SUMMARY: What’s wrong with not wanting to make waves? More than you think. Today, we unpack our people pleasing tendencies -- why we do it, what it costs us and how to drop the act.
Watch the full episode on our YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/xljVYer2abM
New episodes every other Wednesday.
RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:
Free coaching consult: https://autumnnoble.as.me/freeconsult
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME:
SHOP THE LAWYER LIFE COLLECTION on Etsy
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
SUMMARY: What’s wrong with not wanting to make waves? More than you think. Today, we unpack our people pleasing tendencies -- why we do it, what it costs us and how to drop the act.
Watch the full episode on our YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/xljVYer2abM
New episodes every other Wednesday.
RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:
Free coaching consult: https://autumnnoble.as.me/freeconsult
WHERE YOU CAN FIND ME:
SHOP THE LAWYER LIFE COLLECTION on Etsy
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
0:03
You are listening to the Lawyer Life Podcast episode number 10: People Pleasing And Pleasing People….say that 10 times fast.
Welcome, everyone to the lawyer life podcast. I'm your host Autumn Noble. I am a practicing attorney and founder of the Lawyer Life Collective, where we coach around all aspects of your lawyer life and career. Over the course of my legal career, I have worked in firms of all shapes and sizes, from boutique firms, to regional and national firms. And I've also built and chaired my very own practice group from the ground up. I've had the privilege of teaching in business schools and law schools, and eventually transitioned my practice in house with a Fortune 300 company, where I was able to start building the Lawyer Life Collective, before finally leaving to build my own firm, and do coaching full time. Now I teach all of my clients how to do the same thing. If you want to build your practice and your client base, establish some independence, and find more time get more done and generally just have more happiness and balance in your life. You are in the right spot, and I am so happy that you are joining us here.
1:24
So what's wrong with not wanting to make waves? More than you think, actually! Today we unpack our people pleasing tendencies, why we do it, what it costs us and how to drop the act.
When I was in my early 20s, I moved to Washington DC to work for a boutique law firm. While I was there, my direct supervisors were from New York City. So a farm girl from Iowa was quite the novelty in my little office. And I often was chided for my Midwest nice attitude. After that little excursion my next legal job took me to a national firm in the Midwest. There, my supervisor was a another New Yorker. And once again, my Midwest nice was met with much distaste. At first their criticism of my Midwestern attitude, it really bothered me. After all, I was just being polite, and what was wrong with that?!
2:24
But over time, I realized that what they were criticizing, it wasn't Midwestern civility. What they saw instead was an insecure young attorney, who was afraid to make waves, who was afraid to be honest, for fear of upsetting others, and who was afraid to really use her voice. What they really saw was people pleasing, disguised as good manners. You gotta love those people, pleasing tendencies, we've all got them! It may seem like simple Midwest nice, but at its core, people pleasing is rooted in deception. And we're going to talk about that today.
When we put the needs and feelings of others before our own. We relegate our truth, we relegate our voices, and we implicitly acknowledge that we are less important than those who are desperately trying to please.
3:20
So let's start with the why. Why do we do this? Why is this so appealing to us? Think about the last time that someone asked you to do something that you really didn't want to do, whether it's an additional project at work when you're already overloaded and sacrificing any semblance of life. Or maybe it's an additional nonprofit board position for an organization that maybe just doesn't really interest you, or a family friend who asked for legal help in an area that you know nothing about. I want you to think of that situation and see if you can connect with why the decision was hard. Why was it hard to say yes or no?
4:03
What was it that drove you to ultimately say yes, when you really just wanted to say, no? It might sound something like, well, I should help. It's the right thing to do. Meaning if I say no, I'm being a jerk, or I'm not being a good person. I don't want to disappoint anybody or let anyone down. If I don't say yes to whatever they're asking of me. There's going to be some negative consequences. Like, I won't get any more work from them, I'll lose a client. People won't trust me, people won't like me, they'll think I'm lazy, something along those lines. So as you think about those scenarios, when we say yes, and we really wanted to say no part of the reason that we do this, and part of the reason these decisions are hard, is because we have some story that we're telling ourselves about what it means if we say no, and why we should say yes, even though that we don't want to. All of those thoughts are incredibly persuasive in the moment, and they seem 100% factual, but none of those thoughts are actually founded in any facts. They're just opinions and assumptions. And they're all rooted in fear.
