Dhru Purohit Show - #206: Are You a Chronic People-Pleaser? Do These 3 Things!

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Welcome to The Big Idea of the Week! On today’s episode of The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru talks to us about how to stop being a chronic people-pleaser.  In this episode we dive into: -10 signs you���re a people pleaser (3:48) -Definition of people pleasing (7:51) -Understanding the origins of people pleasing (8:15) -How to break free from people pleasing (22:21) -Why you have a difficult time saying no (23:50) -Why you don’t admit when your feelings are hurt (30:55) -Why you apologize way too often (33:24) -How to get out of chronic people pleasing (41:38) Also mentioned in this episode: -https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201708/10-signs-youre-people-pleaser -https://hhs.uncg.edu/pcs/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2019/11/2017-Soderberg-Fry-Anthropological-Aspects-of-Ostracism-ch.17.pdf -https://tim.blog/2019/06/11/jerry-colonna/ For more on Dhru Purohit, be sure to follow him on Instagram @dhrupurohit, on Facebook @dhruxpurohit, on Twitter @dhrupurohit, and on YouTube @dhrupurohit. You can also text Dhru at [phone].  Interested in joining Dhru’s Facebook Community? Submit your request to join here https://www.facebook.com/groups/2819627591487473/. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Drew Prode here, host of the Drew Perrault podcast. Welcome, everyone. Today is a big idea of the week episode. Big idea of the week episodes are where I present a thought, a distinction, an idea that's radically transform my life for the better. Today, we're talking all things people pleasing. Are you a chronic people pleaser? Well, if you are, this podcast is for you. And my hope is that. that you don't just get the run-of-the-mill advice. So often you'll find articles on the internet or YouTube videos or even Instagram memes where people say, stop trying to please everyone else.

If it were that easy, we would all just do it. And I'm speaking as somebody who's gone through his own challenges in life with struggling with chronic people pleasing, especially at an earlier age. And I'll get to that. I'll get to what did I personally do. It's sprinkled throughout the podcast, but I'll get to my specific story. Why is it, first of all, why is it that we want to pay attention to this challenge of chronic people pleasing?

Well, people pleasing when it's chronic will ruin your life. Now, for some people, that might sound a little extreme, but it's actually true. There are so many things that you miss out on in life when you're. you are stuck and it really does feel like being stuck when you are stuck in the place of people pleasing. And it's not just the individual interactions. Somebody asked you to do something. It's not something that you feel you actually can do and it might be to your own detriment. And you want to say no, but you can't. It's not just in those individual interactions. For example, when you don't speak up. It's not just your life is miserable in those moments, but it's

Also, because you don't get a chance to fully self-actualize when you're stuck in chronic people-pleasing mode. We are here on earth to self-actualize. We want to find the highest expression of our goals, our gifts in the world. We want to make the world a better place. We want to enrich our lives and the lives of other people around us. And sometimes, more often than not, when you are a chronic people pleaser, it's hard to step into that. It's hard to step into it fully,

which means that, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, you want to be a better person, you want to make your life better, you want to make the life better of people around you, you want to be of service to the world, but you can't do that when you're stuck in chronic people pleasing. You'll end up avoiding opportunities

because you're going to put everybody else first and put yourself last. You'll avoid pursuing love in some instances. I know many of those stories. People are not going for what they wanted to in life because they wanted to please somebody else. Often somebody that loved them and was close to them. You won't take as many risks

because you don't want to stand out. You'll give up on your dreams and put the priorities of others, even if it's not a specific individual, but it could be society. You'll put their priorities first. So the real question is, before we jump into this podcast,

what are you missing our? on by being so deeply woven in the fabric of people pleasing. What are you missing out on? Well, for those of you that are listening, are like, actually, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Am I a people pleaser? I thought this was a really good list that I pulled from psychology today, which has some good articles here and there.

And this is from an author named Amy Mooring. And she says, 10 signs, you're a people pleaser. You can check out the show notes for the link to this list. I thought it's good to touch upon before we jump into unwinding the topic of people pleasing. Number one, 10 reasons, 10 signs you are a people pleaser. Number one, you pretend to agree with everyone. I think it's so important for people to hear this list because sometimes we don't know, am I a people pleaser?

