Kindly allow me to start with this week’s article with a hot take 🔥:
Being kind and being a people-pleaser are not the same thing.
In fact, I’ll go as far as to say that they are almost complete opposites.
Kindness is generosity coming from a place of strength, choice, and abundance. A kind person gives because they actually have something (their time, energy, money, or love) that they want to give. Sure, they could have said no, but they’re saying yes because the “yes” aligns with who they want to be.
On the other hand, people-pleasing isn’t about that energy at all.
People-pleasing is about a form of generosity (if you want to call it that) that comes from a place of fear, obligation, and scarcity. A people-pleaser gives because they’re afraid of what will happen if they don’t. It’s almost like they can’t say no and the “yes” is a bizarre survival reflex that they’ve told themselves is a demonstration of virtue.
If this sounds super specific, that’s because I’m a recovering people-pleaser and I know this stuff intimately (largely, due to the benefit of therapy).
So, if you have suspected, for a long time that some of your kindness might actually be people-pleasing, this article is for you. Let me walk you through two simple (but, wildly effective) ways to deal with this pesky issue.
When someone asks you to do something, what happens in the half-second between the request and your response?
For example, let’s say you’re hit with one of the following questions:
“Hey, can you help me move out of my apartment this Saturday morning?”
“Hey, can you stay late at the office tomorrow night and cover for me?”
“Hey, can you loan me $100?”
“Hey, can you let me borrow your car?”
“Hey, can you watch my kids this weekend?”
Unfortunately, most people-pleasers operate very quickly (too quickly, actually) when they receive a request.
If you’re anything like how I used to be, the “yes” is already out of your mouth before the request has even fully landed. In my previous people-pleasing life, I didn’t even need to make a decision because, sadly, it had already been made for me by the part of my nervous system that learned that saying “no” would disappoint the asker.
If you can relate, you can test this yourself. Pay attention, over the next week to what your default response is when someone asks something of you.
Are you actually taking time to understand what’s being asked of you? Or are you reflexively agreeing and then trying to figure out how you’re going to make it work?
If the answer is the latter, you’ve just identified the people-pleasing pattern in real time. Thankfully, this is totally fixable by creating intentional space between the request and the response.
Enter, The Pause. It’s the difference between a thoughtful chosen response and a weak-sauce automatic one.
It’s super simple, and it has worked wonders in my life. All you have to do is practice saying, “Let me check on that and get back to you.” And yes, do this even if you don’t actually need to check on anything. The phrase buys you the necessary space to think (and again, if you’re like how I used to be, you’ve probably been bypassing that thinking space for years).
Some alternative “Pause phrases” I’ve used are below:
“Let me check my calendar and get back to you.”
“Let me check with my family and get back to you.”
“Let me sleep on it tonight and get back to you tomorrow.” (My personal fave)
The phrase that you use really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you’re giving yourself time to actually consider the request before responding.
And during this time, here are some questions to chew on: Is this something I have the bandwidth for? Is this something I genuinely want to do? Does this align with who I want to be? Is this the right use of my energy right now?
So, here’s the process, family: 1) Listen to the request, 2) insert your “Pause phrase” of choice, 3) answer the questions in the previous paragraph, and 4) decide.
For real, try it for a week. Watch how many automatic “yeses” turn into “no’s”, once you pause and actually consider the request.
I could stop here with this point and you’d probably be well on your way to disabling the soul-draining people-pleasing habit just by mixing in an intentional pause before saying “yes”.
But stick with me, because I have one more unexpected way to put this people-pleasing habit to bed once and for all.
Hi, it’s Shola! Allow me to interrupt your reading to mention that the fastest way to grow this kindness movement is to kindly share this article with others. If you’ve found this article helpful, please share that helpfulness with others. It’s free and it only takes a second.
Resentment is a feeling that gets a bad rap in our culture. We’re told to “let go of resentment,” to “not hold grudges,” to “forgive and move on.” I even wrote one of my all-time favorite articles about the importance of doing this.
So yeah, all of that absolutely has its place.
But resentment also has an important, and largely unknown, function: it can serve as a compass.
Resentment points, with ridiculous accuracy, at the places in your life where you have been giving more than you wanted to give, more than was sustainable, and more than anyone should reasonably ask of you.
C’mon…you know this is true. When you operate from genuine kindness, you don’t feel resentful afterwards, do you? No, you feel satisfaction because you gave from your own choice, and the giving was honestly aligned with who you are.
However, when you operate from people-pleasing, resentment is almost always there bubbling up under the surface of your skin.
You did the thing, you agreed, you showed up…and underneath, there’s a voice saying, “ugh, I shouldn’t have done that.” Or worse, “I can’t believe they asked me to do that and I said yes.”
The resentment is a powerful reminder to honor yourself. It’s your conscience trying to tell you that you betrayed yourself in that interaction, and as I’ve learned the hard way, when our conscience calls, it shouldn’t be sent straight to voicemail.
The discipline is to listen to the resentment, instead of judging yourself for having it (and real talk, this is still a work in progress for me).
When you notice resentment after you’ve given something, ask yourself:
What did I give that I didn’t actually want to give? Who asked for it, and what does that tell me about how this relationship has been operating? What was I afraid would happen if I had said no?
These questions (assuming that you have the courage to answer them honestly) will start to reveal the patterns of your people-pleasing.
The answers have shown me with astonishing accuracy:
Which relationships are reciprocal and which ones aren’t
Which kind acts have been free choices
Which ones have been automatic acts designed to soothe my people-pleasing reflex
Okay, I’ll wrap this up with this harsh truth bomb that I saved for last. When we stop being people-pleasers, some people in our lives are going to be disappointed.
Sure, some of them will adjust beautifully and respect the new version of you. Some of them will actually love you more, because they can now trust that your yes actually means yes.
But keeping it real, some will pout, some will accuse you of “changing”, and some will even have the nerve to tell you that you used to be more “giving” and they liked the old version better. And yeah, some of these folks may eventually disappear.
If so, let them go. As I’ve said before, some people in our lives need to be loved from a distance.
The version of you that they liked was a version of you that was slowly killing you. The new version of you, the one who can be kind from choice rather than fear, is the version the world actually needs.
The people who can love you in this new version are the relationships worth keeping.
Family, we can be deeply, unapologetically kind without being people-pleasing doormats.
We just have to start operating from choice instead of fear. And thankfully, that is something that we can do, starting today. ❤️
Ubuntu,
Shola (aka, Brother Teresa)
It’s free, it’s fast, and most of all, it tells me you value this work and that I should keep writing every week in pursuit of a kinder world. Just tap on the “❤️ LIKE” button below!
Where in your life have you been confusing kindness with people-pleasing? Drop it in the comments, and let’s encourage each other to make the shift.
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