5:18
We worry that if we don't help others are going to judge us. We worry that others will think we're not a good person, or we're not a team player, if we don't say yes. We worry that something bad will happen if we don't follow through on all of these requests. And we take all of those worries, and we spin them into facts and stories that we tell ourselves. Facts and stories that we believe and that we allow to dictate our actions.
For some of us this is rooted in impostor syndrome, which is generally a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persists despite evident success to the contrary. When we're experiencing impostor syndrome, we often suffer from chronic self-doubt, and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that overrides any feelings of success, or any external proof that we are in fact competent, and good enough. Many of the women that I encounter suffer from various manifestations of imposter syndrome, and many of us handle imposter syndrome by slipping into a persistent helper role.
6:37
And PS, if you haven't listened to the episode on the Drama Triangle, it expands upon this tendency of ours to take on the rescuer role in the drama triangle. And that will that episode further illustrates this issue. And I strongly recommend that you listen to that episode on the Drama Triangle, if this is resonating with you.
Impostor syndrome persistently tells us that we are a fake, and that we will be found out and that eventually everybody's going to realize that we don't belong and that we really need to be shown the door. One tendency to combat those fears is to make yourself irreplaceable. And so for many of the female attorneys that I work with, this takes the form of being a constant, caregiver or helper or rescuer in that Drama Triangle. Recently, I had a client who was expressing to me how important it was for her to always be seen as reliable, and somebody that others could always count on. She was always offering support for new projects and teams, even when she knew she didn't have the time, or the capacity. And more often than not, she would come to our sessions operating on fumes, completely exhausted and frustrated that no one could do anything without her.
8:00
She was totally burnt out. And she really wanted to change the pattern. So as we explored her patterning, we came to understand that this was completely a mess of her own making. She consciously took on more than she was able to handle. And she was really reluctant to give up that part of her practice. On the one hand, she knew that it was making her miserable. But at the same time, she didn't want to give up that important and needed position. She didn't want people to gripe if she said no to more work. She didn't want people to judge her if she scaled back. And she imagined a parade of horrible comments that she believed her coworkers would make if she stopped helping everybody. She really at her core, she wanted to be needed and it was really hard for her to conceptualize letting go of playing that role. She wanted to be an essential player on every team that made her feel really safe and secure. But this is what impostor syndrome does. It creates patterns of coping with our fears of inadequacy. We craft ways to cover up our perceived shortcomings. To keep our little secret safe to keep secret the truth that we aren't good enough that maybe if we're just really needed, no one will ever see that we actually don't belong and maybe we're not as good as everybody else.
9:33
So we craft ways to cover up our perceived shortcomings to keep that secret locked away. In my client’s experience she was bending over backwards to be available to anyone for any project at any moment. She was constantly canceling personal trips and social outings with friends to jump on new projects. It had become part of her persona and it was what made her feel like she belonged. And it helped soothe those fears that she was inadequate. It really silenced the negative rantings in her head. They couldn't possibly fire her if they discovered her inadequacies, because too many people needed her every day. And so it was sort of this protective little game that she was playing with herself and with those around her.
Imposter syndrome, it plays right into this people pleasing and it creates a toxic dynamic that leads us to be really overloaded, and out of gas and stuck between, I really want to maintain this facade and this role that I've created. But I also don't want to feel like this and work like this anymore and so creates this tremendous amount of tension in our lives because we feel like we need that persona, to protect ourselves, even though that persona that people pleasing, is really destroying us.
