How To Stop People Pleasing

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today, just me again. Yeah, I am doing some— I am doing an interview this afternoon, so if you're, uh, yeah, if you're wondering where all the guests have gone, um, there's gonna be one, uh, for you to— there's gonna be a guest, a podcast with a guest tomorrow. Uh, Lisa Quates is, uh, is coming on. Today I thought I would talk about something practical. I was thinking about what I can do, always thinking about what I can do to improve the podcast, develop it, move it on. And it struck me that just having a look around at what questions that people ask, they're often looking for Answers to practical questions such as, how do I stop people pleasing? How do I stop people pleasing? Now, first thing that came on— so the first thing that came to my mind thinking about this was, is people pleasing actually a bad thing? Right, getting on with others, meeting their needs, understanding their needs first, having empathy, empathy for them. And it, it struck me that there's a fine line, isn't there? There's a fine line between getting on with people and being a people pleaser. A people pleaser is kind of identifying who we are with something that we do, and that's kind of fraught with challenges, really, isn't it? Um, am I a people pleaser, or is people pleasing something that I occasionally Occasionally do. So is this about who we are, or is this about something that we sometimes do? And where do we draw the line between what is natural in relationships and what is Not natural. We're going over the top. We're going over the top. So that's the first question I'd like you to— I'd suggest that you continue, you consider. Where's the line between getting on with people and doing more than we actually want? For those people, the next thing about the how questions: How do I stop? How do I stop people pleasing? Well, the how question always brings in our our our our brain, right? And and we start coming up. With coming up with answers to the how question. How, how do we do— how does any change happen? How, how does any change happen in our behavior? Um, and it happens through an insight. That's how it happens. It happens through an insight. So when we see better, we do better. Once we know a new way to work, so say assuming that we're commuting to work, right, and it's taking us 25 minutes and we find a new way, we found a new way that's only 15 minutes. How much effort do we need to put in to going that driving that new way to work? We we don't have to put any effort into. We do it, we do it naturally, unless we forget, right? Unless we forget. So what we're trying to do with the when we're When we're revving up the brain, right, the how-to questions revving up the brain, sometimes that can keep us, that revving up of the brain can keep us stuck in the mud. We're not gonna go anywhere. We're overthinking, we're overthinking, we're trying to overthink our way out of a challenge. rather than letting everything settle down, putting things on the back burner. So on holiday, I sometimes read Lee Child books. It's about this ex-military policeman, Jack Reacher. And he is— it's always the same. It's always the same story. But And that's why we love it. It's, it's the habit, right? It's like we're into the habit, we're into familiarity. We, we, we know what the story is going to be. It's just a different, slightly different take on that story. Anyway, he— what he does is if he's got a problem, he says, I, I put that to the back of my mind. I let the, the, the wisdom Basically saying he sleeps on a problem, you know, so we can sleep on a problem. We go, we have a problem, we have a problem, we have a question that we want an answer for. And he says he puts it on the back burner, the question on the back burner, and then he wakes up in the morning and miraculously he's got a solution. And that's how insights work. insights come to us out of the blue, and if they've got enough oomph behind them, if they're big enough insights, if they've got enough oomph, if they've got enough depth, then we change our behavior, uh, naturally, like we do this shortcut, um, when we stumble upon it and we think, well, why am I wasting You know, 10 minutes driving to work, 10 minutes driving coming back from work. So I can get 20 minutes a day back. That's 20 times 5, that's 100 minutes a week. You know, what's that? 400 minutes a year, 400 minutes a month, 4,800 minutes a year, roughly. How do we stop people pleasing? When we see that it's not a good idea to do it anymore. That's the answer. When, when the, the, the, when the reason to stop it overcomes the reason to keep it, keep doing it. So How to stop people pleasing? Is it a bad thing? Where's the line between it being a good thing and a bad thing? What questions can I ask myself? What questions can I put on the back burner so that I can stop people pleasing? And we can go a bit more, a bit deeper again on this. How do we stop people pleasing? Well, how do we stop people pleasing is when we're, uh, when we're more content in our own skin. So if we're content with our own being, if we're living from a place of higher self-esteem, then we are and we are happier in ourselves, we're happier with ourselves, then we're less reliant on others. So for me, the ultimate way that we stop people pleasing is by seeing that essence of who we truly are. The, the clearer we can see the diamond that's, uh, the, the diamond, uh, that's hidden, that's veiled by the trauma. So my metaphor for this— if I don't know if you've heard this one, we talk about this before, you know, I talk about the, the clenched fist as a metaphor for trauma, and unfurling the fingers of the clenched fist reveals the diamond. the essence of who we truly are, the, um, the perfection, the sparkling, our sparkling sense of self, the, uh, the, the value that we have, the value that we just need to see rather than build. We don't need to build our self-esteem. We need to see the essence of ourselves as beautiful, perfect with our imperfections, sparkling, brilliant, effervescent, shiny, beautiful, lovely, lovable. Seeing that, the more we can— the, the more we can see our inherent innate sense of worth that's already with us, has always been with us, and will not be changed by anything that happens to us. The deeper we can see our, uh, our brilliance, then the less we're likely to look at, at others For their, what would you say? For their high regard. We're not. We're we're comfortable in our own skins. We don't need. We don't need the kind of like the slap on the back. We don't need the congratulations. We don't need the. We don't need the approval. We don't need the approval. of others. No amount of approval from others is ever going to make us see our own worth for ourselves. We have to see this stuff for ourselves. I say this all the time, I love it. There's no such thing as a secondhand insight. We have to see our worth for ourselves. And when we see our own worth for ourselves, then we will look less for that outside. When we see that approval from the world outside isn't going to give us the, the self-esteem that we want on the inside. Then we'll stop doing it, right? We, we, we stop following the foul— the false path, the wrong path. We fall— we, we stop following the, the wrong path when we see the right path. And the, the right— and this is the, this is the path without a path, right? This is— you don't need to Do anything to be yourself. You don't need to become better. You are already inherently, innately, essentially perfect just as you are. Seeing your own perfection means you look less for it from other people. I hope that helps. Speak to you very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.