If you’re someone who’s motivated strongly by external validation, and if you find yourself doing more than you can (and should) to gain the approval of those around you, you’re probably a people pleaser. In fact, people-pleasing could be the worst thing you could do to yourself. It affects you and your life on so many levels from your health and physical self to your professional life too.
Let’s first take a look at how people-pleasing have a negative effect on your life.
You’re at a Higher Risk of a Burnout
People pleasers are, more often than not, at a higher risk of burnout, and if you’re one, you can easily resonate with that. Once you start allotting the chunks of your limited 24 hour day to certain tasks or things that you picked up purely because you couldn’t say ‘no,’ it can quickly escalate, and before you know it, you’ve started getting sleep deprived, you don’t eat properly and you aren’t getting enough rest to recharge yourself.
Your Performance Will Decline
The inability to say ‘no’ and trying too hard to please everyone around you will affect your professional performance more than you can imagine. All that time that you spend trying to butter people up and stay in their good books could have been used to polish your skills and to allow you to work on yourself and your professional aspects. Plus, you’ll feel more exhausted and tired from trying to do so much, which will ultimately, cause your performance to decline.
You’ll Suffer From Imposter Syndrome
In most cases, the habit of people-pleasing stems from an imposter syndrome. You might want to do things as people want you to do them because you feel you aren’t good enough otherwise. You might do it to seek appreciation from those around you because you don’t feel confident enough about yourself and your abilities.
You’ll Get No Time For Yourself
In an attempt to keep those around you pleased and happy, you’ll fail to establish healthy boundaries, and eventually, lose your independence and freedom. You’ll not have the time and strength to enjoy doing things you wanted to, and you’ll find yourself ‘devoting’ your life to solely making those around you happy.
You’ll Lose Control
You don’t lose control overnight. It starts out small, and eventually, it’ll become a habit. A habit that’s rooted in the fact that you’ve set impossible standards for yourself. You’re now not yourself anymore, and your life is more likely controlled by external factors and people. You do what they want you to, not what you want to in every phase and aspect of life. People-pleasing is one of the easiest ways to lose control of your life and independence.
Now let’s look at some tips to start putting YOU first.
Set Priorities
I cannot stress this enough about the importance of setting priorities. When you have priorities in place this allows you to determine what’s most important to you so you can solely focus on that. Instead of saying yes to any and everything you’re now being more selective about what it is you’re going to be doing.
Say ‘No’, And Mean It
When you set priorities this opens the door a lot more for you to tell people ‘no’. Telling people no (and meaning it) protects you from all the negative results of people-pleasing. You’re reducing burnout, your performance will increase, you’ll know you can accomplish things cause you’re giving yourself more time, you’ll be making time for yourself, and you won’t feel like you’ve lost control.
Don’t Apologize
People are going to be shocked at your newfound non-people-pleasing ways, don’t apologize for it. You may feel the need to tell people sorry cause that’s the pleaser in you but don’t. Really think and ask yourself if the situation warrants you being sorry for protecting your peace and time? I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t.
Recognize and Accept That You Can’t Be Everything To Everyone
When you people please it means that you’re trying to be everything to everyone and that’s just impossible. Recognizing and accepting this is a huge step. Making everyone around you happy while sacrificing your own happiness is no way to live. Because you’re not catering to everyone else’s whims accept that they’re not going to be happy with you and that’s okay. Remember your happiness comes first.
Celebrate Your Successes
Keep track of all the times you’ve put yourself first and maintained your boundaries and celebrate them. When you look back after the first few weeks it’ll look and feel good to see just how often you’ve been maintaining and progressing in your new habit.
What tips do you have to resist people-pleasing? Share with me in the comments things you did to put yourself first?
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