10:59
When we know that our people pleasing and imposter syndrome is part of our problem, why is it so hard to stop? Rationally, most of us understand this negative cycle but there's something about it that makes it like really impossible just to pivot or wash our hands of it completely. In part, it's hard to change this tendency, because we are just really good at saying yes, and juggling a million things. Like over time, it just becomes like the norm for us and we're kind of used to it. It's a pattern that we know and we like the feel goods that come with it, at least initially. So when we contemplate changing the pattern and saying no, like really saying no for once, all of our fear and those worries are going to get louder. Everyone is going to get pissed, they're going to stop giving me work, they're definitely going to fire me, they're going to think I'm lazy, they're going to think I'm not a team player, all of those thoughts are just going to ratchet up in your head, the moment you consider shifting that pattern.
Those thoughts all come from the primitive part of our brain that wants to maintain the routine, and it wants to maintain the things that we know and are comfortable with. It wants us to keep saying yes, and chasing the endorphins of people pleasing because when we say no, and deviate from this pattern, our survival brain is like this doesn't make sense, we're doing something dangerous, you know, it's a real threat to our safety and survival.
12:42
Because of that, that part of your brain is going to start offering us all of the reasons why this new approach is going to be catastrophic for our lives and our reputations. Because biologically, this deviation from our standard pattern, it feels like a life or death risk in our brain wants us to survive. So it's going to really try to persuade us why saying no and changing course is only going to result in career failure. Our primitive brain wants us to maintain consistency. It doesn't want us to take risks because that equates to death. That is why our primitive brains freak out every time we contemplate making any kind of a change but especially when we start talking about boundaries and ending people pleasing tendencies. That's what that part of our brain is designed to do: keep us safe and keep us alive. So in order to deconstruct the patterning, and truly make a change, we have to start using our grown up brains, the prefrontal cortex.
13:50
We have to let that more evolved part of our brain, make those decisions and answer those worried thoughts. And we do this by using a few different strategies. Number one, we have to challenge the thoughts that your primitive brain offers you, we have to take the wind out of the sails of this drama cruise that has begun. To do that we look at all of those fear based thoughts and we start really challenging them and using our prefrontal cortex to argue them like a lawyer. You know, we are lawyers, we are trained to see holes in arguments and we have to do that with that part of our brain that really just wants to keep us repeating the same pattern.
For instance, consider that thought I should help. What does that even mean? And how do you know when you should help? Who gets to decide? And would everyone agree with that? Just because one partner says that you should always say yes to work doesn't mean that everybody's going to agree. Because everybody ultimately knows how it plays out when you say yes to everybody. It doesn't make sense to believe that I should help, I should say yes, when people ask me to do work for them. We talked in episode one about how should is such a worthless word and how it really only matters when we're talking about something that's designed to work in a specific, widely agreed upon manner, like my light bulb should turn on, when I flipped the switch. But you dear friends, you're not a light bulb. And there is no widely understood way for you to show up. You get to decide what works for you, and what doesn't, period.
15:36
So we have to stop letting that word “should” dictate any choices that we make. It just doesn't make sense. But if you haven't listened to that episode, check it out, we go into a little bit more detail. Because again, this word should comes up when we constantly tell ourselves that we should be helping, and what we should be doing in our practice and with our workload. how we're supposed to act. So yes, “should” again is really part of the problem here and found some of the thoughts that we have to dispense with. Another thought that's potentially spinning in the background there is I'm a lawyer and I should be able to help my friends and my family. This one gets me every time and it honestly kind of makes me giggle when I do hear it. Because as a practicing lawyer myself, I often find myself in situations where people that I love, want me to help them sort out their legal struggles. And for those of you that don't know me in my practice, my specialty is in ERISA, taxes, Department of Labor and IRS regulation. None of those things are useful to 99% of the people in my life. In all honesty, my utility in helping family and friends and their legal issues, it's really limited. Criminal Law? Yeah, maybe 15 years ago, when I was still in law school. File a lawsuit? Probably not. I've had secretaries who would be better at filing lawsuits than I would.
