Being a people-pleaser sounds like a pretty lovely attribute. Going out of your way to make other people happy, avoid inconveniences and stay away from conflict? Put “Glinda The Good Witch” in your dating app bio and give yourself a pat on the back, right?
Not so much. When you’re a regular human with buckets of feelings and empathy and a need to be loved, it’s hard not to base your actions around whether they will make other people happy (read: make other people like you). When you’re worried about how others think and feel, it’s natural to want to make them happy. This is all fine unless it comes at a cost to your own happiness.
While someone who goes out of their way to make others happy with complete disregard for their own comfort or pleasure can seem generous, it can stem from insecurity and low self-esteem. Ignoring our own wants and needs can leave us drained, unsatisfied and … unhappy. So what happens when we work on pleasing ourselves, instead?
Well, what could be simpler, you ask. For a start, giving in to our own joy is a lot easier to write in a swirly Instagram quote than it is to actually start working on in real life. So, how do we do it?
I spoke to psychologist Seth J Gillihan, who gave me sage advice.
“Plan your time as if someone who really loves you was in charge of your calendar,” he says. “Would the person who loves you most in the world choose for you to have that sad lunch at your desk? How would they want you to spend the hours after work, if they could choose things for you?”
It’s a cliche – but cliches come from somewhere, right? – that often the people who love us really do know us better than we know ourselves, because they’re aware of what we actually like and want and need, rather than what we think we should be doing for others.
With this in mind, I began to approach my days as though my sister was in charge of my decision making. I stopped “saving things for best” because hey, I might be dead tomorrow. That beautiful bottle of wine? I enjoyed and savoured a glass of McGuigan Zero Sauvignon Blanc on my own, in the sunshine. That pricey perfume? Spritzed all over myself. Then, when faced with a free evening or a weekend on the horizon, I asked myself what would my sister choose for me.
Alas, it wasn’t realistic to spend my life in a cocktail bar in the Caribbean, but choosing joy involved moving away from “the norm” and actively deciding to spend my time in a way that made me feel happy. This often involved saying no to plans – or doing what people-pleasers may think of as “letting people down” – but to facilitate this, there are a few helpful phrases I employed along the way:
“Thanks so much for the invite! I’d love to hang out with you but that doesn’t really sound like my thing. How about we meet for a glass of wine afterwards/ beforehand/on a separate date instead?”
“I’m not free then, but how about you come to my place afterwards and we can open a bottle and you can tell me all about it?”
And one to deploy before others get in with invites that you’re just not that into. “This [show/exhibition/park/bar] looks amazing and I’m thinking of going on Saturday. Fancy it?”
Essentially, I found this to be about acknowledging the things I was doing because I enjoyed them, and those I did because I thought it would annoy people if I didn’t, or because it was easier to just go along with them. I made myself pay attention to how I reacted to situations and what made me feel uplifted compared with what made me feel deflated.
When I started doing things simply because they made me happy, there was an undeniable feeling that I’d become more in charge of and in control of my own life. I established healthy – and much needed – boundaries, and became more honest in my conversations. Guess what, honesty actually pleases most people more than someone agreeing to everything because they’re afraid of rocking the boat.
Ultimately, not being a people-pleaser isn’t being selfish, but more of a move to look after your own feelings and do things simply because you know that they’ll please YOU. In all the people-pleasing we do, we too readily forget to please ourselves – which sounds more like an innuendo than I intended, but hey … please yourself.
Free from alcohol and full in flavour, the McGuigan Zero range is available in most UK supermarkets. For more information, visit mcguiganwines.co.uk
