107. You Can’t Be Everyone’s Cup of Tea: How to Move Beyond People Pleasing

The Mindful Healers Podcast with Dr. Jessie Mahoney and Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang

People pleasing and fear of rejection are normal human emotions.

Mindfulness and self-compassion are the key to coming back home to yourself.

What is people pleasing?

Doing whatever it takes to make other people happy and putting others' needs ahead of your own- even when it causes you harm.

People pleasers are often seen as agreeable, helpful, kind, and highly attuned to others. Underneath people pleasers have trouble advocating for themselves and often have harmful patterns of self-sacrifice and/or self-neglect.

Some signs that you might be a people-pleaser:

• You have a difficult time saying "no."
• You are preoccupied with what other people might think.
• You feel guilty when you tell people "no."
• You fear that turning people down will make them think you are mean or selfish.
• You agree to things you don’t like and/or do things you don’t want to do.
• You struggle with feelings of low-self esteem.
• You want people to like you
• You hope that doing things for others will help earn their approval. You look for external validation and don’t validate yourself.
• You always tell people you’re sorry.
• You take the blame even when something isn’t your fault.
• You have very little free time because you are always doing things for other people.
• You neglect your own needs in order to do things for others.
• You pretend to agree with people even though you feel differently.

People pleasing often leads to anxiety, frustration, stress, exhaustion, overwhelm, burnout, feeling stretched too thin, and running out of willpower.

Giving up people pleasing doesn’t = not being nice.

Doing things to please others can and often is a beautiful thing.

It's when you are doing something because you are afraid that you’ll be disliked or rejected is when it becomes people-pleasing.

Find Your Right Cup Of Tea

"There will always be someone in this life who just doesn’t like you, no matter how hard you try to please them.

There will always be something that you say or do, which causes offense or division. Whether you meant to or not.

There will always be someone who finds fault in you, your life, or your words. You may never find out why, please don’t waste your precious time trying to.

You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

Then there will be those who like you on impact. A little fizz of energy passes between you. Silently, unseen, bonding. Those people will not only like you but they will like you fiercely. They are your people. Whatever spare time you have, spend it on them.

You can’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but you can be someone’s first sip of a cold drink on a sunny day…

Or a warming hot chocolate when you come in from the rain or the pop of a long-awaited champagne cork or a stiff shot of tequila when things go awry

Find your people, love them hard." - Donna Ashworth

Listen to the podcast to learn tools to help you step out of people-pleasing and fear and step into alignment and authenticity.

Beyond realizing that you can’t please everyone else, tea (and peaches ) are an invitation to please yourself. Pleasing yourself is not selfish it's self-preservation. You are the only one who knows exactly what pleasing yourself looks like. Your job to please yourself and other people's jobs is to please themselves.

What are afraid of if you stop being the perfect peach or cup of tea?

What are afraid of if you please yourself first?

What would please you?

What’s stopping you from pleasing yourself more?

This podcast is an invitation to what will be a monthly Tea and Be session in Mindful Healthcare Collective. Join us to meet friends, drink tea, learn about tea, and BE together in Community.

There will be plenty of tea and being in community– at all of Jessie’s 2023 CME wellness retreats-

Which one would please you?

Mindful Coaching, Yoga, and Culinary Medicine

Connect in Nature

Honoring Diastole

Learn about all of them and sign up at www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats

Coach with Jessie privately or in Ongoing Presence to learn how to move beyond people-pleasing for good.

If you want to develop a mindfulness practice, reach out to Dr. Liang www.awakenbreath.org

*Nothing in this episode should be considered medical advice.

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