This should be glaringly obvious but we’re a stubborn species; we’ll try and prove this one wrong all day long. We get our clichés confused and insist that impossible is actually ‘I’m possible’. We undertake an epic attempt at being The Little Engine That Could in our quest to please everyone.
Then we hit a wall. Sometimes gently but most times going full speed. The shattering realization that you’ve thrown your energy into a bottomless well that will never give you water.
Taking a step back to gain perspective is necessary and at times soul-destroying. It was for me. I rearranged my entire life as a pre-teen when my parents divorced. The choice was Mom or Dad. How does a 10 year old make that choice? It wouldn’t be an easy choice as an adult; it’s practically impossible as a child.
My kid logic looked at the question very simplistically. If I choose Mom, Dad will be hurt. If I choose Dad, Mom will be hurt. I love them both so who do I hurt? I couldn’t choose so I went to live with my Grandmother from the age of 12. My choice.
Needless to say my life turned out differently than it might have if I’d chosen a different path. In some ways I think it was the best decision; in others it stunted my emotional development. More than a decade disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle of depression. The darkest years of my life when I could barely get myself going every day and I still threw the miniscule amount of energy I could find into making sure no-one got hurt. Everyone around me needed to be happy.
There are different levels of being a people-pleaser. I took the express train into the wall. Thankfully the wall was at Flight Center and I booked a ticket the hell out of my life. I relocated my will to live to distant shores and set up my life in England.
Being geographically separated from the people I’d been trying to please since I could sit up straight made a world of difference. I was finally myself.
It’s not easy choosing yourself when you’ve never done it before. It’s harder realizing that the people you’ve so carefully ‘protected’ and sacrificed for would not do the same for you if the roles were reversed. I’m not referring to parenting here, that’s a different scenario altogether.
Each person is solely responsible for their own happiness. Happiness is a conscious decision. It’s not a guaranteed response to what’s going on around you. You cannot consciously choose for someone else to be happy if they are not making that same decision for themselves.
There are people who are naturally optimistic and then there are the others. I am sometimes that other. The one who is angry all the time and more than a little bit negative. Most times it’s something getting on my wick, I blow a fuse, vent some crazy and then I feel better again.
The others are the ones who expect happiness to knock on their door with a string quartet in tow. Happiness knocks but they don’t open the door because who the hell is bugging me at this hour?!
This might be a crazy analogy but when you’re a people-pleaser, you’re a bit like a window washer. You’re cleaning everyone else’s windows except your own but you can only ever reach the outside windows. You can’t clean someone’s windows from the inside, that’s their domain. So they can have the cleanest damn windows on the outside, but if they haven’t cleaned the gunk off the inside, they’ll never appreciate the view. People who thrive off people-pleasers are not the window-washing type. They’ll always have dirty windows on the inside so your efforts will have been for naught.
When you live your life entirely to make other people happy at your own expense, they get to live twice. They live their own life and they live yours too. You don’t get to live at all. Before you throw more of yourself into a one way transaction, remember that time is irreplaceable. You might want to be careful where you spend it because every minute you spend trading your happiness for someone else’s, is one minute closer to the end of your clock.
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