This one's for the people pleasers
Logged 7 April, 2018 and is also a podcast episode
People pleaser is probably one of my middle names. It's a habit that has come so easy over the years, and there are probably many reasons why: Inherited patterns, observational learning and societal expectations, mostly. I think growing up “mixed”, that is, with dual heritage and living in multiple countries, forced me to continuously adapt and thus was often called to assimilate to the culture i was immersed in.
Reluctant
I meet so many folks on my travels that talk about their struggles with people pleasing. Specifically, trying to please others in ways that cause them to compromise a part of themselves. To play small. To dim one’s lights, as the popular saying goes. To file off the interesting parts and replace them with something less “challenging”. I relate to this. And if any of this speaks to you, please know you are not alone. I feel it’s also interesting to consider how we might be doing this in a world that encourages a “more is more” culture and squashed into a way of being that is deemed “correct”. I think about it in my personal life, in all my work “hats”, be it in “Yogaland”, the music industry, the world of publishing, the “girlboss” or women in business "scene”, social media and so on. How sad an idea it is that anyone would be called or required to be less of who they are. It’s a topic i’m particularly curious about.
I'm interested in what lies beneath the people pleasing.
What's our relationship like with ourselves?
Do we like ourselves and respect what we have to say?
Do we honour our voice and our perspective of the world?
Do we embrace our mission and our journey wholeheartedly?
Are we open to exploring and discovering and embracing all facets of ourselves?
Or do we not feel confident about what we have to say or do on this planet? Doubting our voice so much that we think that everybody else is more valid/ important/ entitled than we are?
I’m interested in us unpicking that stuff. Our mentality. Our relationship to ourselves and thus others. How we express ourselves and where - in work, home, public and so on. And how we look after ourselves in the process. This is often at the heart of my coaching sessions, getting down to the nitty gritty and befriending ourselves in the process.
So if you’re interested in exploring this further, i’m diving deeper into these topics in my recent podcasts, which touch a lot on expression and doing you, especially if you’ve ever been criticised for doing so. How to cultivate more confidence in yourself and what you have to say.
Have a listen!
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Creative coaching
Or if you want to dive into this stuff with support from me in one of my 1-1 coaching programmes, you can get all the details of how to work with me over here.