How many times have you said it?
‘I ate it because I didn’t want to be rude.’
Someone offers you something that you supposedly don’t want, however you choose to eat it anyway because you want to be polite.
The truth is, we don’t really care about being polite per say, what we care about is how potentially coming across as impolite or rude may make us feel, for example…
If someone offers you dessert and you genuinely don’t feel like eating it for whatever reason…maybe you’ve got some cool fat loss goals, maybe you’re just really full from dinner or perhaps you’re just not a fan of the type of dessert that they’re offering…
You do a really quick calculation in your head…
You weigh out saying yes vs. saying no and what the downstream impacts of each option are.
Do I say yes, eat something that I don’t feel like eating and avoid the risk of potentially feeling uncomfortable if the person offering disapproves of my choice or…
Do I say no, honour how I feel and risk the potential of feeling uncomfortable if the person disapproves of my choice.
100% of the time, we make the decision that we want to make, it’s just a matter of what we want most in that moment, which essentially comes down to…
Do I want to honour myself or do I want to avoid potentially uncomfortable emotions?
Whatever action that you take, reveals your priority in that situation.
A quick little aside here in regards to the dessert example…if you just simply want the dessert in and of itself, but you use the ‘I didn’t want to be rude’ dealio to justify eating it because maybe you feel some sort of guilt for indulging for whatever reason, that’s a different story…we’re not talking about justifying doing exactly what you want to do, we’re talking about actually compromising yourself.
Think about that person in your life that you have the hardest time saying no to and now picture yourself saying no to them, imagine them disapproving of your choice…
This doesn’t have to have anything to do with food, it could be a career decision, a relationship choice or it could even be something like deciding whether to go back to school or not…this applies across the board!
For me, that person has historically been my Father…he’s the person that I’ve had the toughest time saying no to…but perhaps it’s your Mother or you’re partner or your best friend or maybe even all of the above.
You probably want to crawl out of your skin right!? This is the feeling that we’re avoiding by quote unquote ‘people pleasing’…when we compromise ourselves, what we want most is to avoid these feelings…they’re incredibly uncomfortable and so instead of feeling said feelings, we take the path of least resistance in that moment and just say yes…it’s kicking the can down the road!
Expanding further…
We say that quote unquote people pleasers put others before themselves and that couldn’t actually be further from the truth…because the priority for the people pleaser is their own feelings. The avoidance of feeling feelings that they don’t want to feel are always of the utmost importance…
Not the stories that they tell themselves about how they don’t want to rude, or how they didn’t want to hurt the other persons feelings or whatever folks are making up these days…it’s all about the people pleaser themselves, not anyone else.
Ironically, the biggest self-proclaimed people pleasers are some of the most selfish people on the planet because they only care about pleasing you as far as how it makes their own lives more comfortable and convenient…that’s it.
It’s not because they’re too nice, it’s not because they’re so thoughtful, it’s not because they’d take the shirt off of their own backs…it’s because they refuse to feel the feelings that they’d feel if they didn’t say yes.
I’m absolutely not saying that people pleasers are sh*tty people, I genuinely don’t think that the vast majority of them realize that they’re being selfish, I think that they truly believe that they’re putting others before themselves and that’s why I wanted to put this article together because I’m hoping that it offers up an alternative perspective on this whole concept.
I talk about sustainable nutritional approaches all the time and it turns out that always saying yes isn’t all that sustainable because resentment begins to brew and the kicker is that it’s unjustifiable resentment. Reason being, it’s not on other folks to draw boundaries for people pleasers because people have their own boundaries to uphold…it’s on each individual to honour their own lives and their own choices.
People pleasers do occasionally say no, but they tend to only do so after they reach what I like to call their ‘yes limit’…
They basically say yes so many times that they begin to resent a bunch of their yes’, they dig themselves into a hole where they’re so tired, they’re so overwhelmed and overburdened by their inability to say no that they do one of two things…
One, they disappear…so they ghost you, they turn off their phone, they screen your calls…they fall off the map or…
Two, they have a blow up and then they say no for an hour, a day or maybe even a weekend and then they’re okay to say yes again…
I say blow up because the funny thing is that people pleasers classically overreact in certain situations because it’s not necessarily about what they’re saying no to once they reach their yes limit, but rather just that they say no and feel some sense of control and agency over their lives, for example…
It could be saying no in the loudest way to the tiniest thing, like going for dinner or not. When the people pleaser has reached such a high yes threshold, it’s like an emotional outburst and you can think about it like an overflowing cup…
They just get to a certain point where they can’t take on any more water, they’re spilling over and so they dump out a whole bunch of liquid and then they’re okay to say yes again…until their cup gets full of course…and then they have another melt down, or ghost ya!
People pleasers often blame societal, familial or cultural customs and claim that it’s someone or something else’s fault for their inability to draw boundaries, but the truth is that we always have a choice…some folks like to pretend that there isn’t a choice, but there is!
Now you could say that people pleasing is a spectrum and that we all have it to one degree or another and so here are a few helpful takeaways to begin to identify where you’re at with this and how to begin to shift it…
First…the most important aspect is awareness, you’ve gotta be aware and paying attention otherwise you’re going to be on autopilot and continue to do what you’ve always done because without awareness, ya change a thing.
Secondly, no matter the situation or the circumstances, acknowledge that when you’re quote unquote ‘people pleasing,’ the ‘people’ is you…it appears as though you’re accommodating others wants and needs, but it’s just a sneaky way of accommodating yourself…you’re only ever pleasing yourself, you are always priority number one…thinking that you’re putting others before yourself is an illusion, it’s a story…and an untrue one at that.
Third, be courageous! Courage is required because the feelings that you’re avoiding by saying yes all the time are clearly uncomfortable ones, otherwise there would be no reason to avoid them and the courage to feel whatever comes to the surface is required in order to change this tendency…you need to go through it, not around it.
Number four, give yourself permission to change your mind, for example…
If you say yes to something and it’s just not sitting with you quite right, you’re allowed to change your answer with one important caveat…
I’d recommend explaining why you’re changing your answer, for example…
Let’s say that you say yes to dinner with some friends, you reflect on it, you realize that you’re stretching yourself too thin and that in order to honour yourself and what you need, it’s better that you skip it or reschedule. Explain exactly that to the person, just be honest, it’s super simple and it’s a very ‘clean’ interaction…I’m sure that they’ll understand and even if they don’t, that’s okay too!
Don’t ghost, don’t no show, that’s some high school shit, just own it…honesty is the best policy and what you’ll notice is that as you become more and more clear in your communication with others, you’re going to feel a huge surge of energy, reason being is…
This is what ownership feels like.
This is what stepping into your power feels like and fortunately…
You can do it any time, right now in fact, you can start right this very second.