It's difficult for non lawyers to appreciate that lawyers just like doctors, we have our own unique specialties. And just as you would not ask your gynecologist to opine upon your ear ache, asking an ERISA attorney to advise you on your divorce is a terrible idea for all parties involved. But yet, we feel like because we're lawyers, we should be able to figure it out and cobble it together. But what ultimately ends up happening is like we say yes, even though we know we probably shouldn't and it becomes this sort of Albatross of a project. And then we get frustrated because we've gotten roped into something that we don't want to do. And it ultimately tears apart the relationship as well. Even though we were doing it to try and foster the relationship.
17:52
It is okay to let people know that you are not an expert in all areas of law. I often use the analogy like yeah, next time you go to the gynecologist ask about that weird toe fungus you got going on! I use that example with people because it's like, it finally clicks for them that Oh, yeah, maybe lawyers aren't really all the same and maybe there are different expertise and specialties and I'm not aware of. At the end of the day, you want your loved ones to get the best advice possible and oftentimes, that means finding somebody who regularly practices in that area of law.
So when you find yourself telling yourself, I should be able to help because I'm an attorney, and I love this person, and I want to be able to help them, I want you to really consider you know, would you do the same thing if this were a medical issue and medical expertise, that seems to make it a little bit easier for us to kind of walk away and wash our hands of issues that aren't within our realm of expertise. And really remember that at the end of the day, you want what's best for them and you want what's best for the relationship. And you trying to cobble through some area of law that you don't know, and that you probably don't want to know, and likely don't have time to explore, that's not going to help you feel more loving to that person. It's going to help you be more irritated towards them. So ultimately, it creates a bigger gap in the relationship.
19:18
So when we remind ourselves that there are specialties, and we have one, and we're not experts in everything, that can allow us to disconnect from that belief and really root into the idea that it's okay to tell people that is outside of the realm for me and I don't color outside the lines. As you challenge your thinking we can start taking some of the energy out of the stories that compel us to people please. Rather than allowing ourselves to be persuaded by all those thoughts that we should help, we can instead remain rooted and grounded in our commitment to ourselves to our balance and to our happiness. We have to reconnect with that prefrontal vortex that knows, we shouldn't be doing this, we already have enough on our plate, we're already overextended, I really actually don't want to do this, and some things are just going to have to start coming off of the list. When we let that part of our brain, challenge those worried thoughts, it makes it a lot easier to assert your power and say what you really want.
20:24
So one way that we can do this is to allow that prefrontal cortex to make those decisions ahead of time before anybody even asks. And we go into the day knowing I have so much on my plate right now, if anyone asked me to do anything, the answer is no. And going into any encounters with family and friends, if they ask me about something that's outside of my area of expertise and they want help on it, here's how I'm going to respond. We make that decision ahead of time from that grown up brain and it's done. And there is no negotiating about it. So when the request comes in, and our primitive brain is, like, oh, we should help, we should totally do this, we're able to go back and say, No, we've already made a decision on this, like, there's no discussion. That's power, that's having your own back, knowing that we're gonna have a struggle in that moment but also, knowing that we've made a decision ahead of time from that prefrontal cortex is going to put you in a position to show up as your best self every time and ensure that when people do rely on you, you will have time and energy to rise up and meet those expectations, because you're caring for yourself first.
21:33
So that was step number one: we challenge those thoughts, and we leverage our prefrontal cortex to make better decisions ahead of time.
Next, we have to start being honest about the real cost of people pleasing. Many of us have a hard time admitting that we don't know all aspects of the law. We have a hard time saying no to our loved ones who want our support, and we want to give it to them. And we often tell ourselves that we know enough and can probably figure it out. And so we really back ourselves into a corner agreeing to do things that we don't really want to do things that we probably shouldn't do, because we feel like we should help as much as we can. But as I mentioned earlier, when we say yes in those instances and we really wanted to say no, it ultimately creates a bigger divide in the relationship. As we settle into the work, we can just start to get just pissed. I can think of all the times that I got roped into projects that I didn't want to do. Maybe it was for family and friends and maybe it was for partners at work that I didn't feel like I could say no to. But the second you sit down to do that work, you just start fuming.