Am I not a people pleaser? So if you say yes to one of these or more, chances are you are a chronic people pleaser. Especially if these patterns show up regularly in your life. Number one, you pretend to agree with everyone. Number two, you feel responsible for how other people feel. Number three, you apologize way too often and often when it's not needed. Number four, you feel burdened by the things you have to do, aka, you've said yes to too many things.

too much stuff on your plate. Number five, ties right into it. You can't say no even when you want to say no. Number six, you feel comfortable. You feel uncomfortable if someone's angry at you. Number seven, you act like the people around you even when you don't want to. You pick up their traits, habits. mannerisms, often the bad ones, even when you don't want to.

Number eight, you need constant praise to feel good. Number nine, you go to great lengths to avoid conflict. Number 10, this is a big one. You don't admit when your feelings are hurt. So these are just 10 signs. Again, not my own. Psychology today. Credit due.

Got to give credit where credit is due. Amy Morin, link is in the article, I thought it was a really great list to help people understand that if you have some of these patterns at a level that is, again, chronic, you could be someone that is a chronic people pleaser. Now, going back to my opening statement, there's this idea that just stop. We hear this often.

And again, if you're on Instagram, you'll see this in memes all the time. You'll see memes that show up and people posting really cool quote cards on their account. And it'll say some version of, stop trying to please everyone around you. And to me, that's kind of like saying, you know, somebody who's eating a lot of sugar in their diet or somebody who wants to cut down some sugar saying, stop eating so much sugar. Okay, we get it, that that might be the end result. but it's not that easy. If it was, everybody would do it.

So to me, that advice is very basic, especially if you get it from society or sometimes you'll hear a friend that says, why do you keep on taking so much on your plate? Just stop. It's not very helpful. What I do see is helpful is asking why. Because even though we know that being a chronic people pleaser

isn't serving us and often isn't serving the people around us, what's more helpful to understand is the why behind it. That's what I want to go into before we talk about unwinding it. And actually, unwinding it is part of that why. It's part of the awareness that we have to bring to the topic to begin to then decide how we want to respond. So let's go into that.

So we have to first understand that people pleasing. Well, let's define people pleasing before we go into the history and the origins of it. So people pleasing is defined as a person who has an emotional need to please others, often at the expense of her own or his own needs or desires. The last part is really the clencher at the expense of her own or his own desires. Okay. So now that we understand what it is, let's untangle that a little bit by understanding the origins

of people pleasing, especially when it comes to our brain and our evolution. And to do that, we have to look at evolutionary history and understand that there's a deep connection to people pleasing and are roots as human beings. So let's take a step back and understand that any kind of complex living structure, especially the most advanced living animals on the planet, a huge part of what allowed them to evolve, including human beings, was group cooperation. Group cooperation was a crucial part of what allowed life to evolve into more complex living structures,

both individually and collectively as that group, including human beings and the tribes of human beings. Now, a huge part of maintaining group cooperation in any advanced living, organism is uniformity. Everyone acting according to the best interest of what the group needs. And if you've ever read anything on this topic, whether it was sapiens by Unival Noah Harari or seen any interesting documentaries, we know that even for human beings, but not just human beings. So much of what made us who we are today was our ability to coordinate together. But again, it's not just human beings. This is with other pack animals too. There's a really interesting article. I've linked to it in the show notes. It's an excerpt from a book,

and it's called Anthropological Aspects of Osterism. It's by a Patrick Sonnenberg and Douglas P. Fry. And inside of there, we'll get into the ostracism aspect in a second. But inside of there, there's all these detailed accounts of how group participation and cooperation is essential to the evolution of all sorts of animals that are out there. And there's this one section that they talk about wolves. And they talk about wolves required, just like human beings do, at their own level and consciousness, they require an ability to maintain uniformity, which is a lot of where hierarchical structures came from.

We kind of need a hierarchy. Some animals have it in the male. Some animals have it in the female. Some animals are rotational. But either way, we need a hierarchy. We need somebody in charge to help maintain the dynamics of the group. And the interesting thing is, when... The group cooperation starts to break down.

