Ep #03: Stop People Pleasing

episode summary

In this episode of Overwhelmed Working Woman, I’m talking about the habit of people-pleasing and its negative effects. 

People-pleasing is the emotional need or desire to please others often at the expense of yourself. Saying "yes" to things we don't want to do means saying "no" to something else, which can lead to unnecessary stress and anxiety.

I’ll teach you the steps to quit the habit of people-pleasing, including learning to say "no," setting boundaries, and focusing on your own needs and desires.

For the full show notes and transcript, head over here.

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What You’ll Learn:

  • We’ll take a look at your own people pleasing habit. How much do you care about what others think about you? How much does it bother you if someone is mad or upset with you?

  • The definition of people pleasing is explained as having an emotional need or desire to please others at the expense of oneself

  • Saying yes to something you don't want to do means saying no to something else

  • People pleasing occurs when we focus too much on what's best for everyone else and don't put ourselves into the equation, which causes extra stress on overwhelm. 

  • The steps for quitting the habit of people pleasing are outlined:

    • Pause and notice when you’re about to people please. 

    • Think about the request and use the “Love and Fit Test” - do I love this idea? Does it fit into the life I’m trying to create? 

    • If the answer is no and you need to communicate that, use a mantra like “my own time matters” and say no. 

    • Know that it will feel uncomfortable but get easier over time. 

  • Breaking the habit of people pleasing is a process and requires practice and patience

listen to the episode:

Featured on The Show:

  • Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to The Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. Hello friends. Welcome to episode number three. Thanks for coming back an extra thank you to those of you who took the time to share this podcast or to leave or write a review. That is amazing. I'm so grateful because it helps us share this podcast with as many overwhelmed working women as possible.

    Today we're going to be talking about people pleasing. Raise your hand if you're a people pleaser. I'm smiling thinking of you all driving or walking or folding laundry right now while raising your hand. Me too. I'm raising my hand as well. People pleasing really is a habit and I have done a really good job of breaking that habit almost all the time, but even I can still have a tendency sometimes, so I am raising my hand right along with.

    Now, let me ask you this. On a scale of one to 10, how much do you care about what other people think about you? So one being not at all, don't care at all, and 10 being it's basically all I think about. And also on a scale of one to 10, how much does it bother you if someone is mad at you or upset with you?

    One being, I don't care at all and 10 being I'm so upset I'm not getting any sleep. If someone is even allegedly upset with. If you raised your hand as a people pleaser or had a score of five or more on either of those two questions, this episode is for you. Today I'm going to talk about what causes you to people, please and how it affects your life when you do.

    I'm also going to teach you the steps for quitting this habit of people pleasing. What exactly is people pleasing? People pleasing is essentially when you have an emotional need or desire to please others. Often at the expense of yourself. That often at the expense of yourself part is the part that is painful about people pleasing, because what that means is you are putting your place below everyone else's desires and needs when you people please.

    When you say yes to doing things that you don't want to do, you're always saying no to something else. So if you agree to a 5:00 AM workout on a day when you are planning to sleep in because your friend wants to do it, you're saying no to sleep and you're recovering time. If you agree to meet your friends out for drinks after work, when you really don't want to go, you're saying no to time at home or time that you could have had.

    So every time you say yes, when you don't want to say yes, you're saying no to something else. I'll tell you about a time when I accidentally almost people pleased myself into a part-time job when I already had a full-time job. That was quite overwhelming when my daughter was in preschool. I worked part-time on Mondays and Fridays.

    So in order to get off work at noon on those days, I had to do like 6 million things before noon. I moved all of my meetings up to the morning. I touched base with my whole team. I had to stay logged on in the afternoon to chat in case there was some kind of urgent thing happening. So, I really decided to do it anyway and to go for this part-time schedule because I wanted to spend this time with my daughter.

    She was going to kindergarten the next year. My son was already in full-time school, and even though it was kind of a pain, I decided, yes, I really want to do this. Well, another mom in the class caught wind and just noticed that I was picking my daughter up at noon, which was a half day, cause this was a full day preschool.

    So she noticed I was picking my daughter up at noon on Mondays and Fridays, and she mentioned that her daughter would really like to go home with us too. So one time I took her home with us and the girls had a fun play date and it was just fine. But. Then she asked if her daughter could come home with me Mondays and Fridays, the days that I picked my daughter up from school early because her daughter didn't like being at school in the afternoon, especially when my daughter wasn't there and she didn't like napping at school and the mom's schedule didn't work where she could pick up her daughter.

    So she had to leave her at school unless I was willing to take her to our house for four to five hours each afternoon. The people pleaser in me wanted to say yes. I wanted her daughter to be happy. I wanted the mom to worry less about her daughter being at school. I wanted the mom to like me. I didn't want the mom to be mad at me.

    I wanted to be seen as the superstar mom, the one with the awesome career, but who could also pick her daughter up at noon sometimes and bake cookies in the afternoon. All the teachers would know how nice I am when they saw me take home, not just my child, but an extra child every Monday and Friday. Just noticed that all of the reasons why I was considering saying yes, none of them had anything to do with me or even my daughter's feelings.

    They were totally based on how everyone else would view me and if they would approve of what I'm doing and think of me as a nice person. And this is the trap of people pleasing. We focus so much on what's best for everyone else that we don't even put ourselves into the equation. My reasons also imply that my time or my desires don't matter.

