Are you a people pleaser?
I think to some extent we all are.
As a business owner, it is my job to give people what they value.
Thus, I get the people pleaser mentality.
It is easy to get sucked into helping people or changing your way of doing something to make somebody happy as it makes us feel good and feel like a hero.
I don’t know how it is for you, but for me no matter what I do there is always somebody who is unhappy with something I’m doing…NO MATTER HOW MUCH I IMPROVE IT.
I will have one person tell me how much they love a new training phase and two minutes later somebody else will tell me how it is their least favorite.
There is no area of my life that I don’t get both Jekyll and Hyde.
So, what is a person to do?
1. Prioritize Yourself
Never allow pleasing others to get in the way of taking care of yourself for extended periods of time. This is a lose-lose scenario.
You can only get away with this so long before your world comes off the tracks.
When your world comes off the tracks your ability to help others diminishes rapidly.
Lose for you and lose for the rest of the world.
2. Know Your Goals and Stick to Them
When you know exactly what you want to accomplish it is easier to say “no” to things that don’t align with your goals.
If your goal is to lose weight and you are deadset on doing it you are much more likely to say no when your spouse’s mother offers you the specialty dessert that she spent all day making “just for you.”
3. Know Where You Stand and Stand There
If I designed workouts based on the opinions of people who know nothing about exercise the workouts would be less than effective.
If I designed workouts based on how bodybuilders train it would not have the desired result for Kvellians.
If you simply go with the whim of everybody else and have no firm stand you will spin your wheels or worse.
For every one way of doing something, there are thousands more.
Choose your ground and stand there.
4. Care Less to Care More
Care less about what other people think about you.
Care less about making everybody happy.
Care less about people liking you.
After all most people don’t even REALLY know you!
Care MORE about what you think of yourself.
Care MORE about making yourself happy.
Care MORE about you liking other people.
Care MORE about living by your values.
After all, you know yourself better than anyone else!
5. Be You
You are you for a reason.
You have specific qualities, traits, and expertise to bring to the world.
Do more of those things.
Just like your fingerprints, your human-print is undeniably you, stop trying to be somebody else.
Be more you.
Be concerned less with what other people think you should be and intenstly concerned with the person you are.
Do the things that help express who you are at your core.
Be a people pleaser all you want as long as it aligns with pleasing and taking care of yourself.
Remember you are “people” too.
Brett “Recovering People Pleaser” Denton