Are you a people pleaser?
I have definitely described myself as a people pleaser before, have you? When I saw this Ctrl Alt Delete podcast episode it immediately grabbed my attention. Being a people pleaser hasn’t always looked like me saying ‘yes’ to others. So spending some time listening to Emma Reed Turrell talk about this topic was incredible, even if it was a half hour podcast episode!
I took away three key messages that I wanted to share on here. I’ll also be investing in Emma’s book so there will be more to come.
My three takeaways…
1. People pleasing has huge depth
Right up front Emma Reed Turrell shares her four classifications of people pleasing – an immediate attention grabber for me. I haven’t read Emma’s book yet so I don’t want to do them an injustice, but her nutshell explanation of them on the podcast was really powerful. The headline for me here is that there’s a lot more the the surface description of what people pleasing is about. I loved the four ‘types’ and being able to breakdown with some more specifics. I think we can tackle things with a greater level of clarity and specificity when we’ve got more detail that takes us beyond generic labels. From Emma’s descriptions I think I’m a mix of two – the classic definition and the pacifier…let me know what you are once you’ve had a listen!
2. Care better, not less.
Emma Gannon brought this up from Emma RT’s book within the first ten minutes and I nearly applauded (I was driving so opted not to). I recently found myself saying to a friend that I thought I was caring less about what people thought of me. When I said it, it felt uncomfortable. I definitely identified as a people pleaser and knew that it was causing havoc with my boundaries. So although I had been consciously working on it, I knew when I uttered those words that I didn’t want to ‘care less’. Caring better not less is exactly the space I want to be in, I hadn’t realised it though.
3. Intersections of weirdness
Ah this was a gem. Although Emma Reed Turrell does caveat that it’s probably not a great phrase, it summed up well a really important point. The discussion had turned to being a people pleaser as we approach life beyond the pandemic and out of lock down. That actually, we’ve all been through significant changes over the last year and we need to realise that there’s a backstory for us all. What’s important to us, what we now need, the relationships we want to reconnect with – something could have changed for other people too. We’re going to have to work through what it means to come out of our worlds that we’ve lived in for the last year or so, and venture into something bigger. With new boundaries. We have new needs. There will be new boundaries and new needs of other people to think about.
What next?
Well I’m going to be delving into Emma’s book for starters – definitely not as a people pleaser of course! I think this is a huge topic that needs some focus, attention and probably a few generations worth of unpicking. People pleasing has featured heavily as I’ve established my business, and I know it’s been the root cause of some of my steeper learning curves. I have personal values that are quite closely tied to people pleasing, but I’ve re-branded them to make them more acceptable (to myself). I think this is going to make the start of my journey (eurgh I still don’t like that word!) of delving much deeper and redefining being a people pleaser.
Anybody joining me?
Let me know how you get on – my inbox is open! You can find me on hello@power-of-the-parent.com, we can connect on LinkedIn or come and find me on Insta.