Some Truths About People Pleasing - Part 1

▫️You can’t actually please other people.▫️

Whether they feel pleased is entirely on them.

You might be the “but for” cause - but you aren’t ever the proximate cause. 

Think about the times you’ve done something to please someone, and they haven’t been happy or didn’t even notice.

Or the times when someone has tried to please you, and even though the intentions were good, it didn’t work.

That’s because you don’t cause other people to feel pleased. Their thoughts do.

Even if something you do or say does make someone else happy--you aren’t actually doing it.

They are happy because of a thought they have about your actions or your words. A thought they have about you.

A thought they are solely responsible for. A thought based on their experience and their social conditioning and a whole host of other things you have no control over. 

And so often, we don’t even know what the other person wants because we haven’t asked or they haven’t told us.

We just assume--projecting our own thoughts and feelings on them--and then respond to our own assumptions.

There are people out there who won’t like you or what you do no matter what. 

There are times where the people who like or love you won’t like what you do no matter what you do or what your intentions are. 

There are times you will please people without even meaning to!

They are responsible for their emotional experience. 

You are responsible for yours and for deciding how you show up in the world. 

And most importantly, anytime you say “yes” to something you don’t want to do or when you don’t like your reasons for saying “yes,” you are saying “no” to yourself. 

You are not pleasing the one person you can actually please - the one person whose emotional experience you do have control over: You.

A ❤️ note to you: If you know you people please more than you’d like and/or in ways you don’t like, I can help. This is learned behavior that can be unlearned. And it helps to have someone work through that discomfort with you. Someone to help you recognize where you are allowing other people to choose for you and to help you come up with a plan for what choices you want to make and how to do it. To get started, send me an email (jenn@jenndealcoaching.com) or sign up for a free call with me at jenndealcoaching.as.me/consult.