Even animals like wolves practice a form of ostracization. They ostracize other members. And interestingly enough, ostracizing other members, even with wolves, some of the data that they featured in this chapter, talked about how wolves that are ostracize have higher rates of mortality. If you're kicked out of the group because you've been acting up, picking fights, stealing people's foods, or doing whatever wolves do, and you're kicked out,

you are less likely to survive on your own. You and your immediate pack, if you have a micro pack, you know, your own mate or cubs or whatever, you're kicked out of the group. You guys all have a chance of dying earlier. Well, the article goes on further, and it documents more examples from different hunter-gatherer tribes all over the world and how ostracistism

ostracizing somebody, kicking them out of the group, is used as another tool to punish anyone that acts out differently according to the group. Now, why is this important? It's important because ostracism, the fact that you can get kicked out of a group, is deeply woven into our fabric of people pleasing. It's woven into our DNA. When we understand this, we understand that none of us

wants to get kicked out of the group. because being kicked out of the group, at least in our evolution, typically meant you were going to die. And still, there are a lot of modern day hunter-gatherer societies that use this as one of the mechanisms to kick out someone who's acted out. There was a group that I spent time with, modern-day hunter-gatherer society tribe in Africa. And they're called the Samburu. I've referenced them a few times on this podcast. I've got to start hanging out with more tribal hunter-gatherer societies so I can have more references that are there. But one aspect of that they had is that murder, if you murdered

somebody from within the tribe, that was considered such a heinous act that it wasn't just you who would be ostracized. For six generations, your entire family would be ostracized from the tribe. And often, they would spread word to other tribes so that you would not be able or your dependence and their kids, great grandkids, so on and so forth, for six generations would not be able to be part of another tribe. That's how deeply ostracism can be woven into the fabric of society. We need everybody to coordinate. We need everybody to be on the same page.

So tying this back to people pleasing, we have to understand that a big part of people pleasing is actually woven into our DNA. We were designed to a certain degree to want to people, people please. We are hardwired to want to get other people to like us. And in fact, the opposite is also hardwired into our DNA, which means that when we don't get the approval of individuals around us, we tend to get very scared. And we were designed to get scared. What I love about this article, again, the PDF's worth it. It's a little academic, but there's all these great stories inside of

there is that rejection, different forms of rejection that were communicated. When somebody breaks the norms of the group. These different tribes had different forms of rejection that they would communicate. It might start off as a stern warning. It might start off as not giving them a seat at the table and making them sit on the floor if it was a hunter who stole somebody else's food. But either way, societies have different ways to shun people initially to let them know that we're not happy with you.

And we're going to kick you out of the club, almost the same way that we would do in high school or grade school. you'd get kicked out of the club because you're acting different or acting not normal for what the group is. And a lot of that was based on survival. And as that increased further and your behavior continued, or if you didn't apologize or profusely apologize back to the group, that could lead to a situation where you were permanently kicked out, which was another form of death. Now, in today's society, none of us are really afraid of, you know, we have the tools and mechanisms. especially if you're probably listening to this podcast.

You have a computer, you have a smartphone. We all want to be like. We all want to fit in the group, but we're not really generally worried about the idea of being kicked out of a group and that leading to death necessarily. Like it's not something that's in the forefront of our mind that if all of a sudden a friend group doesn't like us or if we say no to somebody and then they're not happy with us,

we are not worried about immediate death. Largely, most of us can survive on our own if we had to because primarily the infrastructure of something, society. There's always a supermarket. We have water pumped into our house every day by whoever's working at the water plant. So there's a lot of infrastructure that allows us to continue to do the things that we need to do. But here's the thing. And this is the big thing. It still feels that way inside of our body. It still feels that way when we want to be liked by someone, when we want the approval of someone, but we don't know how to say no or we keep putting the needs of them in front of our own needs

at the detriment and at a chronic level that it impacts our own lives for the worse, that's where it starts to have an impact. Life is a little bit more messier today. We have more inputs. Even in many ways, it's safer. We have food around us. We're not afraid of dying at any, you know, turn in most of the world, right? There are some other places in the world where things are very challenging.

So even though life is safer overall, it still feels down to our core. When we are about to disappoint somebody, it can, can sometimes feel, especially for chronic people pleasers, that we are about to get kicked out. And even if you don't think that way in your conscious mind and your frontal lobe, your executive function, your DNA feels that way. Your lizard brain, your amygdala, the part of your brain that's based on all this evolutionary history starts to feel that way. Now, the thing is, I'm going through a little bit of this history and sharing this with you because people pleasing is not a bad thing.

