People Pleasers Panic During Pandemic

Your Personal Mentor Speaks

You Cannot Please Everyone: One of Life’s Toughest Lessons

But it's all right now, i learned my lesson well.

You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

Ricky Nelson “Garden Party” 1972

During the pandemic and quarantine, there is great pressure to "get it right". We are working in unusual conditions with little opportunity for feedback and mutual support. So today, the topic under consideration for life coaching is: “You cannot please everyone.” Is sounds simple, right? Why then do we become hurt, confused, anxious, full of doubt, or even professionally paralyzed when someone expresses displeasure in our performance or even our personal style and substance? Let’s dig deeper into one of life coaching’s critical mandates: dealing with the doubters.

First Things First

Let’s set some boundaries first. The desire to please is instinctive and healthy, when it results in growth and joy. However, when a natural “People Pleaser” such as many of those who choose work in the helping professions tend to be, becomes overwhelmed by trying to please everyone, all the time, the mind can quickly shift into negative territory. In her 2002 self-help book The Disease to Please, Dr. Harriet Braiker outlines the risks of this emotional phenomenon, calling it potentially disabling and even addictive. This article has three parts: 1) An assessment to evaluate your level of toxic “pleasing” potential; 2) A discussion of how to move out of the trap; and 3) A reminder of how futile it is to try and please everyone, so that the creative individual can then be set free from the tentacles of overt, over the top “people pleasing”. 

The Quiz

Please respond to each statement with a rating of 1…2…3, with 1 as the lowest level of occurrence and 3 as a high level. Total your responses and then use the key for an assessment of your risk.

1.  I tend to worry about what others think of my professional work, even to the extent that I feel defeated or doubtful. 1…2…3

2.  I feel that others do a better job than me.       1…2…3

3.  If I don’t receive a great deal of praise for my work, I become anxious and even angry.         1…2…3

4.  One negative comment from a colleague or resident, concerning something I’ve planned or carried out can ruin my day.  1…2…3

5.  I am constantly seeking affirmation.       1…2…3

6.  If someone challenges my decision or belief, I feel stupid or question my own position.          1…2…3

7.  I often feel like I have to defend my professional work. 1…2…3

8.  I view questions as a form of confrontation.    1…2…3

Key:

20-24 points: You may need a people pleasing vaccine. You are possibly letting others dictate how you feel too much of the time. Your life coaching recommendation: develop a thicker skin and practice responding to criticism with humor and some distance.

11-19 points: You have a normal level of desire to please, but may occasionally stress out over situations that you cannot control. Continue to keep things in perspective. Your life coaching recommendation: take care to weigh stressful situations with a discerning eye.

8-10 points: You have a healthy sense of self-worth and understand that one can never please everyone and that it really doesn’t matter. What matters is your ability to enjoy the work and bring joy to others. Your life coaching recommendation: continue to keep healthy boundaries and to nurture your own mental well-being.

How Did You Do?

You might be a bit surprised by your results, especially if the score is at the higher end of the scale. Perhaps you thought you were coping better? It is more likely that you have become used to this level of cognitive dissonance and dismay. Let’s do something about that negativity. I offer three strategic “mind sets” to help reset your brain.

1.  Focus on the right things. Are your participants or students eager to attend sessions? Do you see positive outcomes, even in small increments? Are you having fun? Those answers matter more than an outside observer’s random comment or criticism.

2.  Free your mind. At the beginning of each session or event, spend a few moments in quiet meditation or thought. Set an intention for the work, something like “peace and joy to each one who enters this room.” One of my favorite yoga teachers says: “Where your mind goes, energy flows.”

3.  Find the positive. Research suggests that “negative forecasting” or the natural psychological inclination to see the glass as half empty is the brain’s default circuit. We do it to protect ourselves. The brain actually pays more attention to the negative. Listen to this:

“Take, for example, the studies done by John Cacioppo, Ph.D., then at Ohio State University, now at the University of Chicago. He showed people pictures known to arouse positive feelings (say, a Ferrari, or a pizza), those certain to stir up negative feelings (a mutilated face or dead cat) and those known to produce neutral feelings (a plate, a hair dryer). Meanwhile, he recorded electrical activity in the brain's cerebral cortex that reflects the magnitude of information processing taking place. The brain, Cacioppo demonstrated, reacts more strongly to stimuli it deems negative. There is a greater surge in electrical activity. Thus, our attitudes are more heavily influenced by downbeat news than good news.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200306/our-brains-negative-bias

If this research is accurate, and I think it is, then staying positive is more difficult than drifting into the abyss of negativity when one person or a single event triggers doubt.

The Final Answer to This Quandary

       When all else fails, don’t fail to recognize this essential truth. It is impossible to please everyone. You just can’t and so don’t use up your precious time and energy fighting against a rip current of criticism that may be coming from a questionable source. When someone rains on your parade, bursts your bubble, or just plain ticks you off….remember these adages.

1.   “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Life Coach Interpretation: Your mind is a sacred space. When others are unhappy or jealous or simply rude, their negative energy or “dirty feet” can only intrude into your happiness if you open the door to them. Remember that.

2.   “In trying to please all, he had pleased none.”

― Aesop, Aesop's Fables

Life Coach Interpretation: It is futile, absolutely useless to try and play the people pleasing game. Accept that and allow yourself to be fruitful and free. Give yourself permission to live the lesson of the storyteller Aesop.

3.   “I’ll be blasted’, he said, ‘if I ever write another word, or try to write another word, to please Nick Greene or the Muse. Bad, good, or indifferent, I’ll write, from this day forward, to please myself”

― Virginia Woolf

Life Coach Interpretation: This is your craft, your journey, your classroom or activity program. The only muse you should listen to is your own heart. If you are doing the work for the right reasons and care about your audience, the work will carry its own weight. Trust that.

       A life coach, whether face to face or speaking from the page or computer screen, comes alongside the individual to support, guide, and sometimes re-direct. Today’s work is about re-direction. Redirect your mind and decisions away from the doubters who cast uncertainty on your work, your style, or even your reputation. If there are legitimate concerns to be addressed, then certainly a professional should be willing and open to feedback. But feedback is specific and causal. Frantically attempting to please everyone, all the time isn’t about applying feedback, it is about self doubt. Use your tools to carefully separate the two and find your joy increasing.