Ep 33 People Pleasing
===
Melissa: [00:00:00] Hey, I'm Melissa Grant, licensed nutritionist and creator of drop the diet weight loss. I am on a mission to help women drop the fad diets and lose weight in a way they love for the last damn time. I know you're ready to end the yo-yo dieting and do this weight loss thing for good. So let's go. Hey there.
And welcome back today. I want to talk about people pleasing. This has been a popular topic. I've been coaching my members around over these last couple of weeks. So I thought that you could benefit from what we've been working through around this people pleasing. So that you can see if it's getting in the way of any of your goals and not just your health and weight loss goals, but check in on all the areas of your life.
And if you're like, man, [00:01:00] this really isn't me hang in here with me because it may be something you're just not quite aware of yet,
or it might help you to understand just a little bit more about the people pleasers in your life. So first I'll share an example of how this played out for one of my ladies let's call her Anna. Anna was beating herself up because she went off of her plan. She made her plan that morning. She felt good about it all day.
And then a friend called and asked to come over and grab. I said, all right, well, tell me what exactly went down. She said, well, had a long day, I really wasn't feeling this hangout and I didn't want to go out to eat and eat off my plan. But I said, yes. Anyway, I figured that maybe I could just make her what I was planning on eating.
But when my friend got here, she wanted to go out and she wanted to go out for fried chicken. All right. So I said, what'd you. [00:02:00] She said, well, I went along with all of it and the whole time I was annoyed with my friend and frustrated with myself for not saying anything and going off my plan when I didn't want to.
So looking back on it, I asked. What, what could you have done differently? She's like, well, I could have said no to the hangout or no, to going out to eat, or even offered up a different place with some healthier options. I said, okay. That all sounds great. Why, why do you think you didn't do that? And she's like, well, I just didn't want to deal with the confrontation.
It felt easier to just say yes. And so I asked her, do you really think there would have been confrontation? Yeah. Over this what's the worst case scenario here. If you did say something, she wouldn't be your friend anymore. That's doubtful. Maybe she'd be disappointed. Yeah, sure. Maybe. So, as we were talking through all of this, after it happened, [00:03:00] her rationally, she could tell me that her friend would have been totally fine with it.
That the worst case scenario she was creating in her mind was unlikely. But for most of her life, she's used to not stating her needs to keeping the peace and letting other people make decisions for her. So when in this moment, even with something like disagreeing on dinner plans, she just goes along with it.
It's uncomfortable for her to not go along. It's just become a pattern, a habit that we need to work on together to start moving away from. I see the people pleasing around food come up a lot for women, not just with friends, but with family, especially around the holidays, worrying about passing on. PI, because it'll make you seem ungrateful or impolite happens at work events where you're worrying that if you turn down the drink, you are not being a part of the team or that they'll [00:04:00] just assume you're pregnant.
And the people pleasing doesn't stop with food. I can think of many times someone asked me to do something. And I just blurred out. Sure. Even though I didn't really want to, it kind of felt bad in my gut. And then I'd spend the days leading up to it, feeling annoyed and even a little resentful ever feel that way about this topic of people pleasing hit home hard for me.
I might even say I'm a recovering people pleaser, and I've done lots of work on this over the. But it's still something I have to work through daily. I used to believe that, oh, this is just the way I am. It's my personality. I just put other people. Until I had a therapist say something to me that just blew my mind.
And it's something I always come back to. She said in the most loving way possible, she said people pleasing. Isn't about doing nice things for other people. It's actually all about [00:05:00] you. I was like, what? So this unselfish thing that I thought I was doing is actually wait a selfish. Yep. We people please to protect ourselves people pleasing is a behavior, turned into a pattern, turned into a habit.
When your people pleasing, you are not showing up as your true self, because you're doing things you don't really want to be doing so that you can control someone else's thoughts and feelings about you. When you're people pleasing, what you're really doing. I want you to validate me and tell me why I'm worthy or why I'm lovable, because I don't know how to validate myself.
I don't believe I'm enough, or I don't love myself or you're saying, I want you to be happy. So I don't have to deal with this. Oh, maybe you have some triggers around being perceived as selfish. If you say no to someone, maybe you were [00:06:00] taught that as a woman, you should strive to be nice, stay quiet, keep the peace and always take care of others first.
But when you do that and when you feel frustrated, annoyed, angry, or even resentful, or it's holding you back from reaching or even going after your goals, it's time to get to work on this, trying to be what you think someone else wants you to be. A lot of work and it's exhausting. I want you to get to a place where you own and love your decisions, where you're not doing something from a place where you're afraid to, or afraid not to, or a place where you're worried about what someone else will think.
I want you to get to a place where you're saying yes, and it's a hell. Yes. It's from a place of, I love you versus I'm afraid you won't love me. That feels so much better. Right? So how the hell do we get there? Well, awareness and practice. Lots [00:07:00] of practice. So to gain some awareness, I have a few questions for you to ask yourself.
The first one is, are you people pleasing? If you found yourself nodding your head along to any of the things I was saying earlier, what was it that resonated with you? And if so, what types of situations is the people pleasing happening? With what specific people, what is it that you're doing?
How does it make you feel and what is it holding you back from once you gain the awareness around it, then it takes practice. The only way to get used to it is to start saying no or saying what it is you want. . Keep this in mind, every time you say yes to something your saying no to something else.
So ask yourself if you feel good about what you're saying no to, oh, it's going to feel really hard at first and it may never feel easy, but it will be worth it in the. And once you do it, you'll [00:08:00] start to feel more empowered because you're making decisions that actually feel good to you. So get some reps in the game by starting with the smaller things and bringing it back to Anna who she's going to work on saying no when offered something she doesn't want.
And as you're starting out, it might surprise people because they're not used to you saying no, and it might feel uncomfortable, but I want you to sit with that. Give them a chance, give yourself a chance. Some are going to find inspiration in it. Some may be more resistive. Changing your dance steps on others is hard, but sacrificing who you are and what you want for the sake of what other people think is harder.
If saying yes, creates any type of resentment for you. That means one of your boundaries was crossed, but you created that situation for you. And you're going to mess this up, but that's how you'll learn more [00:09:00] about your boundaries and what it is you actually need. I love the work that Bernay brown has done around people pleasing.
She talks about one of her personal mantras, which is choose discomfort over resentment, and she repeats it to remind herself that she's making a choice that's critical for her wellbeing. Even if it's not. She says that daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love yourself. Even when we risk disappointing others, we can't base our own worthiness on other's approval.
. It's only when we believe deep down that we are enough, we can say enough. Huh? That's so good. Right. So what will your mantra be? Now? I know this is a huge topic and this one podcast couldn't begin to cover it all, but it's a start and I hope you gained a ton of value and insight.
And if you're looking for. [00:10:00] I highly recommend you check out two of my all-time favorite books that I recommend to all of my ladies untamed by Glennon Doyle and the gifts of imperfection by Bernay brown. So are you ready to do this work with me? Your action step is to go answer those awareness questions I mentioned earlier, and then say no to something that you don't want to do and start with something small and remember.
When you let go of trying to be everything to everyone, you'll have more time, attention, love, and connection for yourself, your goals, and all the important people in your life. All right, thanks so much for being here today. I'll see you next week. .
