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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. I put out episodes four times a week to help you learn and grow and improve yourself.
We've been doing it for almost 10 years now, so if you want to improve your life, join us. Let's do it together. Today, I'm going to be talking about how to stop being a people pleaser and how to re-engain your own confidence within yourself or to just gain confidence within yourself if you've never had it before.
And so when you look at people pleasing, people pleasing is a behavior where people tend to prioritize the needs and desires and approvals of others over their own. At its core, more than anything else, it's a strong desire to be accepted by other people. And this leads towards actions that are more about making other people happy than fulfilling your own personal needs and your own personal desires.
And it's about wanting to make other people happy. And for the most part, it means ignoring your own needs. And this is one of the things that people come to me so often about is being a people pleaser. So I want to talk to you first about how it starts and then how it morphs into adulthood and then how we can actually start to work through it.
And so people pleasing usually begins in childhood. Kids learn very early on that certain behaviors in their life and the way that they act get them praise from their parents and teachers and grandparents and people around them. And so it's like, okay,
certain behaviors get me reprimanded and certain behaviors get me praised. All a young child really knows about or cares about more than anything else, just so you know, is does my mother love me and does my father love me? That's all they really care about. I understand that sometimes children need to be reprimanded because children are wild, right? But to the child, the reprimanding feels like a retraction of love. And so what do they do is reprimand
They will do whatever their parents want them to do to not feel insecure about their parents' love. A child, unconsciously, they're not consciously doing this, but unconsciously will basically become a chameleon to make sure that they get their parents' love. I'm so blown away the more that I learn about adults and how they were as children and early childhood psychology of how intelligent parents
the unconscious of a child is, is to notice, when I do this, I get love. When I do this, I get reprimanded. Okay, so I need to do this to get love. So then they start to change themselves and they build themselves into basically who their parents want. You know, for example, a child might notice that getting good grades is
gets their parents to be happy and to praise them in some sort of way. That feels like love. Or, you know, when I'm really good in sports, my parents get really happy. I got my parents' love. And so over time, the child starts doing these things more and more and more to get their parents' approval, not just because they want to. Like so many people I've seen are like,
incredible at piano and they just don't even really like playing piano. They're just like, yeah, my parents made me do it. I've seen some really, really talented people in sports and they're like, yeah, I don't ever really like this sport that much. I just did it because my dad wanted me to do it. Or they go to a college and get a very specific degree and they go through 12 years of college and
And they're like, well, yeah, I only do this because this is what my parents wanted me to do. It's not the only way that it happens. I'm going to give you more examples today. But I just want you to understand how it happens in the beginning. And, you know, there was a study that was done in 1978. And it was Dr. Murray Bowen and really, really well-known family therapist found that kids often try to please their parents to keep peace at home.
And this is called the differentiation of self. And so kids often don't feel safe expressing their true feelings. And when they do that, they learn to stop expressing their true feelings when things might be a little bit chaotic at home. And they learn to put others first so that therefore the chaos doesn't happen so they can avoid conflict.
And so people pleasing is a behavioral adaptation to your environment as a child. And it morphs into all kinds of these crazy things as you get older.
And for some reason, if you're a people pleaser, in your childhood, you unconsciously thought that it would benefit you. And it did. It did have some sort of a benefit to you as a child. It made you feel safe. It made you feel loved. It made you keep the parental and child connection between you and your mom or your dad. But as an adult, you have to understand it can turn to being
Way too much on your plate, overwhelmed, stressed, burnt out, resentful of others. And at the core, the feeling is I'm worried that I am not good enough as I am for somebody to accept me. So I need to change myself so that I'm accepted by other people. And it's probably time now that you're an adult listening to this to let that thing go. So how does it show up as adults?
Well, as adults, people pleasers have a really hard time saying no. They often feel really guilty if they do. And more than anything else, they really care a lot about what other people think about them, even if it means that they have to change themselves and stress themselves out and make themselves unhappy to be accepted by other people. And so they're usually very concerned with other people's opinions and judgments of other people.
