‘what matters more to you – how far you’ll go, or how far others can go because of you?’
One thing I will never understand is the life of a people pleaser. By far, it is the most alienated concept to me, maybe because I am someone who has far drifted from the motivation of wanting to fit in or being liked by everyone, maybe because I just simply am not open enough to please just anyone.
But it intrigues and confuses me all at once, how an individual anchors their happiness to the happiness of others. That if the people around them were smiling, if they had felt cared for within their company then that is when they could breathe, as if they earned the right to exist. Usually when I talk about this topic, I come across as mean and heartless, which is understandable – I’m all for making others happy, but to the extent that your happiness relies on others, where your needs come second and that your value comes solely from meeting the needs of others, is where my perspective on people pleasing diverts.
We’ve all been there, wanting to be kind, having a pure desire to make everyone feel seen, loved and safe, that is the sole beauty behind kindness. But when I take a step back and see the full picture, I can’t help but see it as self-righteousness masked with selflessness.
What people pleasers crave is not just affection, but validation – they have this burning need to be wanted and a desperate want to be needed. And once they taste the flavours of approval, they can’t stop. It becomes an addiction that’s far more difficult to let go of than any drug.
Meeting new people no longer becomes an aim for connection, as much as they say it is, it becomes an aim of how instantly they can satisfy them. I used to know someone back in college where any new person we interacted with they would agree with everything they said, they’d ask question after question as if their life was more important and interesting than their own – they were determined to be liked. And I’d watch how their identity would instantly be buried; they’d become someone I didn’t know in aims of being liked by someone they didn’t know.
People pleasers collect affection like they are points, and the more they gather the more proof they had that they were allowed in this world. If the people around them were pleased with their presence, then their worth was justified – giving them evidence that they deserved to exist.
The main thing that infuriates me when it comes to individuals with a people pleasing mindset, is how they take back people that did them wrong. Especially when it comes to the people that, the minute they stopped pleasing, those same people showed their true colours, they show how they never truly respected their boundaries, how they never truly valued their emotions – yet people pleasers always fall back and allow them back into their lives. That’s one thing they fail to come to realise – the people they are exhausting themselves out in trying to please, become the very same people who disrespect them. People pleasers fail to understand that kindness is not meant to be given out to just everyone and anyone. This doesn’t go to say don’t be kind, this goes to say that there are people out there that will take advantage of your kindness for their own benefit.
Why that is, I’m not sure, but my best guess is the feeling of familiarity – they know this person, so they rather them back in than holding their ground and saying ‘no’. Maybe it’s a product of neglect from early years, maybe it’s the fear of abandonment, maybe it’s the power to have control in how people view and feel about them in order to feel safe. But these individuals are so far deep into being consistent with keeping others happy, that a simple ‘no’ automatically makes them a bad person – when that’s not the case at all.
They have this fire within them that is carefully built from their inner spark, offering warmth, light, and comfort. It spreads beyond its boundaries, reaching out to warm every corner, every shadow, every shivering figure nearby. It feeds on itself to meet every need, giving more than it has, never saying no to the next demand for heat. But they forget that even a flame must protect its core to survive, and without a spark a fire will cease to exist. They will burn themselves out for the sake of keeping other hands warm. And the funny thing about this is, they instantly blame themselves for not preserving the fire, for not continuously being able to keep others satisfied with warmth – but they never go to question why the hands they were keeping warm, didn’t offer anything in return, to keep it alive and to prevent it from ceasing. Why did no one kneel beside it with a log or even a handful of kindling? They circled close when the night was cold, held out their hands, basked in the glow—but when the flames began to flicker, when the light grew thin and the wood cracked low, they only stepped back and wondered what went wrong. Did they think the fire was endless? Did they believe warmth was its duty? Maybe they never saw the fire as something alive, something that needed tending too—only as a source, not a soul.
So why is it then, do they not question the kind of people they are tirelessly trying to please.
I see a major flaw in this system of living, because we live in a world of individuality, no matter how much you curate yourself, or how tirelessly you try to be agreeable or relatable – there will always be people who will dislike you anyways or people who take advantage. Why should you allow one disapproving glance, one unreturned smile to be enough to unravel your entire sense of worth?
How long can you continue to throw yourself aside to please people – if someone you are trying to satisfy enjoys eating bell peppers and often cooks using them, knowing you have a dislike towards them, how many times will you have to fight back against a gag reflex before you admit that you don’t like bell peppers? – or will you just stop turning up to their house to avoid eating there and slowly start to let go of the relationship because it is less anxiety inducing than voicing your preference?.
If anything, these individuals should take a lesson from the things they don’t like – think of the bell pepper, hypothetically – you hate it with a burning passion, not because of allergies or any explainable logic; it’s just pure, instinctive dislike. And yet, the bell pepper doesn’t try to convince you to like it, it doesn’t beg you to try it out or force you to enjoy its flavours. It simply just exists, knowing that there are countless others out there that enjoy it lovingly. What am I trying to get at here is that – you’re not for everyone, and that’s okay.
The fact that some people will inevitably dislike you, no matter how well you perform, no matter how well you morph yourself into something just to satisfy their likes, will permit you to stop performing. Why exhaust yourself rehearsing for an audience that will never applaud, why twist yourself into a shape that will leave you unrecognisable in the mirror.
To demand universal approval is both impossible and foolish, I understand that people pleasers have a heart as big as anything, and their souls are just filled to the brim with kindness, but as beautiful as that is in theory – it is destructive in practise. Perhaps what you need isn’t for the world to love you, but for you to love yourself.
Here is a hard truth not many like to hear, but people pleasing can turn you manipulative – you lie to yourself, and you lie to others by going against your own thoughts and preferences, you become someone who lacks a voice of their own, and a duplicate of someone else. You bury everything that makes you, you, just for the sake of validation – your life no longer becomes yours, but it becomes the possession of those you please.
Life has an unforgiving way of placing humans through experiences that produce heartbreaks and pain, making us very much aware that people come and go – but most importantly, it makes us aware that the only true companion, the only constant one we have and ever will have is ourselves. And so, perhaps the real work of living this life shouldn’t be to please the crowd, but to stand, on your own two feet, as a whole.
You’re not for everyone; you will never be. Your flaws, your charm, your humour, your goals and talents, your desires, your shames, your ideas and beliefs – they are yours, and yours alone. If you fear your true self, fear your thoughts and opinions to be disliked, then the fault isn’t in you, the fault is in who you are choosing to surround yourself with – you should fear those people rather than the person that you are.
The day you finally stop begging to fit into everyone’s world is the day you start building your own. Not everyone will like you – and that’s exactly how it should be.
The Inner Lens 