Lying to Yourself: The Problem with People Pleasing

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset, mentor, and life coach, Trista Guertin.

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of This Daring Adventure. Thank you for joining me.

This is episode 35, Lying to Yourself.

First, I wanted to tell you about the webinar I am holding on June 29th. It is a free webinar on Overcoming Fear.

Obviously we all experience fear from time to time, but I think it's really important that we don't let the fear hold us back and keep us playing small and safe. And I believe that when we learn how to manage and overcome our fear, we become very powerful. We are able then to take the action that we want and we're able to move ourselves forward and create bigger and bolder lives. Our brain loves to keep us afraid because its job is to keep us safe and alive, which worked great when we were living in a cave and we had to fight for our day-to-day survival. But today, Our physical safety is not at risk as much as it was back in the day. And so now this primal instinct to keep us safe, keep us out of harm's way, keep us alive, holds us back, and it keeps us from going after or doing what we truly want. So we need to learn how to overcome that fear.

So I hope you will join me. I'm going to post the link you can use to register in the show notes. If you can't make it live, I will be sharing a replay, but you do need to register in advance so the link will be in the show notes. I hope you'll join me.

So lying to ourselves obviously means that we are not in integrity with ourselves and we are undermining our most important relationship, which is the one we have with ourselves. Oftentimes we're not only lying to ourselves, but we're lying to the other people in our lives, and this is in regard to people pleasing. We are usually people pleasing with those whom we are closest So it will be our partners, husbands, wives, our parents, our siblings, and our good friends. Could be also our bosses and coworkers. It's an effort to make everybody feel good, to keep the peace, and to keep things flowing in a way that avoids conflict, avoids disagreement, and avoid some of the more negative emotions. And while people pleasing may look like love on the outside, in the inside it will feel like resentment. It will feel like obligation. And it is lying. It's lying to ourselves and it's lying to other people. Basically, we are saying yes when we want to say no, and we end up doing things that we don't wanna do, or we end up saying things that we don't really mean, and in some instances it can mean that we stay and maintain relationships that we don't really want to stay in. And while some people may say this is unconditional love, what I find is that it is not unconditional love because unconditional love will be loving the other person no matter how they respond, it doesn't require us to do anything. It doesn't require us to say the right thing. It doesn't require us to manipulate the situation or the person to make sure that they are happy. It just means that we are honest and then they have a reaction and we love them anyway. So, for instance, I may tell my partner that I don't wanna go out to a bar on Friday night and drink with him. And he may get upset, he may be angry, he may not understand, he may be disappointed, and that's okay. I can let him have his emotions. I can let him have his reaction. I can let him think whatever he wants to think about it. And I still love him no matter what. So in order to do this, in order to love someone unconditionally and let them have their reactions and let them have their thoughts and let them have their say, the prerequisite to this is the unconditional love of ourselves, which means we are acknowledging what we truly want. We are not lying to ourselves. We are honest. We live with integrity. We know what we want. We are honest enough to tell ourselves, and then we are honest enough to tell others. So ideally, you want to know that you don't wanna go to the bar. You want to be honest with yourself that it is truly not what you want. You want to stay home and read a book, and then you tell your husband. I don't think we spend a lot of time thinking about what we want. We might just sort of gloss over it and sort of know well, yeah, I'm not happy about that. Not spend too much time there. And really we want to make the other person happy. We want to make the other person a priority and we feel guilty if we don't, or maybe we don't know how to say no, or we're afraid of saying no. But we cannot call this unconditional love and prioritizing the other person or prioritizing the relationship. We're just doing something that we don't want to do. We're staying when we don't want to stay, and then we're lying to ourselves and to them. And this is not the way to build a relationship. This is not the way we want to build intimacy and connection. It doesn't serve you and it doesn't serve them ultimately. And your relationship is not built on anything stable or substantial or strong. And this includes the relationship that you have with yourself. And if you don't have that strong, stable relationship with yourself, then you will struggle to build the life you want and to become the person that you want.

Now I don't wanna get confused about not making sacrifices because that's not exactly what I'm saying here, sometimes we will want to make sacrifices. Sometimes we will do things that we don't necessarily really want to do, but because we love the other person, we are willing to do the thing and it feels good. It's coming from a place of love. So you can tell the difference when you're making the sacrifice, how it feels for you in your body. Are you taking the action but feeling resentful and frustrated, or are you taking the action and feeling loving and kind and compassionate?

