People pleasing is not something you do for others, it’s something you do for yourself.

Think about it. What are you trying to avoid, by people pleasing?

You are trying to avoid the FEELINGS that you would FEEL when you perceive somebody to not like you.

You’re afraid of their judgement because of the FEELINGS that you might feel from that judgement.

But the judgements that you have in mind that might be thrown at you are the judgements that you have on yourself. And because you have those judgements on yourself, you also think that other people will judge you in that way. If you wouldn’t have those judgements on yourself, you would also not even think about others possibly having those judgements about you.

Judging yourself

You are judging yourself as rude, self-centered, unfriendly, unsupportive etc etc. Not that you are any of that if you do anything that doesn’t please people. But you are also NOT not that.

Both opposites, like for example “friendly” and “unfriendly” are just labels.

Labels is something that the logical mind/the ego makes.

Labels are judgements.

Yes, also “friendly” is nothing more than a judgement.

But without all those labels, without all those judgements, you just “ARE”. You just ARE, meaning there’s no judgement on you, you are not friendly, nor unfriendly, you just are.

As soon as you put a label on yourself, like for example “friendly” you immediately also create the opposite; “unfriendly”.

Because in order for you to be “friendly”, you also must be able to be “unfriendly”. How else are you going to make out the difference between the two?

So….that means that you must be both; friendly AND unfriendly. You are both.

So not accepting one of them, is not accepting part of yourself.

Not appreciating / loving one of them, is not appreciating / loving part of yourself.

Is being unfriendly good or bad?

And so then what we do is after we created those labels/judgements of “friendly” and “unfriendly”, we judge that further by saying “friendly” is “good” and “unfriendly” is “bad”.

“Good” and “bad” being the labels/judgements on top of the already existing labels/judgements of “friendly” and “unfriendly”.

And so then we go “I don’t want to be seen as unfriendly because that’s bad” (because that’s the belief that we picked up during our life as we are growing up).

And so then we start people pleasing….to not be seen as “unfriendly”.

But, as I mentioned before, you are both, friendly and unfriendly, and neither of those two are either “bad” or “good”, they just “ARE”. And they are both part of you, you are both. That is, if you are even one of them, you are both. If you’re none of them, you just ARE. And that’s how it is; you are either both of them or you are none of them.

So if you are telling yourself you are friendly, then you must also be unfriendly.

And being unfriendly is not “bad”. Just as being friendly is not “good”.

Ofcourse being unfriendly is also not “good” and friendly is also not “bad” . Again, both just ARE.

And both are just opinions. And opinions are just judgements 😉

Not caring about being judged.

But back to the moment where we start people pleasing….to not be seen as “unfriendly”.

Why would we care about not wanting to be seen as “unfriendly” if we wouldn’t think “unfriendly” is bad?

We wouldn’t, right?
If we wouldn’t give meaning to any of it, if we wouldn’t judge things as “friendly”, “unfriendly”, “good” and “bad”, we also wouldn’t care about how we are seen by others right? Because then there are no labels of anything we do, so everything we do just “IS”. It just IS, it’s not “friendly” or “unfriendly”, it’s not “good” or “bad”. It just IS.

So without those judgements we wouldn’t worry about being perceived a certain way.

But alas, the logical mind/the ego likes to label/judge everything and so going back to where we use the label of “unfriendly”, we don’t want people to see us as “unfriendly” because it’s “bad”.

So we are afraid of their judgement of seeing us as “unfriendly” because of how that will make us FEEL. (because think about it; if you wouldn’t FEEL anything about the judgement, you wouldn’t care about being judged right?)

But what’s really happening is that we are judging OURSELVES as “unfriendly”. Like I said, if you wouldn’t judge yourself as “unfriendly” for something you say/do, you would also not expect somebody else to see you as “unfriendly” for it.

But because you have already put the label “unfriendly” on that action, because YOU see that action as “unfriendly”, you are afraid that others will too.

How to stop it?