22:47
How could they have asked me to do this, how rude of them to expect that I have time for this, they should be having somebody else do this, they should be paying somebody to do this - not me!, this is not my area of expertise, you know, all of those sorts of angry thoughts, they start coming up as you sit down to do the work. So now we not only have to expend energy, cobbling through some area of law that's foreign to us or doing a project that we simply don't have time for, but now we get to fume about it the whole way and resent the other person for even asking.
So instead of being honest with the people in our lives, we mislead them, and mischaracterize our interest in helping. So in other words, we lie to them and then we get angry for having to do the work. We almost show up like these people forced us into this predicament. And we all got here because we told ourselves that we should help. What's more, when we tell ourselves that we should help we often get ourselves into scenarios, where we're just completely overloaded and we do a bad job at the end anyway.
23:56
In reality, it would have been more of a service to the person making the request, if we didn't help at all! Because it's possible, they would find someone with more capacity, who could have done a better and more efficient job. In other words, when you find your brain telling you that you should help the exact opposite is typically true, you should not help you should back away and get out now and let them find someone else who will be more engaged and more able to help. When we get ourselves into these situations, we usually just end up disappointing the other person and dividing the relationship. We got into this because we didn't want to disappoint anyone and we cared about the relationship, but we end up doing the exact opposite. The only way we disappoint people is when we over commit ourselves, overextend ourselves, and don't show up as our best. When we say yes, even though we mean no, we set ourselves on a really clear path to likely disappoint not only the other person but and everybody else who has projects or wants on our plates. When we overload ourselves, everybody suffers. We erode trust in all of those relationships, and let everyone down, which is the exact opposite result we were trying to create.
25:20
Similarly, when we tell ourselves that something bad will happen, if we don't say, Yes, like, people are gonna be mad at me, or people are gonna judge me, it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. We end up creating our own negative consequence by saying yes, because we don't give something the proper attention that it needs, and we don't do a great job. So ultimately, yeah, people get mad at us, and people judge us for the work that we did. Because it's not up to par, or we blow a deadline. It's a lose lose scenario that creates the exact result that we were trying to avoid.
Anytime that we let our people pleasing tendencies drive our decisions, we truly set ourselves up to create the exact opposite result in what we're wanting: more failure, more disappointment, and more eroded relationships. That's the second element in deconstructing people pleasing, we have to get really honest about what it's truly creating for us to chase those feel goods that we get from saying, Yes. what is the real impact it is having on ourselves, our professional reputation, and our relationships?
26:36
Step number three: be honest about what you're really doing when you're people pleasing. What are your real intentions? In my opinion, people pleasing is really just a prettier form of manipulation. You are saying yes, when you really want to say no, because you want other people to think about you in a certain way. You want them to think, wow, she's super helpful. She's a team player, she's a go getter, like she's always willing to support, and you're doing something that you don't want to do in hopes that it will ultimately control how they think about you. If that's not manipulation, or an attempt at manipulation, I don't really know what it is!
We are so willing to trade our truth for the possibility of them thinking about us in a certain way. It's really simple manipulation. But here's the truth, you can't control what they think of you. You will never know what they're thinking about you or where it comes from. They might think of you in a certain way because maybe you remind them of someone that they hated growing up and you may never be able to change that no matter what you do and no matter how much you bend over backwards for them. What we think of others is based upon so many things, and thinking that we can overextend ourselves to change anyone's thinking, it’s a futile endeavor that rarely works. And what's more, you're never going to know if it works. So you're just going to keep bending over backwards, thinking and hoping that it's changing what they're thinking about you and you never really know. And so it's like, what's the point of all of this overextending yourself when you never really know if you're ultimately getting the result that you're wanting from it and that is having them think about you in a certain way?
