Is people-pleasing just your nature or just who you are? By people-pleasing here, it means that you’re the kind of person who really wants to make other people happy. You want to persevere in heartfelt situations, but so that you can make other people happy. You want to really absorb all the hurt from all those you care about or even from your friends or even at the workplace so that you can make other people happy. You don’t want to hurt others. You really want to — you can hurt yourself; it’s okay, but you don’t want to hurt others. You don’t want to express your feelings because you end up hurting others. It’s all about others, others, others. “As long as they’re happy, I’m happy kind of attitude.” So, is it your nature?

Actually, it’s not your nature because have you ever asked yourself this? Like, how is it that you’re just the only one who wants others to be happy? And why is it that those people you want to make happy won’t really also want you to be happy? Why is it that they hurt you? The best way to really know if you have these people-pleasing tendencies is if you want others to be happy at the expense of yourself. Yeah, there’s another aspect here — like, why not see it from the aspect, why can I also be happy and then them also be happy? So, people-pleasing is not who you are. You just learn this behavior, and you learn this behavior because of your environment and your upbringing.

Let’s say you were raised in a household where you had to take care of your parents, say your parents were alcoholics or had mental issues, and you had to take care of them. And when you did not take care of them, they were sad or unhappy. But when you took care of them, you saw that they were happy. So, when you really, really live in this environment, you’ll start to realize that maybe your job is to take care of others so that they can be happy at the expense of yourself. So, when you start taking care of them, you start developing this aspect of like, you are someone who really needs to live their life to make other people happy.

So, in fact, you may even pick up a job like being a therapist, being a nurse, or something, being a caregiver because you really feel that that’s your purpose, your purpose in this life is to make other people happy aside from yourself. So, it’s not your nature; you learned this behavior to survive in the past. You learned this behavior to survive, and you’ll end up getting hurt because you’ll end up living a life where you are not really authentic. It’s not really authentic to make other people happy; you’re not because deep inside, you are feeling hurt, you are feeling hate, you are feeling resentful of yourself. You are feeling so bad about yourself because you can’t say no. You are feeling so bad about the actions you are doing because they end up hurting you.

So, you are storing this hate on the inside, like on the inside, you’re just boiling, boiling, boiling, boiling, boiling because you cannot really express yourself because you know that when you express your truth, the other people will be so — it’s not your nature, and you’re not really making the world a better place by being a people-pleaser or by making other people happy. You are, in fact, encouraging them to not take full responsibility of their lives because something about people-pleasing is you are taking other people’s responsibilities. And when you take other people’s responsibility, it means that they’ll never really grow because growing is taking full responsibility of your life.

For example, let’s say if I have a people-pleaser in my life, that people-pleaser tells me that, “Edwin, you don’t have to work. I provide everything; I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you happy.” Of course, I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah, that’s really amazing. Let me stop working and just wait, wait.” So, of course, I’ll be getting, getting, getting, getting. So, instead of you empowering me to grow and telling me that, “Edwin, I want you to grow and become independent,” you are making me dependent on you. So, you are hurting me in a way; you are taking away my autonomy. That’s the same thing with your people-pleasing. You think that you are making things better, but you are taking other people’s autonomy in a nice way, which is very, very deceptive. So, you’re taking other people’s autonomy at the same time you’re hurting yourself.

So, people-pleasing is not who you are, and you’re not really making the world a better place. You may think you are, but no, you’re just stripping off other people’s autonomy, you’re carrying other people’s weight, and other people’s burdens, so they’ll never really grow or outgrow it.

You can break free from this; you can break free from this by working on those deeply ingrained beliefs because it’s a belief which has become so stuck in you to the point where you really feel that you cannot let it go. And it’s not really hard to break away from it.

So, people-pleasing is not who you are; it’s just a learned behavior which you can still unlearn and start living a life where you are empowering others to take full responsibility because you know that if they take full responsibility, everyone will be happy and everyone will be contented with their life without depending on one another. Hope that makes sense, guys. People-pleasing is not who you are; it’s a learned behavior, and you can unlearn it.

Once you unlearn this behavior, you’ll realize that there was another scenario all along where you can still care for yourself and also care for others, but you’ll be doing it from an authentic standpoint. It will feel lighter, unlike the heaviness of people-pleasing.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.