Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to episode 63 of Working towards our

Purpose. Thank you for being here. In today's episode,

we are going to talk about how people pleasing is

hiding your voice. But before we get into that, we're going to start with

our check in as we always do. So take a moment to check in

with. With yourself and I will do the same

just to see how we're feeling today and how we're showing up.

Yeah, so for me, I am.

I'm doing okay. I think. I

never liked that question really. But

yeah, I think struggling with a couple different things this week. Maybe one

specifically that

noticing maybe some inaction in some areas and

wanting to do some more things

and sort of struggling with comparison a little bit maybe.

But I think it's all, it's all good and showing me things that

I'd like to change or I'd like to work on. So. So

yeah, maybe we'll do. Maybe we'll do an episode on that

for, for Friday's episode, for the next episode. Um, but yeah, so, but

feeling pretty good. Um, got all my routines done this morning.

Prepped extra long for this episode. Cause I was really trying to

make it make sense and pull it together and trying to pull like two different

ideas together. Um, so yeah, feeling. Feeling pretty good about this.

Um, so yeah, hopefully, hopefully you also checked in with yourself

and, and kind of looked at where you're at today. So

yeah, so let's get into the episode. People pleasing and,

and how people pleasing is sort of hiding your

voice. And so yeah,

speaking as a recovering people pleaser,

I think again, I like looked back through the

episodes and thought it was surprising that I hadn't done an

episode on people pleasing it because I'm pretty familiar with it and,

and trying to, yeah, just like a

recovering people, please are trying to not always do what. What others expect

of you. Uh, so you know, if you're struggling with people pleasing,

hopefully this episode will be helpful. Um, but, so yeah, what is people

pleasing? Like if, if I were to define it,

people pleasing for me is try, like trying

to predict other people's needs while also

acting in a way that you think they want. Um, so

a lot of times I've noticed that people pleasing is all like

assumption based. I'm assuming that somebody wants me to act like this.

I'm pretty intuitive with like feelings

and sensing people's feelings. So maybe sometimes I overly

think I understand what people want and then I try to

accommodate that.

Yeah, so I was just thinking about like where it came from and

stuff and I Don't really want to get into that today, but

recognizing that, like, that is sort of a skill. It is

a skill to like, sense people's feelings and to be empathetic.

But it's also not a good thing if you're

using it to serve other people in a way that's not serving you.

So, yeah, so that's one. One aspect of people pleasing

is like kind of making the whole thing up in your head, basically

anticipating people's needs. And then the other one is,

you know, obviously the opposite of that is like, people asking you for stuff

and then you feeling like you have to do everything.

So, yeah, largely it's acting in

ways that other people want you to act and not in ways that you feel

you want to act or feel true to you. So

I think it's helpful to think about it in, like,

real sort of life examples. And I think

you can people please on like, a small scale, and then you can people

please on like, a larger scale. And for me, the

larger scale would be things like, you know, what you do for work, your

job, the industry that you're in, maybe what school you went to

college, the specific people you

date, maybe like your partner. All these could be sort of

like very large people pleasing,

and then maybe some sort of smaller ones are really just like simple

conversations. I noticed sometimes when I'm

in conversations nowadays and I've like, tried to work on people pleasing. If I'm

in a conversation where I'm sort of felt

that I gave in to, like, what I really wanted

to say and kind of was more catering to what somebody.

What I thought somebody else wanted, then I kind of walk away from that conversation

like disappointed in myself and being like, I don't like

the way that I showed up there. I wish I didn't, you know, do say

X, Y, or Z to try to make this person happy. And

I think that certainly comes up when you sort

of see like a sense of rejection or

disapproval and you,

okay, me, I'm talking about me. When I see that sort of

disapproval. And then I'm like, oh, like, here, let me. Let me say some stuff

that'll make you feel better and trying to make the other person feel better.

So, so for. For me, that's what people pleasing looks like. And,

and yeah. So why is people pleasing a bad thing? Why,

why. Why do I think it's maybe a. A way that

we shouldn't try to be acting or I

shouldn't try to be acting, speak about myself.