28:29
Instead, what would it be like to have an honest and authentic conversation with these people instead of lying to them about your willingness or capacity to help them? In that space, we can instead believe, you know, I can help them to the best of my ability, without taking on this project for them, I can support from the sidelines, the greatest way I can help this project is to stay out of it. Any of those thoughts are going to create a different result for you and that result is likely going to build the relationship even if it stings to say no in the moment.
This goes for all areas of our lives where we struggle to say no to those that we love or those that we respect. We want them to love us, admire us, believe in us, but we go about it in this really dishonest people pleasing manner. And that is simply not the way to create real, meaningful and lasting relationships.
29:32
Step number four in eradicating people pleasing is to start watching for the signs and be vigilant in looking for signs of people pleasing in your own life. My own lady lawyer coach recently just blew my mind. We were talking about a scenario where I was feeling really frustrated and she looked at me and she said, You know frustration is often a sign of an unfulfilled intention. And I just sat there in silence because I realized that the reason I was feeling so frustrated with respect to that scenario was because I wasn't showing up the way that I wanted to. I wasn't being honest. And I wasn't speaking my truth. And that was making me even more frustrated with what was happening. My frustration was out of proportion, with from the trigger, because I was so much more frustrated, ultimately with myself, for not acting in alignment with what I knew to be authentic for me.
Whenever we're feeling frustrated, it's usually because we have stifled our own truths. And we aren't showing up authentically or in the ways that we truly want to show up. We're frustrated, because for whatever reason, we feel like we're being inhibited in our ability to be honest. Certainly, we might be frustrated by whatever external trigger it is but the real frustration comes from our feeling like we can't be honest, we can't speak our truth, or judging ourselves for not being honest and speaking our truth. All of that creates a sort of internal frustration and turmoil.
For instance, when we're frustrated that we have more work than we want, at its core is frustration with ourselves for not protecting our capacity and being honest, because we really wanted to say absolutely not, I cannot do this project, I have more work than I need right now, please go away!, whatever it is, like all those things that we really wanted to say, and we didn't we ignore those genuine intentions of standing up for ourselves, and being honest.
31:52
And that's really what's driving that frustration when we feel overloaded and overextended. When we are frustrated with the people in our lives, the reason that frustration flourishes, is because we aren't taking authentic action to overcome it. Instead of having a real conversation with the source of our frustration, we just rant and rave and we ignore our intention to have open, honest relationships with the people in our lives. We stifle that true intention and it really just feels the fires of frustration.
Consider situations where you're even frustrated with conversations with your supervisors or other members of your team. Usually, those frustrations are rooted in some judgment of ourselves because there are things that we wanted to say that we didn't. Truths that we left hidden, because we are afraid to bare them. And so not only are we frustrated with the situation in the conversation, but we're now we're frustrated and disappointed with ourselves. So again, when you start feeling that real frustration in your belly, there's a sign that you're not being honest, and you're not being authentic in your life, that frustration is a sign that we're people pleasing, that we aren't living in alignment with our intentions.
33:11
It is uncomfortable to be open and honest and air our truth. But it's also really uncomfortable to live inauthentically and to live in frustration. So if you're feeling frustrated, I urge you to recognize it as a sign that you're potentially living inauthentically and engaging in some people pleasing of your own. When we start catching on to our own patterns and catching on to those signs like frustration that we're people pleasing, that is how we start to really deconstruct it at a deeper level. We start to see all these different areas of our lives where we aren't being completely honest with people, and we are potentially engaging in people pleasing, and that's why we're frustrated. And so being really mindful of how you're feeling in any relationship or situation is going to help clue you in to aspects of your life where you might be people pleasing more than you realize.
When we people please we ultimately trade our truth for immediate but temporary gratification. That frustrated, unlived intention it will fester below the surface and eventually it makes itself known. Except usually by that point the frustration has evolved from like a rumble to more cataclysmic rage quit, melt down, epic battle type of situation. That's when all of those past hurts, frustrations and unspoken intentions come tumbling out because we have been stifling those truths for so long.
