Are You Leaving a Legacy of People Pleasing?

How Often Do You Find Yourself Saying:
“I Wish I Knew How to Leave My Children A Legacy I Can Be Proud Of”?

What is a legacy? The English dictionary defines it as: “something that is handed down or remains from a previous generation or time”.

The most valuable legacies are not material, they are behavioural.Our children do not learn from our words. They are very intuitive and they instinctively know that the truth of a person is in their behaviour and not their words.

So, if you behave as a people pleaser, guess what the kids learn? They learn to be people pleasers too.

Okay, you say, what’s so wrong with being a People Pleaser? Shouldn’t we want to help make others happy? Shouldn’t we want other people to be pleased? Of course we want that, especially for our loved ones. However, there is a line many of us cross when we convert from merely helping others to sacrificing ourselves to the point of losing who we are.

That kind of people pleasing is a syndrome that arises from a need to please in order to feel that we have some kind of value, a pleading to be loved. Just exchange the ‘s’ in ‘pleasing’ for a ‘d’ and you have an even more accurate name for this behavior. Unfortunately this is a downward spiral and at the bottom we find ourselves being used, abused and receiving little to no respect from others.

In fact, people pleasing has nothing to do with you helping other people for the sake of helping other people! When their help comes from a source such as this it can actually be harmful to them because your intention is actually focused on you and not them. Whether you are conscious of it or not, what you are really doing is for yourself only.  It is like an addiction, in order for you to have any sense of esteem or worth it has to come from someone else because you have none to give to yourself.  You are wanting desperately to fill yourself up.

Truly helping someone has to come from a source of love of all mankind including yourself.  It comes from a source of gratitude for all you have, the good and the not so good, the desire to inspire someone, to uplift someone so that they can make their own changes and improve their life, not to take on their burden as your own as People Pleasers do. In many cases people pleasers actually force their help on others they can become so desperate.

Here are some symptoms:

1. You rarely receive a ‘thank you’ from those to whom you extend yourself
2. You can’t say ‘no’ to those who ask things of you and yet you can’t help also feeling some resentment toward them
3. You feel a need to always agree with the opinions of others and even if you disagreed, you would find it very difficult or impossible to voice it
4. You really don’t have much of an idea of why you are here
5. You have no personal goals or you have set some yet never achieved them
6. You are constantly fearful
7. You find that you are depressed or angry much of the time
8. You are craving validation from others, yet don’t receive it
9. You are enabling the destructive behaviour of a friend or family member and can’t stop yourself
10.  You set aside little or no time for yourself
11. . Because you have no control over your life, you feel a need to control everything around you, but of course, cannot.
12. . You have no boundaries

These are just a few clues to suffering from People Pleasing Syndrome.

If you discover that you relate to 4 or more of these symptoms it indicates that you have People Pleasing Syndrome tendencies to one degree or another. Is this the kind of legacy you want to leave your children?

If not, you can explore through this website and find ways in which you can begin to change this behaviour and:

1. finally receive the respect, self-love and feelings of accomplishment you have always wanted
2. replace feelings of anger and resentment with contentment, confidence setand purpose
3. learn that ‘no’ is a complete sentence and you can say it without apology
4. you no longer feel you need others to complete you
5. you fall in love with yourself
6. you are finally free to learn how to set and accomplish inspired goals!

As a former People Pleaser, I wish this for you, I want this for you.  All you need to do is reach out.

Go to these links for more information:

5 Steps to Banishing People Pleasing Syndrome

6 Part Confidence eCourse

Keep on Goaling!

(c)Lynn Moore 2010