And so you can see that there's a substantial difference between the two. Taking the action from those two different places. And so you really wanna be clear because it's not all or nothing, but clearly one is going to make you feel better first and foremost. And secondly will help you to build that relationship not just with yourself, but with the other person. The other feels terrible and undermines your relationship with yourself and with the other person. Ideally, you always wanna come from a place of love and it will be difficult to have those discussions with the other person to say no and to tell them that you don't wanna do this thing or you don't feel this way, or that it's not okay. And it will be challenging, and we typically try to avoid those discussions because we don't wanna have them. But learning how to do this will be one of the most important skills that you can learn.

And again, it will be important to build that relationship with yourself. In order to create a bigger and bolder life, it will also be challenging to allow them to react however, or respond however they want. They can respond however they want. They can feel however they want. They can think whatever they want, and we have to allow that. We have to respect it, and we have to allow it. We don't have to try and make them feel better. We want to communicate how we are thinking and how we are feeling and communicate our no from a place of love and kindness always, and then allow them the space to respond as they want to or as they need to. When we don't do this, it comes at our expense and at the expense of our relationship.

And if you don't have that honesty and that trust and that integrity with yourself, it will be impossible to move yourself forward and grow and create the life you want. Now this work can be scary and it can be challenging, but in the long run, it really will bring you the love and the contentment and the connection and the expansion and growth that you want.

So how do we start to communicate and tell people what we want or what we don't want, and to end the people pleasing?

The first step is really to do an audit of what you want, what you don't want, what you're thinking, how you're feeling about the relationships and what's going on and what you're doing and how you're showing up.

Maybe do one at a time or when something comes up and it brings you greater awareness that there's something going on, dig a little deeper, do some writing, do some journaling, do some thinking on it, and slow down in order to take a good look at what's going on for you in your mind and your emotions. And then the second step is you want to start telling yourself the truth.

Even if you don't tell anybody else, even if you don't communicate this at this point, you at least wanna be clear with yourself that this is how you're feeling and this is what you're thinking. So being honest that you do not want to go to the bar and drink, that you want to stay home and read a book, just be honest with yourself. You can still go to the bar. You can still say yes, but just have that clarity for yourself. And then the next step will be to tell the other person, build up to this step.

Tell them from a place of love and kindness, just be clear about what it is you want.

Be honest about it. Tell them, and then allow them to have their response and know that it's okay. They are entitled to their response. You don't have to fix it. You don't have to make them feel better. You are not responsible for their emotions, which doesn't mean that you can act however you want and be mean and impolite and unkind. That's never the case.

But you have to give people the space for them to respond and to feel their emotions and to think whatever it is they wanna think and there will be times that you will do things for them that you might not necessarily want to do, but you're doing it from a place of love and you do it because it feels good for you.

Don't do something that you know is gonna put you in a place of resentment and frustration where you end, end up lying to yourself and to the other person. Loving unconditionally will always feel good. It will feel energizing. It will feel uplifting. It will feel fun. It allows the space and the opportunity for everyone involved to respond, to do, to act, to say what it is they need to say.

It never ever involves lying. It never involves you doing things that you don't want to do and feeling resentful. Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship that you will ever have. And not lying to yourself is one of the most, is one of the most important things you can do to build this relationship.

And at the same time, It is important not to lie with others in your life because that also undermines your relationship with them, and this relationship with ourselves is one of the most important parts of the work that I do in coaching because once we have this solid foundation of love and self-trust and self-confidence.

Then we can start to build the future that we want. We start looking at who we want to become. We start to set big goals for ourselves and imagine what is possible.

So this is one small part of this relationship and of this work that we do in my coaching.

If you're interested in speaking further about people pleasing about building this relationship with yourself, I do offer a private one hour coaching session for you to try coaching yourself and for us to dig a little deeper into this issue or any issue that you wish. I will put the link to my calendar in the show notes.

Schedule one hour. Invest this time in yourself, invest it in the future. You don't have to stay stuck. I can help.

All right, everybody. Don't forget to register for the webinar next week.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Have a great week.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Thank you for listening to This Daring Adventure podcast with your host Trista Guertin.

We hope you enjoyed the tips and conversations on how to get excited about life again.

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