You know how we’re born with this instinct to please our parents? And then we grow up, and we want to please our teachers, our friends, our spouses, our bosses….somehow many of us have gotten caught up in trying to make everyone happy, and you know what happens?
You make everyone, most of all yourself, UNhappy! I just met Larry Winget, www.larrywinget.com, and he is the inspiration behind this post! Larry is simply himself, shares his opinions, and is very direct, which may piss off a good deal of people. But, if you’re trying to build a tribe, it’s hard to do without letting go of people-pleasing. I recently had the harsh lesson myself, when I took over as leader of a group I run, that not only is it impossible to please everyone all the time (because everyone has different opinions), but trying to please everyone actually leads to less respect all around.
If you are a leader – whether of your business, your life, anywhere – leading means you have to sometimes make unpopular decisions, or make a choice for the greater good – whatever you think that is in each moment. This will no doubt make some people unhappy. However, the more you try to focus on people pleasing, the less well you will do it, because the more people you try to please, the more compromising needs will come up. Once 2 or more people have opposing needs, if you try to please any of them, you will, by default, upset someone else.
The more you focus solely on pleasing others, the more you risk sacrificing yourself in the process – you sacrifice your opinions, your values, your needs, your energy, your passion. And then where do you end up? In need of some BULLBUSTING!
In my experience, no matter what you do, and how you do it, there will always be some people who disagree with your methods. So, the choice is yours – will you sacrifice your integrity to satisfy a person, an institution, a relationship…, or will you stay true to your values? If you are in need of getting your bull busted, click here!
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