So you’re trying to people-please, huh? How fun is it? Have you been able to keep everyone happy? Recently I’ve been struggling with this and thought I’d share my thoughts and what I’ve done to change my perspective.
I’ve mentioned two things in my email leading to this blog post…
1. Trying to Keep Everyone Happy
2. Learning to Say “No”
In a lot of ways they can be separate issues, but they have a lot of connections to people-pleasing, so we’ll address them together. Just last week I was feeling a tremendous amount of pressure and stress, and since I don’t love that feeling and know that there’s a way to shift it, I started digging deep to find out what it was really about.
What’s interesting about this issue is that it’s not always so obvious. If your back hurts, you know that’s a problem. If you’re angry about something that happened last week, you know to focus on that. If you feel financial pressure, you know that’s the issue.
But I wasn’t really clear as to WHY I was feeling stressed…
Especially since when I looked around at everything that was happening in my life, it was all GOOD things…AMAZING things in fact, that I am so grateful for.
For example:
1. I just wrapped up the first draft of my new book, to be published by Hay House in April of next year. It was a thrilling process to write it, amazing things happened and I’ve grown so much from the process and have such high hopes for the book (and more importantly, the message it carries)
2. This weekend, I’ll be speaking at a Hay House event in San Jose, and sharing the stage with the people I’ve followed, learned from and loved for years, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, and Cheryl Richardson.
3. Next month, we’re launching the 4th year of the Tapping World Summit. An event that has grown from nothing to over 300,000 people last year.
4. I have the honor, privilege, and joy to communicate with YOU, over 300,000 of you.
5. Every day I worked with an amazing team (most of them my family members!), I read emails of amazing life transformations and people using this powerful technique to change their lives.
6. I could argue that my personal life is going even better. I’m getting married this fall to the love of my life, have amazing friends and an incredible family.
My life is COOL… very, very, very, so grateful, so happy, so amazing, need to help others make this happen COOL kinda life.
SO….why was I SO stressed out…overwhelmed…and a little bit miserable last week?
I thought about all those amazing things in my life, trying to be grateful, but it wasn’t cutting it. Something else was going on. And when I took a deep breath and focused on what was stressing me out the most, the issue of having to please everyone came up.
Let’s take a look at everything that IS amazing in my life, and see how I was turning it around:
1. The book: Will people like it? Will the readers be happy? Will Hay House be happy with the results of the book?
2. Speaking this weekend: There are 2,000 people…will they like what I have to say? Will they get value from my talk?
3. The Tapping World Summit: It’s been such a huge hit…can we do it again this year? Will our partners who promote it be happy with the results? Will the listeners be happy with everything we’ve worked so hard on?
4. The People Who Get My Emails: Yes, that’s right. This one is about YOU. I was stressed about making you happy. (How nice of me, right?) I deeply value and treasure the relationship I have with the 300,000 + people that get my emails. It’s an honor to be able to communicate with you. And I want to keep YOU happy. Which is easier said than done when there are 300,000 different people, having different experiences, wanting different things! So I was asking myself: Are people enjoying what I’m sharing? I want to give them more tapping content, but I need to find more hours in the day!
5. My amazing team: Are they happy? What else can I do to keep them motivated, to communicate better, to connect with them more?
6. I actually wasn’t stressed out at all with my personal life. 🙂
But those first five items, these incredible things that were going on in my life, were actually weighing me down.
I felt a lot of pressure.
Do you ever feel this people-pleasing pressure?
The pressure to keep your friends and family happy. Maybe the pressure to perform at work, or simply the pressure to meet expectations.
Oftentimes, this pressure, often self-created, comes from the delusion that it’s YOUR responsibility to make everyone around you happy. I think part of this is built into human nature, we want the people around us to be happy, with us and with their lives. But beyond that instinct, it’s easy to take it to another level, where it’s just not healthy.
We create these expectations for what we have to do. We create this picture of having to be perfect. We want to people-please! And this is where the need to say “no” comes in. Life is busy, there’s no arguing that. And it seems like it’s just getting busier, so at some point, you’re going to have to say “no” to something. There has to be a limit to what you can do IF you expect to have true happiness and joy in your life.
The funny thing is that as things get better, as you find more success, you’ll have more opportunities and more things to say “no” to. I’ve worked with a lot of people on finding more financial success in their lives and one of the things that come up, again and again, is the fear that if they get what they want, they’ll be busier and thus more unhappy! But I digress, that’s a whole other issue we can chat about some other time. 🙂
So, making people happy and being able to say “no”. They obviously go hand-in-hand because sometimes when you say “no” to something, it can make people unhappy!