Well, for me, I've noticed that the first thing is when

you do things that other people expect of you,

and then you don't get something in return, or

maybe they don't treat you in that certain way, you. Then you start becoming

resentful and perhaps, you know, upset with,

with that person. And in reality, like you've kind

of created this whole scenario in your head, oh, they want me to act like

this, so I did this for them. And then I didn't get like

the approval that I wanted or the attention that I wanted. And then

you become sort of resentful. And in reality, if

you just sort of acted the way that you wanted to, maybe it could have

avoided that problem altogether. Um, but sort of a deeper

issue that I see with people pleasing or that I've felt with deep

people pleasing is being

afraid to be who you are, your true self,

your, your voice, your authentic voice. I think with people

pleasing, it's sort of like

hiding who you are a little bit because you're looking for

acceptance, you're looking to be liked. You're looked, you know,

you're trying to fit in. Um, I think that it's natural to

want to fit in and to be accepted, but

when we're doing it in a way that makes

us sort of

put our own values in at question,

then, then it's not a positive thing. So, so if we're going

against our own values to please other people or we're going

against our own thoughts to please other people, I think this can become a negative

thing because then we're not being who we want to be. We're

not saying what we feel is true and

what we believe in. So, so yeah, let's get into like,

maybe an example of this. I think for me, the,

the first things that come to mind with people pleasing is,

is like when I was in corporate, I remember

corporate life. For me, my experience is it's very

sort of group thought herd

mentality, sort of

interaction. I'm trying not to sound like super negative about it because I'm

obviously biased against not enjoying a 9 to

5 in a corporate setting. But for example, I

remember in my groups we would be going to lunch and,

you know, I was new to a job and I would go to lunch with

the rest of my group and we would go and

spend way more than the half hour that we needed and

they would talk about all kinds of stuff that I wasn't really interested in and

I would like, try to participate. And I,

I felt that, like we shouldn't have been doing that. I felt like

you know, weird about taking the more time than we were actually

allowed to and you know, sort of, I guess against the

rules or something that I didn't really believe in. I also

didn't really like the way that I felt because we, we would never, we would

always talk about things that like, I wasn't into and I would like try to

pretend that I was into whatever they were. And I just didn't really like

the way that I felt. But there was a lot of pressure of like, oh,

we're going to lunch, you kind of come down with us, you're going to hang

out. And if you didn't, then there was sort of like, oh,

okay, you, you don't like us, or you know, whatever. There

was like this peer pressure element of going

and doing what, what everybody else was doing. And you know, I

think I, I did that for a while because I was trying to be

liked by them, accepted by them, and

I ended up really not liking who I was in those

situations. So I ended up having to like stop doing that. Um, so,

so, so really it's just like you're doing things that make you not feel good

about yourself or not proud of who you are and sort of

catering to what everybody else wants. And I think it becomes

harder in those sorts of settings because there's more than one. Like in,

in my example, there was like, I don't know, four, five,

six people in the group who are all doing the same thing. And I have

to be like, oh, actually I don't want to do what you guys are doing.

And that's hard. You know, it's hard to go against that because we

want to be liked. But I was, you know,

I was trying to ask myself like, where does people pleasing come from? Like, why

do we do it? And I think it's of course

like wanting to be liked and accepted, but I think

there's like a deeper rooted fear there.

And for me, as I was like thinking about it and trying

to uncover like, you know, what, what's

there further down with people pleasing other than not being liked? Because, because, because I

know that what came up was

sort of the feeling of

not being good as you are. So I think a

lot of times when I was people pleasing, I thought that my

ideas and my opinions and what I wanted to say

wasn't good or wasn't good enough.

And I think that I tied like the way

that people perceived me as my self

worth. So I don't know if you're a people pleaser,

see if this resonates but or if you were a people

pleaser or have people pleasing tendencies

that like when you're people, when you're catering to other

people, you are sort of have

this deep fear that the way that you exist

isn't like good enough. So you have to kind of like,

you know, act like the other people want you to act.