So to stop this, is for yourself to stop labelling/judging something that you will say or do. It’s YOU who is seeing things as “unfriendly”, not them, it’s YOU. Once you stop doing that, you will also not expect others to judge you in that way, because you don’t judge YOURSELF in that way anymore.

Instead of labelling/judging your actions, choose to FEEL how you feel when doing that action. Because the FEELING is the thing that you are trying to avoid with your people pleasing in the first place!

And once you felt those feelings fully, those feelings will transmute and the whole experience of this judgement will not appear in your experience anymore because you have moved past it. But if you keep avoiding those feelings then yes this experience of this judgement will keep repeating and repeating and repeating in your life.

Without giving any meaning to the situation, to your action, to your feelings, to other people’s reaction or feelings, without all of that, just the pure feeling, focus on that! Focus on how YOU feel when NOT labeling/judging and NOT people pleasing.

THIS is where your breakthrough is!

THIS is where your way out of people pleasing is! -> Your FEELINGS.

EVERYTHING you do, you do it because it benefits you in some way.

So, how does people pleasing benefit you?

It benefits you by not having to face/feel those feelings that you classify/judge as uncomfortable/bad.

Does it mean that by avoiding those feelings that they are not there?

Nope, they are still there, you’re just avoiding them.

And by continuing to do that, you will never ever move past them.

The only way to move past them and to move forward is to go THROUGH them, straight THROUGH them. FEEL! Don’t label/judge. FEEL.

The people pleasing is something you do for YOURSELF. For YOURSELF to not FEEL a certain way.

Choose to FEEL it and there’s no need for people pleasing anymore.

Accepting and loving yourself wholly.

Also, when you are judging “unfriendly” as “bad” and not accepting yourself as “unfriendly” because you don’t want to be perceived that way, which tells you that you do not accept yourself as “unfriendly” right, it just shows that you do not accept part of yourself.

Because like I said, you can’t be “friendly” without also being “unfriendly”. And so, this is where self-love / self-appreciation comes in; loving and accepting both parts of yourself, loving and accepting the whole of yourself, you are both “friendly” and “unfriendly” and neither is “better” or “worse”. But giving them those judgements of “good”, “bad”, “better” or “worse” makes us judge ourselves, makes us not accept parts of ourself, makes us not fully love ourselves, makes us not fully appreciate ourselves. AND it makes us not feel our feelings fully!

Allow yourself to be both, allow yourself to be everything.

And realize that at the same time you are none of them, because they don’t mean anything, they are just judgements from the logical mind/the ego, they have no meaning, without them you just “ARE”.

But if you are “friendly”, you are also “unfriendly” and by accepting and loving both parts of yourself, by accepting and loving the whole of yourself, there’s no fear needed anymore to be perceived in any way, because you already know and accept you are all, and it doesn’t mean anything and it doesn’t matter either because it’s nor “good” nor “bad”!

People pleasing has nothing to do with other people, but EVERYTHING to do with yourself.

And so, the only way to stop people pleasing is to go within yourself and allow yourself to FEEL and to allow yourself to love and accept the whole of you.

So, again, now that you are aware of that, how do you stop people pleasing?

By allowing yourself to FEEL those “uncomfortable/bad” feelings that come up when you DON’T people please.

Think about it. What are you trying to avoid, by people pleasing?

You are trying to avoid the feelings that you would feel when somebody apparently doesn’t like you

The only reason why you feel a certain way about a certain action you do, is because you give meaning to that action. You label/judge that action as “unfriendly”. And because of that you FEEL a certain way.

So pay attention to once you stop the labeling/judging how you FEEL.

Just allow yourself to FEEL.

A feeling doesn’t mean anything, it’s just energy. Emotion = energy in motion. And you can actually use that energy for ANYTHING.

You could even use that energy to run a marathon (if you would want to do that ofcourse 😉 )

No but really it’s the same energy. There’s only ONE energy.

Energy is something you feel and something you can use, if you want to. Well, you’re using it nevertheless, but if you are people pleasing you are blocking that energy from moving AND you are using EXTRA energy to avoid that energy. You could use that energy to create other new different experiences!

Implement and let me know your experience in the comments below!