The more you please, the more you ultimately lose yourself, and others. Let me explain.
Being a recovering ‘eternal pleaser’ myself, I know all about it. Of course, I am not talking about helping people out, about doing something you know will make somebody happy, no. What I am talking about is: systematically doing what pleases another person, whatever the situation is, whatever you feel, always choosing what the other person wants.
That’s how you ultimately lose yourself. For me, it even came to the point that, even when people insisted on me telling what I would like most, that I could not even answer anymore. I did not even know anymore what I wanted, what I liked, what I preferred. I had just vanished as me, as the person I was. The most shocking point is, and here is something all pleasers should really remember, that even when you please people who need to be pleased all the time, it’s never enough. They can never be pleased enough. So, it’s a lose-lose situation. They stay unhappy and you feel completely invisible.
Then why do we keep doing it?
We do it out of fear. We fear we will not be lovable when we don’t do what the other person likes. We fear that we will be considered difficult when we choose to do something we like. We fear that we are not good enough, that we are not worthy of choosing what we would love to do, to eat, to say. When you do it long enough, you start believing this and it becomes your modus operandi to the point that people walk all over you, to the point that people don’t see you anymore, that they don’t respect you anymore, and in that behavior, you find the confirmation of your false belief that you are not worthy.
Anita Moorjani writes about this in her book ‘Dying to be me’. She too was always putting other people first, was always trying to please other people, trying to be ‘no trouble’, trying to fit in, … to the point where she got really, really sick and had her NDE (Near Death Experience). She came out of it, having ‘seen the light’, having felt this huge Love, this Love that unites us all, this Love that we all came from and that we all are. She then finally knew that she was good enough, that she was lovable, that she was deserving too, and that she had every right to be who she really was, who she was meant to be when she came into the world. That’s when she was finally free from the false belief that she was not enough.
I would like to ask all the pleasers amongst you:
Be who you are. You really are enough.
Stop thinking people won’t love you when you say no. The only people getting angry when you set boundaries, are the people taking advantage of you not having any**.
Live your life. You too, have as much right as anyone else to do the things you like in life.
Love yourself as you love other people. If you were/are willing to please other people, then you should be willing to please yourself too!
This week’s blog is a short, and hopefully powerful wake-up call:
Love yourself as you love your loved ones!
Stop making yourself invisible.
When you do the things that come from within, from your heart, from who you really are, then you expand your energy and you vibrate in this positive, loving energy.
When you please others and deny what your heart is longing for, you diminish your energy and you’ll get sick. You’ll vibrate on a low frequency and that is what the people around you will feel too. Everyone loses when you are not living your purpose in life.
The highest form of loving, is making sure you are living as your Highest Self. That’s when you are the best version of you and that’s when you’ll be healthy, happy, and confident!! It’s the best gift you can give yourself AND others. Living on that high vibrational frequency is way better than pleasing others and diminishing yourself. Living from your heart makes everybody happy as that is what you’re here for, as that is your purpose in life.
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Katrien
*’Dying To Be Me’ by Anita Moorjani
**Be More with Less. Courtney Carver