Wanting to please others around you is not a bad thing. I want people around me to like me and I want to go out of my way to make sure that my employees are taken care of and that they like me. I want to make sure that my, you know, parents like me, my, my siblings like me, my friends like me, but not at the detriment, not the long-term detriment of not just my own individual happiness and joy, but my own needs and. wants. So yes, you can look after people and you can be, you can have the urge to want to be liked by people, but it has to be a balanced relationship. It has to work for you because if it

doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for everyone else. When we understand this, we also see the flip side of the coin. If we didn't have any reason to want to people, please, to look after the group around us, to have a sense of reciprocity built inside of us. and a sense of looking after other people. If we didn't have that, we would end up on the other side of the spectrum, which in many cases, and from a psychological term, it's often called a narcissist.

You know, Mayo Clinic has a definition of narcissists, which is perfect for this conversation here. It says a personality disorder, one of several types of personality disorders, is a mental condition in which people have inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships and lack of empathy of others. When you have lack of empathy of others, complete lack of empathy, there's basically no desire to people please for the better of other people.

The crazy thing is that narcissists typically actually are very driven by people pleasing, but it's in the short term to make themselves feel good, not in the long term, which is a type of benevolent looking after other people. So a little bit of people pleasing is good and it's good that it's in our fabric of our DNA. It's part of our bonds of wanting to look after and have group coordination. A lot of people pleasing, chronic, that it disrupts your life and ruins your opportunities and prevents you from self-actualizing in this world. That's the challenge. That's the difference. So if you are a chronic people-pleaser and I'm raising my hand over here that I've dealt with

this in the past, it's not my habit and pattern anymore. Have a little bit of self-love and compassion for your own body. and your own brain to understand that it was trying to look after you. It was trying to look out for you. By trying to people please, it was trying to prevent getting kicked out from the group in one way or another, whether that was avoiding pain or disappointing people or what have you. So let's have some self-compassion.

It's kind of like if any of you heard my interview with Dr. Gabor Mate, he says, you know, we're so focused on addiction, but I'm just... I don't ask why does someone have addiction? I ask, why does someone have pain? Because where there's pain, there's addiction. Where there's pain that creates a void, then we'll find addiction to fill in that void. When you understand that it changes your strategy. So many people are focused on the addiction, especially if somebody has alcohol addiction,

if they have cigarette addiction, if they have shopping addiction, whatever type of addiction that's there, if we only focus on the addiction again, you would have heard this in the interview, if you heard it, then we might solve that addiction in the short term. But if there's still the pain, we create the void, and then we go on creating another pattern.

This is why one of the most frustrating things, it's not frustrating, really. I'm okay with it, but I say it for theatrical statement to have a theatrical statement here, but a frustrating thing is, a funny thing is, and my heart goes out to people who say this,

that, you know, fire all the negative influences in your life. Get rid of all the toxic people in your life. I'm not going to argue against that. Who should I be to know what's right for you? But if we don't understand why that pattern exists in the first place and you fire your toxic friend just for being toxic, but you don't see the role that you played in it, then you'll just go find somebody else. Maybe your next partner or husband or wife or somebody else will fill that void and you'll attract somebody who fills in that toxic nature that you need to cover up that void in your life. Well, how does that relate to people pleasing? If we don't understand that we are wired to want to people please and that we want to prevent being ostracized in the group, then even in the

short term, if we're able to say no more, we might end up filling our need to people please with something else. And I want to break the pattern. I don't want to train. I don't want to train. transfer the pattern to a different area of life. We want to break the pattern and awareness is one of the best ways to do that. So let's talk about awareness and action when it comes to the area of people pleasing. When we start to understand that we're wired for people pleasing, then we can start asking a different question. And that question is, how do we begin to break free?

Well, there's a article that I wrote a few years ago, and I'm going to pull a quote from that article, and I'll paraphrase it here, it says, we have to understand that no matter how destructive our patterns are, including chronic people pleasing, there's always something in it for us. And that's often why we keep these patterns alive, even if we know that chronic people pleasing doesn't work for us and also doesn't work for other people. because when you say yes to things you don't want to do, you build up resentment that affects your relationships with other people. And in the long term, they're just wondering what the hell's going on with you. Why are you so upset at them all the time? We have to understand that there's something in it for us.

