How to stop being a people pleaser

2 actions to stop being a people pleaser

“If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at anytime, and you would achieve nothing.”

— Margaret Thatcher

This is going to be a very direct blog post, centered around a single message that probably resonates with many people. Stop being the nice guy or the nice girl. You need to realise that not everyone is going to like you, no matter what you do or how much you compromise. The quote from Margaret Thatcher above absolutely resonates with me. Say it with me. Out loud and with power!!

"If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at anytime, and you would achieve nothing."

Say this quote over and over again. Why? Because it is so true and is one of the greatest weaknesses of many introverts. Introverted people pleasers crave just that little bit of attention, that little of recognition from others that validate our existence, our intelligence, the value of our deep insights (even though we may not have communicated it to anyone or communicated it clearly such that our intelligence is understood). 

Especially in the modern office environment where extroverts have a natural advantage and their loudness and openness dominate the workspace. We are competing with extroverts (and introverts who have learnt to be extroverts) for attention. 

So why are so many introverts people pleasers? My theory... is that over our life times, we've learnt it as the easy way to get attention and to get recognition. Who wouldn't appreciate someone who is nice to them right? It would seem logical and natural that anyone would appreciate your presence, and the level of effort you're putting in to make their lives easier right? In school we're taught to be polite, be respectful, play nice, and cooperate. We're rewarded for when we go out of our way to help others in school. I know this because I've done it myself. As Confucius teaches, the needs of many outweigh the needs of the individual.

While the ideal is great, we live in the real world, and in the real world, there is a sad fact we need to recognise.....

No matter what you do, there will always be people who don't like you.

And the even sadder fact is, the more someone is obvious in the fact that they don't like you (appreciate you, recognise you, etc.) the more you try to be nicer to try and turn that around. All of your focus and attention goes towards proving that person wrong and to get them to like you. 

Guess what this does? As you would've seen in many blog posts in the past, the more you try to be nicer, the more available you become and what happens.............. you lower you value to that person. You become too available.

So today, I kick off an action that will over time be embedded as the way I work. I will relearn to express how I feel, and I will relearn to express my desires. It's not going to be easy as I will have to unlearn decades of fuzzy logic that taught me to suppress my wants and needs.... to the point where I don't even know what I want. 

If you struggle today to express how you feel (i.e. when someone says something that hurts you, you get emotional but you can't express out loud how you feel) or you struggle to express your desires (i.e. go to your boss and state that you'd like that role that's just opened up), then I encourage to take up the same two actions. 

• Action 1: Relearn how to express your feelings.

• Action 2: Relearn how to express your desires.

Blog Photo by Pete Bellis on Unsplash