With my own story, I could pick out any area of my life, career, relationships or whatever else and I can give an example of how people pleasing has had an adverse effect on my life.
I would find it hard to find a partner or keep one around because I’d be too nice to her, try and do everything she wanted. Or in work, I’d be trying too hard to do what is best not just for my manager by for the customers also and in the end becoming a little too needy and failing at what I needed to achieve.
Finally, I ended up with friends who became takers that never reciprocated my acts of friendship whenever I needed something in return. People pleasing became a part of my personality. In the end, I just needed to be myself, do the things that pleased me and in a way that suited my values and integrity, that it just works out.
Does this sound familiar to anything in your own life?
If it does, you might be a people pleaser. While it is fine to help others in situations that suit your values and integrity, you still have to adapt and not always give in to others. Taking charge will help you become more in control of what you do and don’t do and build confidence in your ability to say no.
Now, lets look at the 5 ways people pleasers find it more difficult to find success.
1. They end up giving up what is important
So, here is an example of how this can make success more difficult:
You are at work, your shift is coming to an end, but then your manager approaches you and asks “Hey, is there any chance you can stay on a bit later today? We have got some new projects and need your help to get things rolling as soon as possible.” Now that same night you have planned to take your family out to celebrate that your partner has had promotion at work. Your romantic partner has been excited about it all week. As a people pleaser, you can’t just say no to your manager — can you?
Don’t give up what is important to you because you want to make one person happy. Sometimes it is worth it to take overtime opportunities but on the other hand, your life is your own and you deserve to enjoy it!
2. They end up with lower confidence and self-esteem
This is a big one for me, I have suffered from low self-esteem and confidence and can say that it has got to be down to many things, but people pleasing is one of them.
If you are constantly making others happy, it could easily be to make yourself feel great, if others are pleased with you, then you become pleased with yourself because of it. But what if you do your best for somebody, and it is not good enough? They’ll not be pleased with you, and if your self-esteem is based totally on how others are pleased with you, your esteem will shrink and your confidence will lower.
Having others tell you that you were awesome is great, but if you are reliant on that for your confidence and self-esteem to grow, then it may start to negatively to affect your ability to succeed.
3. They have trouble with personal boundaries
Sometime, you may be asked to do something you just don’t feel comfortable doing.
A friend may ask if they can sleep on your couch for a while, but you find it a bit intrusive, especially when they don’t seem to want to leave after months of taking from you, eating your food, using your heating and electric and not contributing at all. But because you just want to please everyone, including your friend, you find it difficult to ask them to leave.
We all have personal boundaries that others just should not be able to cross. Sticking up for yourself requires courage but it is worth it in the end.
4. They end up running out of energy
We have limited hours in the day, so if you are constantly running around pleasing people in many different ways, whether it is taking somebody shopping, helping with decorating a friends house, extra hours in work or whatever, where do we have time for ourselves?
We need time to relax, rejuvenate and do the things we enjoy and to please ourselves. When we do the things we want to do, we fill with energy and a motivation to keep doing it and get better and we can really feel refreshed after doing it. But if that time is taken away by our habitual people pleasing than we just won’t have the energy to cope.
We may even be lacking sleep, which could even cause illness and mistakes to happen.
5. They may sacrifice their personal values
We all should have personal values and integrity stand point in our lives. We have areas of our lives that we can’t let others intrude on and if we are people pleasers there is a major chance that we’ll let others go against our values and integrity.
If there are people in your life that go against these values, a friend or family member, even a colleague that likes eating fast food. Now that you are trying to lose a little weight, or you could even have an illness that requires you to eat healthy, but your people pleasing goes against your healthy eating value and integrity in trying to lose weight and you go to get that cheese burger and fries with large drink, because you don’t want to disappoint. We have to stand firm in our values and not let people damage our integrity at all.
Featured photo credit: Creative Happy And Sad Emotions On A Man/Ed Gregory via stokpic.com