That's why we keep the patterns alive. Now, here's a great way to understand this. Let's go back to the original list that I mentioned and see if we can take a few of the typical traits of folks from the Psychology Today article typical traits of people pleasers and see what could possibly, what could possibly be in it for us when we practice people pleasing? Let's take the first one. You can't say no.

That's a common statement or a common trait that a lot of people pleases have. They can't say no. What do you think could be in it for you? what do you get when you can't say no? Well, I can think of a few things. One of the first ones that is very obvious is in the short term you get to be liked. In that moment, when somebody asks you for something

and right now you don't have the capacity, which no doesn't mean no forever, it could be, this is a busy week. You have a lot on your plate. Your kids are going through a difficult time. You're going through challenges at work. Your cup is full. So you don't have the bandwidth at the moment,

but you want to be helpful, maybe in the future. But a lot of times, even for people pleasers, that feels like if they say no, like I can't help out right now, but let's check back in next week. That feels hard for them. Well, one of the reasons why is we want to be liked in the short term.

that immediately goes back to the idea of group cooperation and not wanting to be ostracized. Because on the other end, we have a fear. We have a fear that if people don't like me in every interaction I have, then I'm falling short. And then our mind fast forwards and says that I'm going to be completely alone. All my friends are going to leave me. My family's not going to like me. And I'm going to be homeless one day. I'm going to die alone.

Even if you're not thinking that your subconscious does that. in an instance, boom, just like that, it fast-forids the whole thing and we're left dying alone wherever we are. Well, there's also another more sophisticated pattern. There's something that we get when we can't say no. Again, the goal here is I'm trying to show you what you get. A big part of why we keep patterns alive is we get something in return. So another thing that we get in return is we get to keep up.

the illusion, the illusion that we can handle it all. That we're a super mom or a superwoman or a super ma'am or super dad or a super employee that we can handle anything even when we can't. And that illusion is important to us. It's ego. We get to preserve the ego that we can handle it all. And we're somebody who always has everything under control no matter what. life throws at us. I think you can see the challenge with that. There are fundamentally times where all

of us, the best of us, are in situations where we actually in that moment can't take on more. Does that make us less of a human being? Does that make us less of a husband, a father, a mother, a grandparent, a friend, a sister, an employee? No, it makes us human. You'll see this often with type A personalities is the showed up a little bit with my interview with Dr. Amy Shah and her talking about her story is we get to be this version of perfection. Maybe because when we were younger, our parents always told us, you got to have it all under control. Or we looked up to people who we thought had it under control.

We put them on a pedestal. And we thought that this is what a grown-up looks like. It's somebody who can handle everything and anything no matter what's thrown at them. But it's ego. It's ego to take something on. when we actually can't handle more at the moment. Let's talk about something else. What else do you get when you can't say no?

Well, I've seen this pattern in my own life. When I can't say no and I take on more and more and more, I get to preserve the idea that when it all sort of falls apart, that I'm all alone, that nobody's there to help me. I have a pattern from early childhood. And I know this came from kind of moving around a lot and it was a little bit difficult to make friends in every city. It's part of the reason why I'm so big into friendship now,

but it was tough when we moved around a lot. We moved from Kenya to Nashville, Tennessee, to El Paso, Texas, to Delaware. Even Delaware, we moved a couple times. And I always found myself at sort of pivotal moments in life going to a different school needing to fit in. And when you feel alone, and that's a little bit of your story,

your pattern, as we talked about with Peter Crone in a past episode, you can identify with that because it feels comfortable. So when I say yes or I can't say no to different things that are being asked, I also get to preserve the illusion because I have so much stuff on my plate. I don't play this pattern out anymore, but I used to all the time. And actually, let me just correct that and saying, I catch this pattern early. It's very rare that you can completely, completely stop a pattern. And I don't think we talk about that enough. I get better and better at catching it early,

which means that I don't have all the effects of that pattern in my life. In the past, even though I had tons of amazing employees in my team, I would often just say, I have to do it myself. It's all on me. It's Drew versus the world. And I get to keep up that story because that story is comfortable to me.

