18: How To Overcome People Pleasing

Welcome to the Women's Success Coach Podcast. A podcast created to inspire growth and to help you learn, achieve, and evolve in your life ongoing regardless of your age. I'm your host, certified coach, and licensed therapist Karen Vincent, and I'm here to guide you and provide you with concrete tips and strategies you can implement in your life. I'm also here to inspire you, challenge you, and cheer you on so that you can create the life of your dreams and beyond.

In today's Shorty podcast episode, I'm talking about people pleasing, which is a behavior pattern in which you constantly seek to please others at the expense of your own needs and desires. In this episode, I break down what this can look like, how it can negatively impact you and your relationships, and I provide you with some specific information to help you move from being a people pleaser, to becoming a recovering people pleaser. Let's get to it. Well, hello my friend. I hope you are well. Since this is a Shorty episode, I'm going to jump right into today's topic all about people pleasing. People pleasing, which is sometimes known as"approval seeking behavior" or"people pleasing syndrome", describes the tendency to prioritize the desires, opinions, and needs of others over your own in order to gain approval, acceptance, or to avoid conflict. People pleasers can go to great lengths to accommodate others, while neglecting their own wellbeing. While not all people pleasers look alike, there are some common characteristics or behaviors, and I'm going to run through some of them, and as I do this, I want you to consider how many might apply to you. First. we'll start with overcommitting yourself. People pleasers have a hard time saying"no" for fear of disappointing others, or appearing selfish. Do you find that sometimes you take on more than you can handle, which results in you feeling overwhelmed or not getting to the things that are important to you, because you have put the needs of others before your own?

Another characteristic is difficulty expressing personal opinions or emotions. Do you have difficulty asserting your own opinions, emotions, or preferences for fear of creating conflict with others?

Next, do you rely heavily on external validation? Do you feel like you need validation or approval from others to make you feel worthy, secure, or to boost your confidence? Do you find that you question yourself, or doubt yourself until someone else reassures you? Next, do you neglect your personal boundaries or fail to establish clear personal boundaries? People pleasers often compromise their personal boundaries, which can result in others taking advantage of them. This ties to having a hard time saying"no" and expressing opinions, preferences, and emotions. Next, are you fearful of being rejected? Do you put the needs of others above your own because you are afraid you will lose someone if you do not do this? Do you go to extremes to maintain relationships even if it negatively impacts your overall wellbeing or causes you to experience negative emotions? If you answered yes to any or all of these characteristics or behaviors, there's nothing inherently wrong with you. People pleasing usually starts from a place of genuine kindness and wanting to help others, which is a very positive thing, right? The issue becomes when you are more and more often placing the needs of others before your own needs, which can lead to feelings of burnout, resentment, and even a loss of your own personal identity. People pleasing can also ultimately damage your relationship with others, and if we're being honest with yourself. In terms of relationships with others, if you are saying yes to things you don't want to be saying yes to, you're essentially lying to the other person. And in terms of yourself, when you act out of alignment with your values, neglect self-care, and do things you really don't want to be doing ongoing, you can lose respect for yourself. Now, even if you have been a people pleaser for a long time, you don't have to continue with these behaviors ongoing. I've witnessed many clients becoming,"recovering people pleasers", and it's possible for you as well. As I do in all my episodes, I want you to take some action, so I'm going to offer you several strategies you can try, and I encourage you to try one at a time, assess how it feels, and implement more once you feel confident with the first one implemented. All of these action items are in the show notes, so you can always go back and review them and read through them again there.#1: Buy yourself time before saying yes. So instead of saying yes automatically pause and say something like,"I would love to help, but let me check on a few things first and I'll get back to you by and then give a timeframe for which you'll get back to the other person. This will give you time to evaluate if you really want to do something or if you're just people pleasing so that you can say no if in fact you are people pleasing.#2: Say no without feeling like you need to give a big explanation. This one will be hard, and starting off with number one may be more comfortable. However, you should have a goal of being able to say something like,"I'm not able to help out with that, but I hope it all goes well", or something like that. It's so interesting that we feel the need to overexplain ourselves, instead of giving the answer and leaving it at that. Remember, when you say no to one thing, you are saying yes to something else.#3: Try expressing your opinion about something you normally would not. If you always go out to eat at a place you don't really like, offer a different suggestion that's more appealing to you. If you don't agree with the direction of a work project, share your thoughts in a collaborative manner, instead of not speaking up at all. See this as offering value rather than fearing that this will result in a conflict. I recently had a client who started sharing more of her opinions at work, and it has been so well received, which has done wonders for her confidence and self-esteem.#4: Share your emotions with someone instead of pretending you're fine. For example, tell your partner that you're feeling overwhelmed and need them to pitch in a bit more this week so that you have a little more time to tend to your own wellbeing. 5: Every day, write down one positive thing about yourself or one positive thing you did that day. Start to build your inner self-confidence rather than needing to rely on others to do this for you. Keep these daily check-ins as an ongoing list, and after a month you'll have 30 things you recognized yourself for. This activity can be really powerful.#6: Take inventory of your relationships. Take a piece of paper and make three columns. In the first column, make a list of the people in your life. These could be people in your personal life, or your professional life, or both. Then in the second column, I want you to write down how each person adds value to your life. And then finally, in the third column, I want you to write down how each person takes away value from your life. If you find that you have people with items in the third column, how can you mitigate them? If you find that the majority of people in your life have more in column three than in column two, consider getting support to help you reestablish boundaries, increase confidence, and create healthier relationships with others, and also with yourself. If you know someone who may struggle with people pleasing, share this episode with them. I want to support as many people as I can, and you subscribing and sharing this episode helps me do so. So I really do appreciate it.

That's a wrap. You should be proud of yourself for investing time in you, which is so critical for success and for overall life fulfillment. I look forward to having you join me for my next episode. And in the meantime, go click that subscribe button so you'll know when it's released, and you can also follow me on Instagram at Best Boss Lady Life that's at Best Boss Lady Life on Instagram. Also, remember that whatever it is that you're working on, you've got this and I'm here cheering you on.