People pleasing have become a survival tactics for us working the grind in this gig economy.
But once we notice it doesn’t really take us anywhere we understand that all that this habit does is drain us. We become obsessed with constantly trying to prove ourselves, mostly o other people, in the hope of getting their validation and eventually failing to do that. This tendency of us goes to everyone, our bosses, colleagues, spouses, friends, teachers, parents and other family members.
If your sole target is to get into people’s good graces and make them happy, it will never lead you to happiness, and invariably make you sad. And there is a simple reason for that. When you try to please someone, all your actions are focused towards what they need from you and not what you need from yourself, what really makes you happy. So following such a vague ideology will only get you hurt.
You can choose to be kind and helpful but! You can really help people come out of their trauma, while maintaining your own boundary. And in order to do that your job is not to hold their hand, it’s just to show them the way and help them figure it out on themselves. If you try to do all their jobs for them, just to please them, you will invariably disappoint yourself. It will not teach them the lesson that they needed to learn so that they could do this process when you are not around, neither will it satisfy either of you.
You have to keep in mind what you are doing; you are solely doing that for your own sake not for the sake of satisfying someone else’s need, or not to please anyone, not to win anyone’s approval or good graces. You are the only person you are trying to please, just you.
Pleasing people is a dangerous path which inevitably leads us to energy drainage and unhappiness. It is really important for us to remember how not to neglect our own needs. If we keep on neglecting our own needs we will become chronically unhappy and stress will eat our brain whole.
What can be the way out of this?
The first thing’s firth, we have to know our limits and we have to establish clear boundaries. Once we have done that we will need to communicate all that to others so that everyone is on the same page.