I'm on my own. I don't fit in. It's just me. it's a sense of creating safety by attaching to this egoic story because it gives you a sense of a false sense that you think you know how the world works. I know how the world works. It's me versus everyone else. Let me understand that now so that I don't get my hopes up and I can let myself down before

somebody else can let me down. It's a pattern. It's a story. No different than a childhood story that kills. tell themselves about princesses and kings and fairy tales. It's a story. The earlier you catch your patterns, the easier it is to untangle that story and say,

I have a lot of support around me. Or if you don't at the moment, let me go get some more support around me. Or let me go talk to somebody who seems like they have a lot of support in their life and see how did they do it. But going back to it, we always get something in return

for keeping up our destructive patterns, no matter how toxic they are for us, we keep them alive because we get something in return. Let's go to a different pattern off that original list from that article. You don't admit when your feelings are hurt. What do you think you could possibly get in return for not admitting when your feelings are hurt? Again, you can't say no.

You don't admit when your feelings are hurt. these are all signs of a chronic people pleaser. So my punchline is we keep these patterns alive because we get something in return. So what do you think you get in return when you don't admit your feelings are hurt? How about this? You think being hurt or expressing hurt is a sign of being vulnerable and you think of vulnerability as a bad thing. You don't want to look weak.

You equate being vulnerable as looking weak. So instead of telling people that you were hurt by their statement, you just brush it off. Instead of telling people that you're not sure exactly what they meant, but you kind of felt hurt by their actions and you just want to check in, you push it away. And you eat, you're hurt. You swallow it up.

You don't express it because you get something. What else could you get? Well, often people don't express their hurt because they want everything to be okay. They want everything to look okay, rather. I should say that. You want everything to look okay, which also means you don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, including yourself. You're worried that if you acknowledge your own hurt by vocalizing out loud,

maybe you'd ruffle feathers. But you're not just worried about ruffling other people, feathers, you're worried about ruffling your own feathers. If you are a chronic people pleaser and this has been something that you've been doing for some time, chances are that you've built up resentment to some of the people in your life, even people that you've loved, even people that you love currently. So if you don't want to admit when your feelings are hurt, sometimes it's because you're scared. You're scared that if you go into that rabbit hole, all this resentment and old hurt that never

was addressed is going to come up. Let's take another pattern. Our final one. You apologize way too often. Why? What do you think you get in return? When you are a chronic people pleaser and you apologize too often, you get something in return. What do you think you get in return for apologizing way too often?

Unnecessarily so. Well, one idea is you don't come close to a, offending someone, which just goes back to the statement of, you don't want to even be remotely accused of offending someone, so you just want to keep everything looking good. You know, in landmark form, which I did many years ago, they called this a racket, right? If you think about a racket, which is,

I've talked about landmark a little bit before and some of my mixed feelings about it, but how I really appreciated going through it, and it was a big, huge influence in my life. and I know that other people have recommended it before, Peter Crone, Gabor Mate, other stuff. I did it in the year 2002. It was a big shift in my life.

You can look it up. Look up the good, bad, and ugly, but just know it was a huge growth as part of my journey. But the inside of landmark form, they talk about a racket. And I'm not going to go into all the details, but basically imagine somebody in the mafia.

A racket is something that looks kosher on the outside like a laundry mart. or a laundry, a dry cleaning spot. But on the back end, they're selling drugs or they're doing something, you know, notorious. So often we apologize because we want to run a version of a racket. We apologize way too often when it's not needed, constantly,

because we're afraid of offending people. We want everything to look like it's okay. And that sometimes goes back to resentment. Another reason why, Why people apologize way too often is they don't want to feel like they're coming across is too much and it's a way to hedge against it. They feel like them asking for what they feel that they want, they're not sure if it's okay, but it's their own needs and things that are important to them.

If you're asking for time off or you're asking for maybe your boss to support you because there's too much stuff on your plate and you're genuinely doing the best you can, you apologize for asking in the first place. Because deep down inside, you may not feel that your wants are real or that they're justified. Well, why would somebody feel that? Or why would somebody want to feel that? Well, when you feel that your wants are not justified, your needs are not justified, it's another way of saying, I'm not good enough.

