Do you know somebody that is people-pleasing all the time? You may wonder; “How can we not PEOPLE please every day”? We interact with other people on a daily basis!
And you’re right.
We are all interacting with other people every day. We are polite and we are treating others with kindness and we’re courteous and all of that. So there’s always going to be an element of giving and take in any interaction.
However, it’s, when we people PLEASE we’re making the interaction an imbalanced interaction. And imbalanced energy as a result.
I love the quote by Abiola Abrams that says “People pleasing doesn’t allow you to receive“.
And isn’t that true? That quote, that statement really highlights that energetic imbalance that happens when we people please.
For the longest time in my own life, I people pleased, and that took the expression of me always considering other people’s opinions first, before I put out my own.
What happens when we are always considering other people’s opinions and direction, we are not living and leading our life with our true selves.
When we people please our true self is not expressed without condition.
Another day-to-day example, when I was cooking a meal for my family, I always ate last because I was serving everyone else first. And it’s a people-pleasing behavior of always making sure that others are happy first.
So putting ourselves at the very bottom of the totem pole in our own life is a form of people-pleasing because we put everyone else first.
So to address this imbalance of energy, it’s important to consider how can we shift that energy so it becomes a balanced give and take in our lives?
Because often when we people please (like in my example) it included energy of giving, giving, giving, and giving, and that is clearly an energy imbalance.
So making sure that everyone else is happy first is a very common pattern.
How are you people-pleasing and your life?
So why does it matter to stop people-pleasing and start receiving? Simply, I would say that when we people-pleasing we are giving our energy away.
And what I mean by that is people can feel when we want validation from somebody else. It often comes through people pleasing because there is this again, there is a condition.
If I people please you, I am expecting a validation back. And sometimes that doesn’t happen. And that just makes us give, give, give even more.
So this people-pleasing behavior needs to be balanced and a people interaction instead of people, pleasing is the way to look at this in a different way to balance that give and take. Also, you’re not leading with your own true self in your life if you’re people-pleasing.
We are not really in our full inner power when people pleasing dynamic are at play.
And people-pleasing hinders us from being in contact and connecting with our true inner passion. Because there is this desire to fulfill something that actually comes from somebody else. And we are not fulfilling or sourcing that inner power from ourselves.
So what does this people-pleasing behavior do to us? What does it cost us? It may be that you’re not feeling alive or you’re feeling bored in your life, or you feel stagnant.
Any of those energies that people-pleasing brings with it is very much energy of condition. “If you give me this, I give you that instead”. This is not a balanced give and take within ourselves.
So what is it that you’re giving away or not being happy with? Is it worth it for you to not feel alive? Is it worth it to continue people-pleasing?
So what does it take to stop people-pleasing and start receiving?
- The first step is always to start observing yourself.
So for you, what is the pattern of people-pleasing? Is it with a certain person? Is it within a certain situation at work? How does it express itself in your life? Be clear on that and then move into what is this behavior costing you?
What is it that you’re missing out on and sit with that for a moment because sometimes we feel that our current behaviors are really serving us and it does serve you in a certain way but is it for the good.
2. How do you know that you have stopped people-pleasing?
People-pleasing that’s a key question, isn’t it? How do you know that you’re no longer people-pleasing? One way of looking at it is when you feel that you are not saying what other people want to hear from you, then you’re not people-pleasing anymore.
Does that make sense?
That’s just one indicator of not people-pleasing anymore because you receive.
You have a sense of receiving what you need without saying to others what they want to hear or doing what you think people want you to do.
And it also brings, with you that sense of I am me, I express my true self. I express my opinion. I stand for it, no matter what other people are gonna say.
If you want to go deeper with this concept of people-pleasing and identify more of what that means for you in your life and the desire to shift it, I recommend reading chapter four and my book Wisdom Beyond What You Know: How to Shift from Being Driven by the Mind, to Living from the Heart and Intuition.
And I also going to put a link to a previous episode in the description box below here that has to do with connecting with your inspiration and creativity.
Because the more we expand on our own sense of life force our own sense of true self. And it has the same energy as creativity.
That’s when we can stop people-pleasing and feeling our own inner power, not having to give, give, give all the time for a potential receive something rather source that completely from within ourselves in balance.
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Check out my book Wisdom Beyond What You Know: How to Shift from Being Driven by the Mind to Living from the Heart and Intuition.