Because if, if you acted the way that you wanted to and they didn't

like it, you take it as like a personal

thing that like that's a personal trait that somebody

didn't like what you said. Therefore somebody doesn't like who you are,

therefore you're not worthy the way you are. And

for me that felt true when I had that

thought and was doing some research. And

yeah, I think that that is for me

at least a reason why I would people please and why I was afraid

to use my own voice. And this again kind of ties into the, the

people pleasing is a way to hide your own voice and

to sort of not have to put

something out there that somebody may or may not like. You know, maybe it's a

controversial opinion or maybe it's an opinion that differs from everybody else's

or you know, maybe it's something that makes you feel uncomfortable or

cringeworthy. Maybe it's making a podcast and

being afraid to put it out there, you know, so, so yeah, I think

that like, if I really thought about people pleasing, it really came down to like

that feeling of like, well, what if what I think isn't good enough

or isn't, isn't worthy? So when I think

about it that way, it kind of really helped to understand

like why I would get in sort of people pleasing

mentality and then, or patterns and then

try to think about like, how could I stop doing that.

So that brings me to

the next part of, is like,

yeah, so I'm kind of already worked into the next part of the solution

and figuring out how we can stop people policing. But some other things that I

wanted to say about that is that one

is to recognize that like our likability isn't attached to

our self worth. That if somebody likes what we

say or doesn't like what we say, it doesn't mean that we're worthy or not

worthy. We're worthy either way and people are allowed to disagree. And I think

that that's really hard to remember,

especially being online, you know, in the political environment we're in. I think

anytime somebody says something that somebody disagrees with, it

immediately is like a personal attack. And you can

like write Somebody off because they said one thing. And, you know,

I don't think that that's really true. I think that if you think

back to, like, people that are closest to you, probably once

or twice they've said something that maybe you didn't agree with and you

still love them for it anyways. You know, if a friend says something that you

didn't agree with, you don't have to agree with every single

thing. Um, so I think that that's important to remember. And then I think it's

also important to remember that we are

not responsible for how other people.

How other people's emotions are. So, you know,

even if we're not talking about friends or we're talking about other people, and

maybe it's a boss or a random stranger, we're not

really responsible for their feelings. And

we can say something that makes somebody feel a certain way,

but we don't need to take on the responsibility of trying to make

them feel better. That is a personal

endeavor. We don't need to sort

of balance everybody's emotions and make sure that everybody's happy.

And I think the only person that we're responsible for is ourselves

in doing that is, you know, if we get angry or upset, we

have to manage our own emotions and, you know, deal with that.

But it can be really easy to, like,

blur the lines, especially if it's like a close friend or a family member, where

if they have an emotion about something or, you know, maybe you did

something they didn't like and they're expressing it angrily,

we feel like we have to fix that or to

make them not angry. And that's not really a

responsibility. Um, I think a lot

of times I got caught in that of trying to, like, make somebody feel

better or, you know, try to fix their emotions. But

in reality, like you, you have to. That has to start from the self. You

can't. They can't make somebody feel something, you know, and

depending on, like, how you. You're thinking about it,

I guess as a people pleaser, you can think like, well, if I say something,

then maybe they'll feel better. But really it has to start with

them. Like, they have to decide that they want to do something with their

emotions and maybe not act on them or change them.

But for us, for me,

it's not up to us to help people change their emotions.

And then sort of the last thing is like, you know, what's

the, what's the alternative of being a people pleaser is saying

no. And I think that's like the biggest one for me, that. That's always

something that came up in therapy was just like saying no to people

and being like, no, I don't want to do that. Or saying an

opinion that's opposite of somebody because you feel that

you want to say it, but saying it in spite of what other people might

think. So I think that that's

sort of like the opposite of. I'm trying to, like, describe what

the alternative to people ple. Hopefully that

was clear. It felt a little unclear, but. But now

I want to get into, like, actions. Like, what actions can you take to not

be, or to, you know, maybe be less of a people

pleaser? Because, you know, I say I'm a former

people pleaser, but I. I think we all kind of go in

ups and downs of. Of old habits and like, you know,

sometimes I still have people pleasing tendencies and sometimes I don't.

