09/20/2021
🚨 People-pleasers, let’s listen up!!
Repost from
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Years ago, I noticed that I was really frustrated when all of my efforts to charm someone with my people-pleasing didn’t yield “results.” They were pleasant to me, sure, but they didn’t immediately warm up to my curious questions or warm demeanor. It was almost as if they were immune to it — this approach that had worked so well to recruit other connections in the past.⠀
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At the time, I was angry that they were “so cold” and “so standoffish” to me. (They were neither of things, by the way. In retrospect, they were just reserved.) ⠀
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I realized then that I wasn’t putting on this warm performance for their benefit; I was putting it on for *my* benefit. It was a transaction that I’d wrapped them into unknowingly, and when they didn’t hold up “their end of the bargain,” I was resentful and angry.⠀
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That’s the problem with the transaction of people-pleasing. We over-give in the hopes that others will over-give back. When they don’t, we don’t feel neutral about their neutrality — we feel *bitter* at their neutrality. We feel like we got screwed. ⠀
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In making this invisible transaction, we rob others of their autonomy. We make them characters in our own private stories, and assign them traits that may or may not be accurate. And, worst of all, rarely do we build solid and honest relationships on a foundation like this. It’s too loaded, too imbued with expectation and debt.⠀
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