The People Pleaser - A Year in Review

I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on a post from July 2021. In that post, I wrote about being a People Pleaser and the negative impact it has had on my life. I feel like as a society, we do not always measure success fairly which can lead us to become hypercritical of ourselves or minimize our accomplishments.

I have struggled at times with being a people pleaser since that post. I have put my needs aside, sacrificed my time when I did not want to, and have not always advocated for my wants. However, I have challenged my automatic thoughts of being a people pleaser on occasion and have made more of an effort to communicate assertively. Have I accomplished the goal I have set for myself? No. But I am proud of myself for the progress I have made.

I had to remind myself that this automatic thought has become part of my core belief system. Repetitive negative thoughts have made it difficult to break the cycle of self-defeating comments. This is learned behavior that I have allowed to be acceptable behavior in my life. Years of learned behavior need to be cognitively reframed and relearned and it will take time. Being patient with myself is learning to love who I am and love the process of developing self-confidence.

In this journey, I have learned that I originally wanted to change not only for myself, but I sought out recognition from others for my self-improvement. I realized along the way that this is a flawed thought process. Identifying that I have people pleasing tendencies was essential, however; the idea of changing myself for others to see progress was another form of people pleasing.

People have challenged my people pleasing traits and I saw that as a personal failure because I must not have met their expectations. So, my automatic thoughts kicked in and I subconsciously told myself, “I need to change to be the best version of myself for that person. I do not want to be a disappointment.” Pretty easy to see how this is a problem. Now multiply this dozens of times each day and repeat.

The personal growth has been the recognition of this distorted thought. The very idea that my thoughts are controlling my emotions, and my emotions are controlling my behaviors is empowering. And that is progress. I learned that my thoughts have power!

My perspective of life’s expectations needs to be redefined. I am not perfect, and that’s OK. I make mistakes, and that is also OK. I will have bad days, but that does not equate to being a bad person. I have unfinished goals, but I have not failed.

It will take time for this to settle in, but my negative thoughts have been put on notice. They no longer are free to roam around and control my behaviors on a daily basis without resistance. I am much stronger than I give myself credit for and I will continue to make progress.

Be kind to yourself today.