, you're actually devaluing yourself because you're increasing your supply. And too much of you makes the demand go down. It also makes your value go down. If you're struggling with people pleasing and you're feeling undervalued, this is what you do. One, you get real about the ugly truth. People pleasing isn't kindness, it's manipulation. I know, I know. It's an ugly word. I give you an ugly word because the ugly word works. And as soon as you see that this is what you're doing, it's a lot easier to stop. People pleasing is really about trying to manipulate how you're seen. It's trying to manipulate the image, the Persona, the character of who you are, rather than trusting that other people are get to have their own opinion of you. So what does that mean? That means you have to stop trying to manage other people's opinions of you. You have to stop trying to make them think a certain thing about you. You have to stop trying to make them feel a certain way about you. And believe me, I have struggled with this. It is in my nature to try to people please. And what I did was I lost pieces of myself over time to the point that I really did think I was coming from an authentic place. And I didn't even. I was being kind of covertly manipulative. So you really have to get real with yourself about this and go, yeah, I was trying to make them like me. It's okay, it's okay. And you'll move on to step two. Step two, you're going to have to be uncomfortable. The reason why we people please is because we have an inner discomfort that we're trying to get rid of. And the discomfort is not feeling like you have control over what somebody thinks about you or how you're appearing in a certain circumstance. People pleasing at its core is a coping mechanism for discomfort. We say yes because we want to avoid the discomfort of saying no. We contort ourselves to try to make people happy because we don't want to feel rejected. We fake nice because we don't want to face what's really going on in ourself. Authentic kindness really requires presence, and it requires trust in yourself and trust in others to be willing to be uncomfortable. That means you have to Be able to sit in your own skin without trying to manage the people around you or manage how you're appearing to others. And that takes a certain amount of presence and a certain amount of groundedness in yourself to just stay for a second. Number three, feel your own feelings. The mantra for this is, I can handle this. Okay, so the bad news is you're going to have some feels. And sometimes they're not going to feel good, but I promise you, you can handle it. You can count to three, you can count to five. You do not need to go, please someone. You can just sit with your own discomfort. People pleasing is really about trying to avoid your own inner self. It's a. It's a way to like, run away from yourself and then go think about somebody else because that's easier really than confronting your own feelings. So if you find yourself where your husband's mad and it puts you into a tailspin and you're like, oh, I've totally lost myself, what you have to do is drop in and instead of being focused completely on what that person is feeling, or so and so is mad at me, or I let so and so down. What you have to do is drop into your own self and go, what am I actually feeling? What is the emotion I'm actually feeling here? Name it, bring it back to you. And then you need to question, can I handle this feeling while I'm uncomfortable? Can I handle this feeling without trying to fix it? Like, a feeling is not a problem that needs to be fixed. It's just an emotion. It actually has its own natural cycle. It will pass. Everything will pass. So can you just sit still for a second, feel this discomfort, name it, and then let it pass through. And then you also have to give yourself permission to. To feel something different than the people around you. Sometimes they're just having a day. Sometimes your kid is going to be mad at you. Sometimes the PTA president just blew up at you. It has nothing to do with you. Sometimes. So can you allow them their own space to have their own experience and really just put a little nice bubble around yourself to protect yourself and think, I don't have to go outside of my own life here to go manage them. And really the whole entire reason you're people please in the first place is because you're trying to be nice. And the kindest thing you can do is really allow someone their own experience, witness them. That is the kindest thing you can do rather than trying to manage them. Number four is be willing to show up as your true self. To build self worth, you have to take action that reinforces that who you are, your true self, is worth your time, energy and attention. So every time you're people pleasing, you're actually in the worthless cycle because you are devaluing yourself by valuing someone else more than your true self. So to build self worth, you're not only having to value your true self over your ideal self, you're also needing to value your true self as much as other people's true self. It's two different parts. One is you can't go out people pleasing. If you want to build self worth, you have to invest in self. And from that place of generosity and from that whole self, you can actually be incredibly kind, incredibly vulnerable, incredibly helpful for people. But when you're coming from the place of an ideal image or fantasy self, or you're not even grounded in who you are and you're just out there trying to manage the universe, that's where that manipulation trap comes in. And that is why you get so exhausted. Because you're not even in your body, you're not even in your life at that point. So one more time, if you're struggling with people pleasing and you're feeling undervalued and you're exhausted and you need to know what to do, Here are the four steps. 1. Get real about the ugly truth. People pleasing isn't kindness, it is manipulation. Just work on it. 2. Be willing to be uncomfortable. This requires courage. It is scary to be uncomfortable because you don't know how long it lasts. I promise you, you can work on this. Number three, feel your own feelings. The mantra for this is I can handle this. I can handle this little bit of time. I can handle it. Number four, be willing to show up as your true self. Invest in your true self, gain more value. And from that whole sense of self, you can be absolutely generous, kind and giving. Are you a recovering people pleaser? Kind of. Sorta. Or wanting to? Let me know in the comments below. Let's chat.