Today's Mindful Monday Moment comes from a coaching client who asked what we do when the desire to please others becomes detrimental to our lives.
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But what if like a seed we've been planted, and having been planted would grow to become a mighty tree. Now, open your eyes, open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth. And I am your host, Brian Smith. Hey, there everyone. Thought to give you a little bonus today, if you want to call it that someone asked a question in the group. I think it was yesterday about how do we deal with the disease to please, which I think is pretty common among a lot of us, especially as more empathetic types. And frankly, it's more common probably among women than men. And I don't think that's a gender thing. I think it's a socialization thing. So please don't take offense for that to that generalization. But anyway, someone asked about this disease to play is what is it? Why do we have it? What do we do about it? Well, what the disease two places, first of all, let's talk about where it comes from. It's a natural evolutionary thing to be social creatures, that's human beings actually depend on society to survive. So we actually socialize each other by rewarding, rewarding what we consider good behavior or beneficial behavior to the group. And by punishing behavior that's not good for the group. And as social beings, we absorb this so we want to please other that's a natural part of evolution, you can say it's God, given you could say it comes from evolutionary biology, but we can understand where it comes from. And it's actually a healthy thing to want to please other people. But like a lot of other things, a lot of other biological urges that we have, if it gets out of control, it could become harmful, and becomes harmful, when people please others at the detriment of themselves, when we start to not take our own needs and wants and interest into consideration. And we want to please other people over that. So that comes from more getting your self esteem from other people, and a lack of self esteem in yourself. And what we do is we actually a lot of times will work for praise. We want other people to think good things about other people to say good things about us. So we'll do things to get that feedback. And ironically, what happens a lot of pleasers is we can become resentful when people don't give us that feedback when people don't praise us. So we actually are setting ourselves up into a very negative cycle. Because actually, people start to take advantage of us and will actually not value what we actually we do. And I was working with a client. This had happened her everybody around her just depended on her to do everything she was she owned her own business. She had a husband that dependent on her she had grown children, that she was still supporting and paying for things for them. And hardly anybody ever said thank you, people did not acknowledge her. She was totally burned out. And she came to me and just like, I can't do this anymore. And she was actually resentful to these people. And the thing is, we have to do at that point, we have to break this cycle. And what people what happens, people get very uncomfortable with us breaking the cycle, because they put us in this box and they say, Oh, you're a pleaser, you're going to do everything I want you to do and they just kind of accept that. So what I did with her as I said, Why don't you find one person in your life that you can actually break this cycle with someone that you trust and tell them that you want them to come over for lunch because our kids are always coming over for lunch and stuff. So tell them you want to come over for lunch or you want to take them to lunch and explain to them what you're going through and how you feel and how you're doing all this stuff and you're gonna have to you're gonna have to stop doing it and just you know give that'll give you permission to kind of break the cycle yourself. We have to set some boundaries at some point. And when I when I you know, I'm a pleaser myself to be honest with you and to be frank with you. A lot of times people will call me for help, and I'll drop everything to help them. I if I'm if I'm done working for the day, I'll go back back into my office. If it's a Saturday, and I'm watching football, I'll put the game on pause, and I'll come into my office and I'll do whatever they want me to do, right at that moment, because I want to please people. And I've actually been breaking the cycle lately. It's like, you know, if I'm done for the end of the day, and it's not an emergency, and they can wait till tomorrow, then I will do that. I'll just let it wait till tomorrow. And no, for most people would be like, That's not that big of a deal. But for me, it kind of is. And what I've done is I kind of separate reward system for myself. So, you know, instead of me getting praise from the other person, about how, you know, I dropped everything and did stuff for them, which they probably wouldn't appreciate. Anyway, what I've done is I start praising myself. And I'll say, you know, you did the right thing for yourself, that was self care for me. And I give myself a pat on the back for setting that boundary. So this is a matter of balance, right? We still want to be sociable, we want to be helpful we want to be, we want to be seen as that and we want to play our part in society and help people out. Nothing wrong with that. But if you feel like it's coming at your detriment, then set that boundary and say, I'm going to take a little bit of a break here. I'm not going to do so much to please other people. And when you do that, reward yourself, give yourself a pat on the back, and that'll help you break that cycle. So I hope that helps and have a great day.