    So this mom, who honestly I didn't know well at all, asked me to do this big thing, and after I had gone to all. Work it took to propose to my boss to work part-time and to talk to my team about it and move all my meetings. Someone else asked me to take that on for them, and I immediately considered saying yes.

    A good thing to do when you're trying to decide what to do in a situation, maybe one like this, or maybe even one much smaller than this, is to give it what I call the love and fit test. So first, ask yourself, do I love this? No, I did not love this idea. I did not love any part of it. I just wanted to be with my daughter, just the two of us for those precious afternoons before she was off to kindergarten and at school all day.

    Then ask yourself, does it fit? So this is called the Love and Fit Test. So do I love it? Nope. Does it fit? So let's look at, does it fit? I don't mean does it fit on your calendar? Because in this particular situation, my calendar was technically open at that time. It was open because I had moved everything in order to spend that time with my daughter.

    But what I mean by fit is does it fit into the type of life that you're trying to create? Also, no, for me, I was trying to create a special time with my daughter while my son was already in full day school, so that we could just do whatever we want. Lots of times we would just go grocery shopping or take a nap, or watch a show, or do whatever we wanted.

    So the love and fit test failed. I did not love it. It did not fit into what I was trying to. And as I was trying to decide what to do, I realized that I was considering saying yes in order to make sure that the mom liked me and that she wasn't mad at me. But the truth is, I can never control how that mom feels about me.

    In fact, I can never control how anyone feels about me. And maybe she already didn't like me, or maybe she liked me more after I said, no, I have no idea. And I have absolutely no way to know what she's thinking. To ever control how she feels. So when we, people please, we often tell ourselves we're being nice or that we're too nice to say no.

    But the truth is, if I had people pleased and said yes, I would have been lying and manipulating because what I was doing is saying yes when I meant no. The yes was basically a lie, and I was doing it to try to manipulate her into liking me or thinking of me in a certain way. So people pleasing isn't nice. If anything, it's controlling.

    Saying yes would've also meant giving myself an eight hour week babysitting job. When the goal was to spend time with just my daughter, I already had two kids. Taking that one on would've added much more overwhelmed to an already overwhelming life that I was having at the time. Luckily, I was able to say, no, I'm going to do a whole podcast about how to say no without feeling guilty.

    So more on that later. But for now, I just want to offer that no is a complete sentence. You don't even have to give an explanation. A simple, Nope, that actually doesn't work for us will do it. You don't have to say sorry. You don't have to give a 10 minute explanation about how you wanted to, but you want to spend this special time with your daughter.

    You don't actually owe anybody that explanation. Another quick thing I want to tell you about saying no is that when you're a people pleaser saying no will feel uncomfortable. So just know that that's the case. When you say no, you're going to feel a feeling of discomfort in your body, but that feeling of discomfort won't hurt you.

    It won't last forever. Just know that it's going to come say no and then move on from. Okay, let's recap and look at the pros and cons of people pleasing. So the cons are you don't get to do what you want. You give yourself more to do. You're trying to control something you can't control, and you usually end up being resentful.

    And the pros are nothing. There are no pros to people pleasing, none. So think about for you where people pleasing, shows up in your. Do you have a hard time saying no at work? Do you have a hard time saying no to your friends or to yourself, or do you find yourself feeling resentful towards your family cuz you're the only one doing everything even though you did agree to plan the whole family vacation?

    Just noticing where people pleasing shows up for you will give you more awareness of it, which is the first step in stopping or at least lessening your people pleasing tendencies. So if you're a lifelong people pleaser and you want to stop, don't expect yourself to listen to this podcast. Go through these steps I'm about to give you and just kick this.

    This is a habit you've probably had for a long time, and I want you to go easy and gently on yourself and try to do these steps and just notice what happens. And don't be judgmental of yourself and make your goal to go from being a 10 out of 10 people pleaser to an eight out of 10, and then go from an eight to a seven and then down to a five, and eventually get to the point where you have almost kicked the people pleasing habit.

    So here's what to do. Number one, pause and just notice that you're people pleasing or ideally that you're about to people please. Sometimes you won't notice until after you've done it, so you've said yes. You put it on your calendar and you realize, oh man, I just, people pleased. I did not want to do that. And I said, yes, just to make someone else happy.

    When you do that, just notice it. Notice what was going on, and then you'll have more awareness for the next. So ideally if you pause, you can catch it before you say yes, and just notice that you're people pleasing or you're considering people pleasing. Then number two is to do the love and fit test. So ask yourself these two questions and these will all be in the show notes if you want to like copy these to your phone so you have 'em.

    Do I love the idea of doing this and does it fit with the life I'm creating? This is not, does it fit on my calendar? It does. It fit with the kind of life I want to have. And then if the answer to do I love this is no, and does it fit is no, then you say no to the person. Saying No to the person is going to feel uncomfortable.

    So you might want to use a mantra with yourself before you say no. Something like it's okay to say no. My priorities matter. I get to decide how I spend my time, or I am working on prioritizing me. Any of those will work or any other mantra that feels like it speaks to you, that just reminds you that it's okay to prioritize and think about yourself.

    Okay, that's it for today, my friends. Get out there and don't people please today. I guess the opposite of people pleasing is really, uh, self pleasing or self, I don't know. Thinking about yourself, thinking about what you want to do, try that for today and see how it works. As always, feel free to email me. Or comment.

    If you have any questions, I would love to hear from you. I will see you next week.

    Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman Podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website@michellegauthier.com. See you next week.

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People Pleasing, Overwhelm, Tips, Say NoMichelle Gauthier