Being a People Pleaser May Be Causing You to Lose Your Sense of Self and Delay Success
Courage is Needed to Stop Being a People Pleaser
It takes courage to stop being a people pleaser and look inward to what you want and set boundaries around your goals.
Courage isn’t the lack of fear of disappointing someone, but the ability to move past the fear, embrace the fear, and take action or state what you want despite it.
It takes courage to be yourself, to not let others influence your decisions and behaviors.
And it takes courage to not let distraction, imposter syndrome, and comparison influence how and when you show up to provide value for your audience.
What is People Pleasing?
Being a people pleaser may not sound like such a bad thing because we’ve all been taught to be kind. But in reality, when you are a people pleaser you are sacrificing yourself for what someone else wants. People pleasers tend to go along with the requests or demands of others. They may also agree with another opinion simply to avoid conflict or make someone else happy.
At the end of the day, being a people pleaser can be damaging because you are not making decisions that are in your best interest or aligned with your goals, dreams, or passions. Being a people pleaser is a lot like following the crowd.
And what did mom say about following the crowd? It leads to trouble. I’ll always remember, and have used it on my kids too, if so and so jumps off of a bridge are you going to too?
Mind Blocks and Procrastination
As an introvert, especially an anxious introvert, and a people pleaser, you often get distracted by comparison. This includes likes on social media and the need to know that your content pleased others. It’s always about pleasing others.
The likes should not be a consideration factor for showing up and sharing content. In fact, they often become a distraction and a source of procrastination.
When you are focused on pleasing others and on who likes your content and how many likes you receive, you get distracted. This results in a loss of focus and comparing yourself to others and their likes. When this happens, you lose motivation because you don’t think you’ve met a fictitious standard.
Once you lose motivation you may find you are in a creative slump. Often times when this happens you’ll look to others for inspiration and ideas. You may feel like you need to do what someone else does to get the same engagement or likes. This can be the root of inauthenticity.
Being a People Pleaser Results in Inauthenticity
If you focus on pleasing others or focus on creating content that you think will get attention because it worked for someone else, you risk losing authenticity. When you create content it has to be aligned with your values, your passions, and your purpose. What works for other people will not work for you. Your audience will see through it and recognize that the content you are sharing isn’t aligned with your personal brand.
Your content isn’t about pleasing others, but about educating them, entertaining them, or inspiring them. It is about providing value and sharing your zone of genius.
Remember, people have been watching you. They may not have been liking your content or engaging, but they have been consuming. If you start to behave off-brand, you will lose confidence in yourself and your audience will recognize the change and lose confidence in you too. When your audience lacks confidence in you, they will also lack trust.
It’s Time to Stop Being a People Pleaser Or The Result Will Be a Lack of Trust
Without trust, your audience will decide to move on without you, not hire you.
Compare that to tapping into your own gifts and sharing what you know, what you are an expert at. When your content is valuable and authentically shows the problem you solve and who you solve the problem for, your audience will get a good feeling about who you are. The more they know you, the more confident they will be with your ability to serve them, therefore, the more they will trust you.
Instead of getting lost in trying to please people in the sea of online noise and losing confidence and trust, focus on staying aligned with your values, passions, and purpose. Create and publish content authentically from the core of your personal brand.
More on the attributes of a personal brand.
You Can’t Please Everyone
You will never be able to please everyone and you may never be able to have the number of likes you think are acceptable. But if you stay true to your values, passions, and purpose, your audience will relate to you. The more your audience relates to you, the more they will respect you, have confidence in you, and understand that they can trust you to solve their problem.
On the contrary, if you remain focused on pleasing people, you will lose your sense of self. When your sense of self is lost, you will start doubting yourself, become frustrated, resentful, and annoyed, and won’t bring positive energy to your work or life. Being a people pleaser holds a risk of attracting the wrong people. People who will be difficult to work with or who don’t have your best interest in mind.
Often times being a people pleaser comes from a deeper issue. It may be as simple as low self-confidence, lack of self-trust, self-doubt, or because of how you were raised. If coming from a family who was always worried about what other people thought, or had parents who were strict disciplinarians you may have spent all of your time doing what you thought others wanted to avoid rocking the boat. Or, maybe you like to avoid conflict so it’s easier to please everyone.
No matter the root cause of being a people pleaser, it’s important to establish boundaries and begin saying no, or aligning your decisions, in your business and life, with your values, passions, and purpose.
People pleasing may cause you to feel stuck or even burned out.
Stop Being a People Pleaser and Focus on Pleasing Yourself by Setting Boundaries
You can focus on pleasing yourself by sharing your authentic self and your zone of genius with the world. If you get a lot of likes and please other people, awesome. But don’t measure yourself or your business on likes.
If you focus on pleasing others instead of setting boundaries and establishing and adhering to a schedule, and rules, you may lose part of yourself and lose opportunities for success.
The more authentic value you share by trusting yourself, believing in your expertise, and sharing from your zone of genius, the more you’ll please yourself. The happier you are with yourself and the content you create and the actions you perform, the more confident you will become. As your audience gets to know you and sees your confidence shine through, they will be more confident in you and therefore, they’ll trust you.
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