The solution
Well… you saw this coming… you’ve gotta tap on it. What I did last week is to make a list of the things I was feeling pressure about and then tapped through them, some general, some more specific. A general tapping round looks like this:
(If you’re not familiar with the EFT process, you can learn the basics here: www.thetappingsolution.com/how-to-tap.php)
Tune in to the feeling of having to keep everyone happy. Feel it in your body. Is there an emotion there? Can you feel some resentment or anger? Do you feel pressure? Is it overall stress?
Give the feeling a number on a 0-10 scale and then let’s tap on it.
Karate Chop: Even though I have to keep everyone around me happy…I deeply and completely accept myself…
Karate Chop: Even though I feel all this pressure to keep everyone happy…I deeply and completely accept myself…
Karate Chop: Even though I’m stressed out about keeping everyone happy…I choose to relax now.
Eyebrow: I’ve got to keep everyone happy…
Side of the Eye: All this pressure to keep everyone happy…
Under the Eye: How am I going to pull this off…
Under the Nose: There’s so much to do…
Under the Mouth: And so much pressure to do it right…
Collarbone: What if people are unhappy with me…
Under the Arm: I want to please people….
Top of the Head: I want them to be happy with me…
Take a deep breath – if your number hasn’t dropped yet, do another round.
Then, when you feel a shift, you can move on to some positive tapping…
Eyebrow: It’s time to relax about this issue…
Side of the Eye: It’s not my responsibility to keep everyone happy…
Under the Eye: Their happiness is not under my control…
Under the Nose: I can only control what I do, and I can only do my best…
Under the Mouth: Releasing this need to be perfect…
Collarbone: Releasing this need to make everyone happy…
Under the Arm: Letting it all go…
Top of the Head: Letting it all go now….
This is obviously a very general tapping round. REMEMBER: If something else comes up, a specific event, emotions, or belief that you have, focus on that issue specifically until you clear it. Just a clue to look out for: we often develop these patterns early in life, so if you’re doing this general tapping about keeping people in your life happy now and you start to remember about how you tried to please Mom or Dad, perhaps how you tried to make them happy so they wouldn’t fight or be stressed…know that that’s an important topic to address.
If you want to clear the underlying people-pleasing pattern forever, going deep into those childhood roots is where you will most often have the most powerful and lasting results. It’s not always easy to go there, but you can do it. 🙂
Let’s do a little more general tapping on not being able to say “no”
Karate Chop: Even though I just can’t say no to people, I deeply and completely accept myself…
Karate Chop: Even though I feel all this pressure, I have to say yes, I deeply and completely accept myself….
Karate Chop: Even though I’m scared to say “no”, I want people to like me…I deeply and completely accept myself…
Eyebrow: I just can’t say no…
Side of the Eye: I want to do all these things…
Under the Eye: And I want to make everyone happy…
Under the Nose: I don’t want to disappoint anyone…
Under the Mouth: So I just can’t say no…
Collarbone: My issue with saying no…
Under the Arm: Why can’t I say no?
Top of the Head: I wonder where this old pattern started…
Take a deep breath – if your number hasn’t dropped yet, do another round.
When you feel a shift, you can move on to some positive tapping…
Eyebrow: It’s time to relax about this issue…
Side of the Eye: It’s safe to say no…
Under the Eye: I can say no and people will still like me…
Under the Nose: I can’t control what people will think of me…
Under the Mouth: I choose to release this pressure to say no…
Collarbone: Releasing this need to say yes…
Under the Arm: Letting it all go…
Top of the Head: Letting it all go now….
Take a deep breath… and let it go…
Again, these rounds of EFT are just to get things started for you. Focus on YOUR specific issues. Who are you trying to keep happy? Why? When did this pattern start? Is it a healthy pattern? Or do you suffer because of it? Do you have trouble saying “no”? Why? What would happen if you said “no”? When did this pattern start?
These are all questions to get you thinking…answer them with a pen and paper, focus on the specifics, and then tap through the emotions, events, and limiting beliefs.
So… needless to say, I did a lot of tapping and felt a tremendous amount of relief. I was able to enjoy these amazing things happening in my life right now. The reality is that I’m doing the best I can, and while I certainly have the intention to make the people around me happy, I’m not willing to sacrifice my personal happiness to do so and I understand that at the end of the day, their happiness is their responsibility.
Ahhhh…..much better. 🙂
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Share your comments below: Who are you trying to make happy? What are your patterns around not being able to say “no”? Did you feel a shift with the tapping? What have you identified that you want to continue to work on?
Please take the time to comment, not only because it means the world to me (makes me know you’re happy and I need that!!! Just kidding!), but more importantly, your comments, stories, and ideas might really help someone else get more clear on their issues.
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