All the water in the world cannot drown you unless it gets inside of you.
—Eleanor Roosevelt
How many times have we let someone else’s negativity, comment, or bad mood spoil our day? How many times have we overeaten when we didn’t get the recognition or validation from others that we so desperately needed?
Lots of us are people pleasers. Our happiness is tied to how happy we make others. No one’s happiness should be more important than our own. When we do this, we sacrifice ourselves, our happiness, and our integrity.
It’s nice if people are pleased by what we do, but we shouldn’t be living to please others at our own expense. Each person is responsible for their own mental state and moods. We cannot take on that responsibility for another or we are going to suffer. Many people pleasers wear a serene, smiling face in public, and once they get home, find themselves bingeing or eating to comfort themselves or to squelch anger, resentment, or even exhaustion from being a doormat. Here’s the truth: people pleasing makes you fat.
Having to appear like you’re pleasant and happy all the time is exhausting. It’s also a breeding grounding for self-neglect. People pleasers often feel they have no right to say no and to have needs, and may not have a clue as to what their real needs are. Food is often the only way they meet their emotional needs.
When we begin to take back our power and stop our people pleasing, we may ruffle a few feathers. After all, the people we’ve been pleasing have been benefitting from our behavior. Why would they want us to stop?
When we are being true to ourselves, we will sometimes displease others and that needs to be ok. We have to accept the fact that we can’t please everyone. If we try, we lose ourselves, our peace, our health and sometimes our sanity. If we want to overcome overeating, we can’t afford to pay this price anymore.
Setting appropriate boundaries protects us against other people’s negativity. We need to recognize that what other people say and do is a reflection of them, not us. Realizing that fact helps us to detach, let go, and not take things so personally.
If people say or do things that continually offend us, we can let them know we won’t tolerate that kind of behavior anymore. We may need to distance ourselves from those people. If they continue on, we can choose to let go of them.
If we feel hooked on other’s approval and validation, it’s high time we began to give it to ourselves. Compliments and validation from others are nice, but they should be icing on the cake. People with solid self-esteem regularly validate and affirm their good qualities and give themselves regular rewards (nonfood) for a job well done.
When you affirm your own worth, you become your own cheerleader, and then you have something that no one can take away from you – your own best self.
Am I living to please others? Or am I striving to be true to myself?
To thine own self be true.
Quotes
The art of pleasing is the art of deception.
—Luc de Clapiers
There just isn’t any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.
—Robert Mitchum
Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we ‘should’ do, pleasing others, following rules, or deferring to outside authority.
—Shakti Gawain
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
—William Hazlitt
There are only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s.
—Byron Katie
When I’m unhappy I need to ask myself: “Whose business am I in?”
Affirmations
I please myself; that way I know for sure I have pleased someone.
I act in ways that are pleasing to me.
I have a right to take care of my needs.
I have more to give to others when I come from a place of fullness.
I find peace by staying out of others’ business and tending to my own.
Taking good care of myself isn’t selfish; it’s having a real self to take care of.
