How to Kill Success

One of the most damaging personality traits is people-pleasing. It can be like a prison sentence and it can consume our lives. I’d like to share my thoughts on how to combat people-pleasing and use boundaries effectively. When we put boundaries in place, our interactions with clients, colleagues, friends, and family all drastically improve—as does our bottom line.

If this were a YouTube video, I would title this "Five ways to kill success through people-pleasing”.

It's almost like you are drinking poison. When you are a people-pleaser, the only person you are hurting is yourself. It is very easy for many of us to be a doormat.

Fear and Ego

When people-pleasing occurs, it's generally because we are really concerned with how people perceive us or what people think of us. It’s linked to ego and it's also linked to fear. Fear of what people think. And it can be intoxicating. It can be almost like drowning underwater.

I've seen people run themselves ragged trying to please everyone all the time. Ultimately, you can only please a few people some of the time. It stunts your career.

Boundaries

It's a boundaries issue. Boundaries are incredibly powerful for our success. A long time ago, I was an up and coming jazz musician at the age of 12 or 13. My father was a jazz sax player. He was my hero. We used to frequent open auditions for a renowned British jazz orchestra with my father’s friend, a drummer, whose daughter played the saxophone. And we would all be terrified of what others would think. We were afraid and worried of making mistakes during our auditions.

I didn't let that fear grip me. I thought to myself, "Listen, I got one shot at this. If I succeed or fail, I really don't give a shit what people think." I leapt in and I bungled my way through it. I was playing with musicians that were a lot older than me, and at the end of the day, the orchestra leader came up to me and said, "Listen kid, you hit a lot of wrong notes, you played a lot of this stuff wrong. But my God, you really gave it a good try."

And he actually invited me to be part of the band and I was one of the youngest players in that outfit, which sent me on my musical career.

Here are the questions I ask myself when I am making a decision:

Are my actions going to hurt someone else?

Are my actions going to affect my career negatively?

Or, is the worst thing that could happen is that I’ll be embarrassed?

I might fall on my ass. I might look like a dickhead. If that is really the worst-case outcome, I don't care because if there is a potential of it benefiting me—I’m going to go for it.

A couple of months ago I bought myself a VR headset—the Oculus Quest. There’s a boxing app that I love, and I also really love working out at the gym. I thought to myself, "It would be great after I've done my cardio, if I can do my boxing at the gym with the VR." For about a month, I've been afraid to do it, worrying about what others would think.

I chastised myself for that thought because I always urge others to not give a toss what others think. So, I put on my headset and did an immaculate workout. I took the headset off, and people were looking at me like I was bonkers. I didn’t care one bit.

In business, people-pleasing will crush your career into a thousand pieces because we’re obsessed with what others think.

Let’s not confuse people-pleasing with service. They are two very different things. People-pleasing is very destructive to us. Service is incredibly powerful to our careers.

When you are thinking about doing a creative campaign in real estate or in any other business, this little toxic voice appears in your mind. You begin to wonder what people would think and worry about all the negative opinions they may of you. And if you listen to those self-deprecating voices, you’ll stop right before you start.

This is toxic and will crush your career. The question that arises next is—how do we make people happy by being of service but not people-pleasing?

Don’t Sell Out

We've all had those clients that like to call us at 10:00 pm because they think that because we're doing a transaction, which we are incredibly grateful for, that we are at their beck and call. They think that we don't have children or a life outside of real estate. Here’s an example of people-pleasing: Your daughter’s ballet performance is about to start, and she’s the star of the show. Your phone rings—it’s that client. And you’re afraid that if you don’t pick up, they’ll end up working with someone else. So, you pick up that phone. And after you hang up and put the phone in your pocket, how do you feel about yourself?

You feel crappy—like you sold out. I do believe we need to have flexible availability, but we also need to have boundaries. And boundaries will help your career flourish.

If I have a call during a time in which I’m placing boundaries, I will politely send them a text letting them know that I’m in the middle of something and I ask them if I could call them later.

People-pleasing is a very slow death. It is literally like removing cells from your body, one at a time until there is nothing left. Self-respect is the root of not people-pleasing. We must respect ourselves and our clients and our people. Because when we set boundaries and when we have self-respect and when we are not people-pleasing, we feel that we've done an estimable act. And when we do estimable acts, what happens? Our self-esteem rises. We're better to our families. We're better to our clients, we're better to our kids, and we're better to the geezer in the car wash standing next to us getting his car done.

Boundaries are vital to our success.