I'm not good enough. Or I'm not deserving. So you get to continue the pattern. that you're not deserving in that example. These are just some of the ways that when we take this initial list of people-pleasing traits, you pretend to agree with everyone.

You feel responsible for how other people feel. You apologize way too often. You feel burdened by the things that you have to do. You can't say no, ever. You feel uncomfortable if someone is angry at you. You act like people around you, even when you don't want to. You need praise to feel good.

You go to great lengths to avoid conflict. You don't admit when your feelings are hurt. If you are cycling through any of these traits on a regular basis and you suspect that you might be a chronic people pleaser, and you start to look at each individual one and ask, what do you think that you might get in return for keeping those patterns alive? when you ask that question, then something beautiful starts happening.

Not all at once. Not all at once for sure. But something beautiful happens, which is you start catching yourself early. You start catching yourself early and saying, am I saying no right now? Because am I not saying no, rather? Or am I saying yes right now?

because I want to be liked. Even though I don't want to do this thing. Am I saying yes because I want to be light? Why do I want to be like? Because I'm afraid of being ostracized. I'm afraid of being kicked out. I'm afraid of not being able to keep this egoic vision that I'm a superwoman, man, person, human being,

dad, mother, brother, boss, employee, grandparent, whatever, child, dissecting these patterns. and seeing what we get in return is a huge part of untangling and breaking the cycle of people pleasing. It's my first big idea and recommendation. And it took the entire podcast 38 minutes so far to set it up. And I'm glad I took the time to do it. Because when you get it, you get it. And now you start looking for that pattern in every aspect of your life, not just with chronic people pleasing. My second big idea to help you untangle people pleasing.

Chronic people pleasing is give yourself time. Take the most common areas of your life where you tend to chronic people please where you can't say no even though you want to and buy yourself time. What does that look like? You're on the phone with somebody and they ask, can you do this thing? How do you feel about that thing? And typically, let's say you had a response. They're asking you to maybe take care of something that you just don't have the capacity for in this moment, which, by the way, doesn't mean that you don't care.

There's a lot of other ways to showcase that you care. But they're asking you for something. You don't have the capacity to in this moment or you can't do it in the exact same way you want to. For example, they might be asking you, let's say it's a family member asking you for money. because they're going through a tough time. Well, okay, great. If you budgeted for it and you have the money, fantastic, do whatever you want.

I've done that a bunch. But what about when you don't have it? What about when you can't do the thing that somebody's asking for? What about if it's going to significantly affect your life for the worst, which will impact that relationship? Well, buying time is one way

to allow yourself to figure out what's going on. And it's very simple. You can do it when somebody makes an ask. You can say, can I get back to you. Or let me think about that. I need to get back to you. Not even, is it okay to get back to you?

I mean, fine. You can say that if you want to be pleasant and if the conversation requires it, but it's like, totally hear you, let me get back to you. And just take a few minutes Take a few moments to pause and talk it out. Journal.

Talk to a friend. Figure out what's going on and what all the different layers are to where you typically would have just said yes. It's fine. No, don't worry. It's okay. I'll do it or whatever it might be. Buy yourself time.

Buying yourself time so you can untangle the patterns and also start to break free. You can get out of your default neural network. Number three, my third big idea that will support you in the process of breaking out of chronic people pleasing is this. There's a quote that I've chaired from Jerry Colonna, who is an executive coach, early venture capitalist and now a coach. Really great interview with him and Tim Ferriss, if you Google it. We'll link to it in the show notes. But he has a great quote. I'm hoping to have him on the podcast soon.

He has a great quote and his quote says, how am I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want? When you're aware that these patterns are going on, then you buy yourself time. The third one is understanding that generally people are treating us how we've taught them to treat us. Generally, not always. There's many exceptions to the rule, but a lot of our close relationships in our life, people treat us how we teach them to treat us. So where did we set certain expectations that we would do certain things? Where did we play a role in this people pleasing dynamic? It's a good question because

it's not saying that it's 100% your fault. It's saying where was I complicit or how rather was I complicit in creating the conditions I say I don't want. So somebody keeps on asking you and putting you in awkward situations, did you play a part in that? And now do you have to reset expectations? Whether those expectations were implicit or explicit, right? There's two types of expectations. Sometimes there's expectations that just two people have between them that are just understood or that both parties think are understood, even if it's not outwardly spoken. And then there's explicit. That's where an expectation is very clearly stated. around you. And part of breaking out of being a chronic people pleaser is resetting those expectations

even if that's painful to folks around you. And by the way, sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's just simply, hey, listen, I know you like to rely on me for this and I often say yes, but actually I realize I can't do this or I don't want to do this. And I'd love to just reset a little bit. And then the person says, totally cool. Yeah, no worries. I actually thought you liked it. I've had that before with business partners in the past. We've had to reset who works on what inside of a business.