And so I have a few examples I'll give you of just fake people that I made up that will kind of show you how it happens in childhood and how it morphs as an adult. Where it pops up is at work, right? People pleasers, they tend to take on too many tasks. They're really afraid to say no to the people around them, the people that they work with, their boss, their coworkers. And they feel like they will be rejected
if they say no to someone who's asking something of them. And for instance, they would rather be stressed with too much than to feel like they're being rejected. And so it can lead to overwhelm, exhaustion, stress, all of that stuff. In relationships, it might feel like they hide their true feelings to avoid arguments. So they're like, I'll just make sure that I keep him happy
and I'll keep him happy and I won't tell him how I really feel so therefore we don't get into an argument, I don't feel rejection and they kind of like put themselves in the back burner and it can really make relationships feel one-sided and unfulfilling. There's a study that was done in psychology today in 2012 with Dr. Susan Smith and Dr. Loya Riley and they found that low self-esteem
often leads to people pleasing. So people who have low self-esteem tend to people please more often. And when people don't feel good about themselves because it's not inside of, they think that it's not inside of them. What they do is they look to other people and they seek approval from other people to feel valued in some sort of way. Not realizing that more than anything else, like self-esteem comes from the self. And so let me give those examples I was talking about, right? So let's say
We have Emma. Emma grew up with parents who had very high expectations of her. And they praised her mainly when she excelled in school or when she did really well in extracurricular activities. And basically what that taught her as a child is that she needed to achieve in order to earn their love and approval. Whether it's true or false, that's just kind of what clicked in her head. And I see many people like this. And so as an adult, Emma constantly takes on expectations
extra projects at work and always strives to be perfect and does more and does more. And she often finds herself really late at work past the point where everyone else leaves. Then someone comes in and she's, you know, hey, can you do this? Oh, absolutely. She has a lot of trouble saying no to new tasks. And the reason why is because she fears that she'll disappoint her boss and colleagues if she doesn't keep up with her high performance.
see how it happens in childhood, and then it morphs into adult. You know, let's say there's a guy named William, right? His home was really, really intense and had a lot of arguments with his parents. And so to avoid adding stress, he became very compliant. He was always trying to keep the peace, doing whatever was expected of him, never voicing his own opinions or needs. He just wanted to make sure that the chaos at home, he kind of
was doing what needs to be done to keep everybody peaceful. And so he became the good kid, right? And so in adulthood, how's it show up for him in his relationships? William avoids conflicts at all costs. He agrees with his partner, even when he's got a different opinion. He lets her choose everything that they're going to do, every place they're going to go. He never speaks up. He often goes along with plans he doesn't enjoy just so he keeps the harmony.
And it leads him to feeling unsatisfied in his relationship and actually resenting his partner, even though it's not his partner's fault at all. And we will be right back.
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And now back to the show. So that's another example. Another example is let's call her Sophia, right? Sophia was often praised for being helpful around the house, especially when her parents were busy or stressed or overwhelmed. And so for this, she was praised for being, once again, another good girl.
So she learned that being helpful was a way to gain their approval and to feel valued. And so as an adult, she often puts other people's needs first above her own. So she volunteers for tasks at work. She takes care of her friends' problems. But the problem out of all of this is that she rarely takes any time for herself and to fill her own cup. And so she constantly feels like she's drained because she's
unappreciated. She's pouring from an empty cup and most of all she's just like burned out. She hasn't been able to fill her own cup up because she's too busy trying to do everything for everyone else. Let's give another example. Ava, we'll call her right. Ava's parents were emotionally distant from her. They just weren't really good with emotions so they were emotionally distant but they were very critical of when she did something wrong or got bad grades or messed something up.
And so to avoid this criticism in childhood, she learned to stay quiet and was told that children are supposed to be seen and not heard. I hear this so often from people. Children are supposed to be seen and not heard. That was like a really popular phrase, it seems, because I hear it all the time. And so what she learned is she learned to shut up, believing that her opinions, everything she wanted were just, her needs were less important than everyone else's. So she learned not to take up space and she learned to be small.
And so at work, she never speaks up in the meetings or shares her ideas, even if she thinks like, man, this is a good idea and I have a valuable contribution, never speaks up. And she fears that her input is going to be criticized and dismissed. So she stays silent, which affects her self-esteem because she doesn't think that her thoughts matter much. She doesn't think that she matters much. And so that's how it kind of happens in childhood. And it usually starts once again, that's pretty much everything that I talk about and pretty
almost always starts with the child to parent relationship. And so then it morphs and changes over time. And now if you're listening to this and you're an adult, you're going, okay, I'm a people pleaser. Please tell me how to get past this shit. So that's what we're gonna talk about. How do we overcome it, right? Realizing that you're a people pleaser is the first step to changing. Okay, I'm a people pleaser. Cool.
