Self-Limiting Behavior #2? People-Pleasing.

People-pleasing is a convenient trap to avoid the possibility of failure. The thought process is that if everyone likes me, they won’t let me fail. Rather than trust my abilities—i.e., confidence—it is safer to make people like me. But people-pleasing, like all of the self-limiting behaviors, doesn’t work.

First off, you can’t please everyone. Someone, somewhere, is bound to not like you. I’m going to go so far as to say, you don’t even know what pleases other people. You think you are making them happy, but the reality is, you can’t read their mind. How do you know what they really want? And what makes one person happy may not make another person happy. As my mother used to say, “you can’t please everyone.” And yet we continue to try.

But here is the even more dangerous part of people-pleasing. When you work hard to please other people, you lose yourself. Ouch. I have been so into people-pleasing in the past, I totally lost myself. I had no idea what my favorite color was, or my favorite food, because it changed according to the people I was trying to please. I had no idea what I wanted because I was busy trying to please everyone else. Jane had totally disappeared.

Another problem with people-pleasing—on top of the fact that it doesn’t work because you can’t please everyone—is that it can lead to a dissolution of boundaries and eventual burnout. As a people-pleaser, if others come to you with a task, committee assignment, or additional work, you are likely to agree because you are more concerned with making them happy than you are with setting boundaries for yourself and doing what you need. Saving “yes” may make others happy, but it can lead to stress, and burnout for you.

What concerns me even more is that when I ask my students to name the self-limiting behavior—perfectionism, people-pleasing, control, isolation, or busyness—that tends to trip them up the most, people-pleasing is currently the one most frequently cited. Why is people-pleasing so popular, especially among young women? My suspicion, confirmed by informal class discussions, attributes the rise in people-pleasing to social media. No surprise. Everyone looks good on social media and everyone can measure how many people follow them, and yes, like them. A recipe for people-pleasing.

Here’s the weird thing about people-pleasing. We think we know what people think about us. But do we really? No. Unless you’re a mind reader—which most of us are not—we really have no idea if people like us, agree with us, etc. Furthermore, can you really control what people think about you? We’d like to think we can—by saying the right thing, agreeing with them, doing behaviors that please them—but the reality is that we cannot control what people think about us. Only they control what they think. So instead of focusing on what we can’t control—other people’s thoughts—a healthier perspective is to focus on what we CAN control—ourselves. One of my favorite quotations comes from Eleanor Roosevelt and was written long before social media had been invented: “No one can make you feel bad about yourself without your permission.” And I add, “Do Not Give Them Permission!”

Reframe People-Pleasing

In a candid interview as part of the Massachusetts Women’s Conference, Awkwafina, the comedian, rapper, and actor from the hit movie, “Crazy Rich Asians,” and other films, admitted to being a people-pleaser. Who knew? I must admit I was taken aback and somewhat relieved to know that a woman as successful as Awkwafina struggles with people-pleasing like the rest of us. Instead of trying to please others, Awkwafina switched her thinking and focused on what she could control: her thoughts. Now, instead of trying to please others, she tries to treat everyone with respect and kindness. According to the actor, if she does that, she’s done her job. Whether they like, approve, or support her, it is up to them and it is out of her control.

The second thing she does to minimize people-pleasing is avoiding social media. While eliminating it altogether may sound drastic, taking all things in moderation—even social media—may help reduce the propensity for people-pleasing. I’ve never seen an obituary that cited the number of likes the deceased received.