And then when I just said it, they're like, okay, yeah, totally cool. How do you want to handle it moving forward? Who should do it? And you're like, wow, it's crazy that I didn't speak up before. And other times you speak up. And people are not okay with what you say. and which, by the way, is a huge part of being someone who breaks out of people pleasing is that it's okay that people have their own response.

It's okay if they're upset. It's okay if they're angry. It's okay if they don't understand you. But what's not okay is you not speaking up about what you need. That's what we need to focus on. People pleasers, chronic people pleasers tend to focus on what the other person's going to say and how that's going to be processed. I'm not saying don't think about it.

I'm just saying what somebody else shares about what works for them or doesn't work for them is theirs. It's not yours. Now, how you process it is yours. And by the way, it's their right. Just like it's your right to speak up about things that don't work for you. It's their right. It's their right to not understand you.

It's their right to be frustrated. That doesn't make it right, but is there right. And part of this, if you've ever listened to our. interview with Dr. Joan Rosenberg is she said confidence. I'm paraphrasing here, but she says confidence is going through a situation and knowing that no matter how it turns out, you're going to be okay. And that's part of breaking out of being a people pleaser. You're not afraid if the other person is not okay with what you say and speak up about because it's okay if they're not okay. Now, you'll deal with what has to happen next.

But you still have to speak up because you're not okay with it. And they might just have to deal with it. How they respond is on them. But most importantly, you got to speak up about what you feel. And that will give you confidence. It'll give you confidence to say no more often. It'll give you confidence to break patterns more often and not be a chronic people pieceer because you know that if somebody's not okay with it,

It's not the end of the world. You'll just work through it in one way or another. Or they'll just have to get over it one day. Awareness of our patterns is everything in life. The more often we're aware, the less we need tactics because it's more about the strategy. Strategy is their strategy when it comes to people pleasing is there's a reason I keep my patterns alive, even if I don't think so. Let me investigate. It's like teaching you how.

how to fish on your own. Buying time and asking for a little bit more time before you respond, great. That's a good tactic. Right? That's a good tactic and we need a little bit of both. We need strategy. We need tactic. But I'm sure I could give you a ton more tactics that are here.

But at some point in town, every tactic breaks down. At some point in time, every tactic breaks down if we're not aware of our pattern. Because we will want it to break down when we don't feel good enough. We don't feel smart enough, when we don't feel worthy enough. When our biology is afraid of being ostracized. If we're aware that those things are in the background, it's easier to break the pattern, which means it's easier to break out of the pain and suffering

that we put ourselves to. It's also easier. It's our final concluding thought. It's also easier to give ourselves a sense of self-compassion. If you're a chronic people pleaser, if you've messed up in your life and I know I have and I've made mistakes and I've said yes to a bunch of things that I didn't want to do and I've let people down and I've messed up business opportunities and you know I've apologized to those folks in my life but I have to have self compassion for

myself and I hope you have self compassion for yourself too because you're wired to want people to like you it comes from a genuine place but in understanding that and understanding that it's part of our wiring and it's trying to protect us from this imminent threat of dying and being ostracized, we can go in a different direction because that old playbook is not working for us anymore. We need a new playbook, a playbook of awareness, self-compassion, and a little bit of bad assness. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast on chronic people pleasing.

If you did, a huge way to say thank you to me. If you enjoyed it, sure you can leave a review, a rating and all that other good stuff, but actually I'd much prefer that you send this podcast, send this podcast to one or two people in your life who you think could benefit from it. That would make my day. But more importantly, it could change their life. This is Drew Perot here on the Drew Perot. podcast signing off for this week's big idea.

See you again next week.