So here's some ways to overcome it. The first thing is to get really clear on what your people-pleasing tendencies are. So I've got a lot of them for you. Like, I'm just gonna just go off of a list that I made of like, what are the people, most common people-pleasing tendencies? I'm gonna go through them, identify. Maybe one of them are you, maybe all of them are you. But you have to get clear on what your people-pleasing tendencies are first before we go any further. One of them is saying yes when you really wanna say no.
right? You over commit, you don't want to disappoint people, all of that. Another one is avoiding conflict at all costs. You'd rather just, you know, walk on emotional eggshells
then risk someone being upset with you. Next one is over apologizing. Even when it's not your fault, you just say, sorry, it's just your job. You know, you do this to avoid judgment or disproval to get any sort of fights. Another one is needing external validation. So you rely on other people's approval to feel good enough. If someone's upset with you, your whole day can be ruined.
because it must mean that something's wrong with you. Another one is being a chameleon, trying to fit in with everybody. You downplay your own opinions. You mute your preferences. You just mirror what other people do just so you can be liked. Another one is feeling guilty for having your own needs. So you struggle with asking for help or rest or support or any of that. Another one is taking responsibility for other people's emotions. You
If somebody had a bad mood, you feel like it's your job to fix it. And so you become this emotional thermostat for every room that you go into. Another one is you fear being too much.
for other people. You fear being not enough for other people as well. And so you tend to censor yourself constantly, right? And another one is over-delivering to prove your worth. So you go above and beyond, you exhaust yourself to feel approval or belonging or that you fit in. And so those are just the different types that could pop up. Obviously, there's other ones that could pop up as well, but those are the most common ones that I could come up with.
So the first one you need to do is figure out what are your actual people pleasing tendencies. And then what you need to do is you need to start setting some really clear boundaries with yourself. You set boundaries with yourself. This is what I will do from now on. This is what I won't do from now on. And then you start setting really clear boundaries with other people.
And, you know, I always say there's basically three steps to communicating and getting your boundaries and setting boundaries with other people. The first thing is you got to get clear on what your new boundaries are with other people. The second thing is you need to clearly communicate that with the other person. And the third thing is that you need to stay firm in it. So if you're the type of person who, let's say you just take on, for years you've just taken other people's tasks on at work.
Well, you need to get really clear. I'm not doing that anymore because it's stressing me out. And so you get clear on what you will do, what you won't do, and then you need to communicate it. So someone says, hey, can you take this task on for me? You need to clearly communicate it. Hey, just so you know, like I've realized like I have completely overwhelmed myself at work.
Frankly, it's because I'm a people pleaser and I say yes to everybody. But it's really starting to affect my mental health and it's also affecting my work performance. And so I would love to help you, but I just can't. I just don't have the time and the bandwidth to do it. Right. That's clearly communicating it.
Now that person will eventually come back to you again and ask you because they're just used to that pattern. And so you have to stay firm and re-communicated with them. And so you've got to set boundaries for yourself and you've got to set boundaries for other people as well and be very clear on what they are, communicate them very clearly and then stay firm on those boundaries, right? It's about figuring out who you want to be, becoming firm in those boundaries and not getting away from that in any sort of way, okay? Which goes to number three, you got to get better at saying no.
I want you to understand in order to stop being a people pleaser, your favorite word from now on should be no. Not yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
And the reason why is because when you say no to another person, you are protecting yourself. When you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. When you say no to something, you're saying yes to something else. So when you say no to another person in some sort of way, what you're doing is you're saying yes to yourself. And so you have to get better at saying no. And the last thing is start to work on building confidence within yourself. A lot of times,
what we're seeking from other people and from the world, we're actually seeking from ourself. And so if your self-esteem is messed up, if you're looking for approval from other people, if you're looking for love from other people, what you're looking for is love and approval from yourself. And so the biggest relationship that you'll ever have is a relationship with yourself.
And so few people will just push that relationship away. But I want you to understand that the more that you start to really understand that the whole thing that we're doing here is building our own interconnection here in this episode and everything that we're doing in life, you realize, oh my gosh, I've really abandoned myself a lot.
And from this moment forward, I'm not going to abandon myself anymore. And so you've got to start saying yes to yourself and start building confidence in yourself by not being a people pleaser as much. And so that is what people pleasing looks like. That's how it starts in childhood. That's how it becomes what it becomes in adulthood.
And now it's your job to start setting boundaries, start being firm with them, start being clear and develop that interconnection with yourself. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in it. There's a lot of people pleasers out there and I want to be able to impact more people's lives. So if you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.