And I have ways of overcoming that

now. And these are the actions, these are things that you can do now

to try to not fall into people pleasing. So the

first thing is to just sort of set boundaries with people

and with yourself. I think it's helpful

sometimes for me, if I'm going in a situation where there's going to be a

group of people and maybe I know

that I want to, let's say it's a party or something at night,

and I know that I want to be gone by 10 or 11

because I want to go to bed early, because I. Because I get up early,

I can easily, like, be in that environment and everybody's

like, oh, don't leave, don't leave. And then I'm like, oh, okay, fine, we'll leave.

But if I think about, like, what I want to do before I get there

and make up my mind before I get there, then I can

sort of not struggle with being persuaded

by the people as much. So I think that that's helpful for me to

think about it in advance. If you're trying to set boundaries and you know

that it's going to be hard to think about what you want in advance. Um,

but also episode 10 of this podcast was with

Barb Nangle, who is a boundaries coach. So if you do struggle with

boundaries, go listen to episode 10 and it's like a personal

coaching session from Barb. Boundaries coaching session.

So. So that's a really helpful episode, I think, if you struggle with boundaries.

And so the second action that you can take

is exposure therapy and practice saying no,

get in environments and, and, you know,

practice in real life saying no to People or saying like,

oh, you know what, I actually don't agree with that. Or,

you know, I think practicing disagreeing with people, practicing

like not always having to be liked is helpful

and sort of like thinking about

how you can show up in the way that you

want to with using your own voice, that,

you know, practicing using your own voice in spite of what other people think or

what you think other people may think. So I think that that's

really been helpful for me. And yeah, just, just practicing

saying no. And certainly it's a lot harder to do that in

person than it is through text message. So, you know, I've found

sometimes that like, maybe if, if you're finding that you don't want to do something

and it's hard to do it in person, you could start with a text message.

You could start by saying like, hey, you know, this isn't going to work for

me. You know, it's not helpful. I'm going to have to pass

on it, but maybe next time. And I think

that for me has been helpful. And it's empowering too to say no

sometimes because I think we all, or at least I always feel like I have

to say yes to people. You know, you get invited to something, you feel like

you have to say yes. And it's not always the best

thing for you to say yes to things. So, yeah,

so practicing saying no is really helpful. And then

the third thing, the third action is to remind yourself

that likability does not equal self worth.

And if someone does like or doesn't like what you say,

it doesn't mean that you're less of a person because of it. Because

that's kind of how it feels when you're a people pleaser. If somebody doesn't agree

with you or you make somebody upset or, you know, you

sort of feel like your self worth is being attacked, or at least

I do. That's what I've noticed. So,

yeah, those are sort of the three things, you know, set boundaries, exposure,

therapy, practicing no, and then to remind yourself that

likability does not equal self worth. And I think it can be really helpful to

do that as you're practicing. No. You know,

to sort of just keep reminding that in your head. So. So

yeah, hopefully, hopefully this help, hopefully this episode helped. If you

are a people pleaser and let me know, you can always comment on

YouTube or go to workingtowardsapurpose.com to

send me a note through our contact form.

And I also wanted to say that I've recently

found out that my number one goal, my one thing

from now until the end of the year is to try to grow my audience

on YouTube. So if you are on YouTube, please

go type in working towards our purpose. I'll come up, my channel will come

up. And please give me a subscribe or a follow up,

uh, maybe like a couple videos while you're there to help with my analytics. I

would really appreciate it. And yeah, if you also watch

podcasts on YouTube, you can, you can watch the full episodes on YouTube.

Um, so. So, yeah, so thank you for that. And

I think that's all I got for you today. So

take care of yourself and I will see you on another episode real soon.

Thank you for

listening.

Sam.