34:48
In order to have real and lasting relationships, we have to invest in authenticity and allow all of those around us to know the real us. When you feel yourself being tempted to people please others in a manner that's not consistent with your truth, choose instead, to have your own back and to honor your deepest intentions. When someone asks you how you're feeling about something, be honest about it. When someone asks you, do you have time to work on this? Give a real answer. When you feel yourself wanting to say no, instead of yes, honor that, like that is your truth. And it might feel horrible, and it might feel scary, but I promise you on the back end, when you get out of this situation, and are able to catch your breath, you will be happy that you spoke your truth and that you were honest with others about your capacity, and willingness or even interest and helping.
At its core, it's really about investing in real and authentic relationships with everybody in your life. Real relationships are going to require you to use your voice and have your own back when it comes to your wants and needs. Anything else is just a really pretty form of manipulation, which is not the foundation for any good, professional or personal relationship.
36:16
What's more, as you start to kind of flex your “no” muscle, you get to decide what it means when you say no. You can choose to believe that you're letting everybody down and that you should help them. Or you can work to deconstruct that line of thinking and choose to believe instead, that you're really loving them and you're really honoring that relationship by being honest with them and that is your greatest contribution and your most loving contribution to that person, whether they like it or not. You can support people in your life and not agree to do things you don't want to do. It's okay to say no when you want to, you don't need a good reason for it and you don't need to explain yourself. Because there is no manual that you have to follow, you get to do whatever you want to do, because you are a human. Period. We cannot let that word should drive us to act in any way.
37:12
When we act, it should be from a place of true intention and authenticity, and not some perceived notion about how we're supposed to be. And remember, what is the upside of doing anything that you don't want to do? How much fun is it to fume about projects every step of the way and beat yourself up for saying yes because now you're overloaded and you're angry at the other person for even being in that situation? How is that serving anybody in the relationship? What is it costing you to say yes to work and projects that you really don't want to do? And what is really motivating you to take on all of those things? Last, what would it get you if you are better able to set boundaries?
Changing how we think about ourselves and how we show up in our lives is painful. Facing the fears associated with setting boundaries is hard work, it's far easier to just keep saying yes to every man, woman, child or dog that wants your time and energy. But the only way to truly make the shift is to first get really clear on what your current pattern is costing you, and what it will cost you in the long term if you don't make a change away from people pleasing. Are you sacrificing your personal life and relationships because you're afraid to say no at work? And what is that costing you?
38:33
Someday you will leave that job. And your friends and your family will still be there (at least theoretically), your body and your health, your mental wellbeing it's still going to be with you (again, theoretically.) But are you investing in all of those things, as much as you're investing in that job? Is your pattern costing you all of those things that will be there waiting for you once that job is gone?
Our patterning in life, it's persuasive and it's convincing and it served us to get us where we are. It's easy to believe that we are doing the right things, because those tendencies likely created your immediate success after all. But now as we start to see the impacts of continued people pleasing we have to open our eyes and see that these patterns are costing us more than they're getting us at this point. We have to start believing that if we remain in place, we will destroy everything. It's about seeing the forest for the trees, doing the hard work and investing in your own integrity. Your career and your relationships will only thrive because of it.
39:50
Cheers, my friends. Thanks for joining us again this week. If you can relate to this topic, be sure to stick around for next week where we dig in to boundaries - the greatest tool and most terrifying tool to protect yourself and stop the people pleasing for good.
In the meantime, if you need support deconstructing your current patterns, grab a free session and start reinvesting in your own wellbeing. It's only 30 minutes. You get to chat with me about your challenge and we see what coaching can do for you, I promise you, you won't regret it.
Also, be sure to check out the show notes for some additional great resources on this topic, to sign up for our monthly newsletter where you will get amazing free coaching tools right into your inbox every month or check the free time management webinar because you know, we all could use more time for the important things.
As always, thanks for listening, and thanks for sharing with your friends.
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