Do you ever find yourself saying yes more than you’d like to?

If you watched our video on ‘How to Stop People Pleasing’, you will understand how constantly people pleasing can end up leaving you stressed, anxious and eventually burnt out. 

In today’s blog we are going to look at how people pleasing can keep you stressed out, and our three top tips to help you overcome your people-pleasing ways.

 

Find Out if You’re a People Pleaser

You may be wondering, “how do I know if I’m a people pleaser?”

Well, if you find yourself saying yes to most of these questions below, you might be a people pleaser.

1. Do you worry about disappointing or letting others down if you say no?
2. Do you over commit, promising to do more than you actually have time and energy for?
3. Do you ever feel responsible for how other people feel?
4. When someone asks you for a favour, do you automatically agree without questioning it? For example: You already have so much on your plate, and then your psycho boss asks you to pick up pookie wookie from the doggy bloody day spa.
5. Do you apologise often?
6. Do you find it hard to say no?
7. Do you feel uncomfortable when someone is mad even if you know you did nothing wrong?
8. Do you need constant praise to feel good?

When it comes to people pleasing you aren’t the only one. People pleasing ONLY starts to become a real problem when you always put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own, compromising on YOUR needs and values.

You may be asking, “Why would someone be prone to people pleasing and saying yes all the time?”

It could be because you dislike conflict, so you go along to keep everyone else happy.  Or perhaps you hold onto a belief that being a good person means you have to always help other people, at the expense of your own needs.

When you continue to people please all the time, this can end up leaving you feeling anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated and well…resentful.

It’s important to realize that your self worth isn’t based on what you do for others. Your self worth comes from within you and how you think and feel about yourself!

 

Three Tips to Quit Your People Pleasing Ways

If you’re sick and tired of your people pleasing ways, and ready to take responsibility and look after your own needs. Start with our top three tips below.

 

1. Praise Yourself Daily

Praise yourself daily, by writing down and celebrating all of the great things about yourself and what you achieved in your day.

By working on pleasing and validating yourself, your need to be validated by others will lessen – breaking you out of the vicious people pleasing cycle. Because hey at the end of the day sometimes others are impossible to please no matter what you do.

For example, you might write down: “Today I am so proud of myself because i managed to complete my work assignment a week before the due date! This is a massive achievement for me because I usually run a day or two late behind schedule.”

Some questions to ask yourself to get the ball rolling are:

What did I do well today?

What am I proud of myself for today?

What did I learn today?

This will take practice, but the more you practice, the more confident you will being to feel within yourself for yourself, needing less validation from others, because you are doing it for you!

2. Pinpoint Your Boundaries

This is a critical step in helping you to finally gain some much needed control over your life, and it makes sense right?

I mean think about it, If you don’t have clear boundaries and implement them, then you will allow others to walk all over you, leaving you once again in the people pleasing trap.

In order to pinpoint your boundaries, the first step is to write down what your boundaries could look like. This is essential because it helps you begin to feel the process of truly committing to your boundaries and owning your needs.

For example if you find yourself staying back at work every night because you can’t say no and you don’t want that. It’s time to set and implement your boundaries.

For example: The latest I will leave work is 6pm.

I will only perform duties at work for the benefit of the business, and not the personal benefit of others. AKA, taking the gluten out of a muffin.

Now that you have established what your boundary’s are, we can now move onto the next step, which is going to require you to really commit to yourself, are you ready for it? We think you are.

3. Practice Saying No

This is going to probably be the most difficult step for you especially when you are wired to saying yes all the time, but it is the most necessary.

Feeling confident when you say no is essential, otherwise you will be prone to negotiation, allowing others to turn your no into a yes which will mean you’re right back into people pleasing.

It is important to practice saying no in a way that feels ok to YOU, helping you to feel more comfortable actually saying it.

When you do come to saying no, it’s important to make sure that your answer is true and you are not lying about your answer, otherwise it will be easier for others to persuade your no into a yes because you will feel guilty.

Don’t apologise for saying no, and practice saying it so you can feel confident when the time comes to decline a request.

R: For example: No, I can’t, I am cutting back on commitments so I can focus on my health. OR

I can’t, I am cutting back on commitments so I can spend quality time with my children.

Stick to the original answer and if the other person begins to pressure you, stand your ground, stay true to you and kindly and firmly repeat your answer.

Of all the steps in our strategy this is likely going to be the most difficult, but by practicing saying no, you will become way more confident in saying no. So start today.

With more and more practice you will find yourself reducing those people pleasing tendencies, making you feel a lot happier and content at work without frustration or resentment.

 

Question of the Day

What boundary are you going to commit to setting for yourself at work? We want to know! Pop in the comments below.

Let us know below, or tag us on instagram, facebook or comment on our youtube video.

If you need more support in letting go of people pleasing tendencies, book in with Rachel Dhanjal here.

Have you ever been labelled a control freak?

Sometimes obsessive and controlling tendencies like being a clean freak can create more stress than necessary, especially when it ends up in an argument.

In this blog post we are going to chat to you about how you can reign in that inner control freak and get some calm back.

Why You May Have Control Freak Tendencies

Controlling others and your environment can lead to relationship rifts and some pretty nasty hair pulling (well in our case).

For some, controlling their environment is a requirement to make them feel calm and at ease on the inside.

Managing the world around us, including people and things can seem like the best way to gain a sense of order and control in our lives. Especially when we’re feeling really stressed out.

Trying to control our external environment, can often make us feel way more stressed and that’s because the focus is on others and not ourselves.

At the end of the day, we can only control ourselves.

Learning to create a calmer environment for yourself, needs to start within yourself. Not with other people.

That’s because trying to control other people’s actions is impossible, which leads to more stress and more anxiety.

Steps to Reign in that Inner Control Freak and Reduce Anxiety

Follow these steps and learn to lower expectations and learn to become less reactive during times of stress.

1. Awareness

Become aware of how you feel before you react.

Next time you see someone make a mess, before reacting, notice what emotions or feelings are arising within you – this is quite the self-discovery process! Having awareness means giving yourself the space to make a choice about how you want respond to your emotions.

2. Manage Expectations

Start to accept other’s habits as they are, and if you want to clean up after someone, choose to do it because you want to.

Accept your own cleanliness tendencies, but don’t impose your expectations onto others. Don’t try and change them into something they’re not.  Change your own rules, if it’s making you stressed out – just know ‘it’s not perfect but at least it’s done’.

3. Train Yourself to Relax Before Controlling Your Environment or Obsessively Controlling

You will find that when you train yourself to feel calm first, the intensity of needing to frantically clean and get everything done in order to feel calm will reduce because you are fulfilling your need for relaxation FIRST.

“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.  Joan Borysenko”

Question of the Day

We hope that our blog post and Youtube video will help you to ease your inner control freak and help you feel more at peace with your environment.

Question of the Day: What are your control freak tendencies? Comment below.

Let us know below, or tag us on instagram, facebook or comment on our youtube video.

Are you always giving yourself a really hard time?

Do you find yourself criticising your body, your actions, the flaws you see about yourself that you wish you could change? 

We all have an unkind voice inside of us that likes to find ways to put us down, and unfortunately this voice can be much stronger than the compassionate, loving, accepting voice we have buried deep inside ourselves.

For me, my inner self-critic was one of self-hatred, and judgment. Constantly judging the way I looked – my skin, my body, my lack of intelligence, always complaining about how I could never be good enough compared to everyone else around me. Boy did this part of me get in the way of my life.

Clinical Psychologist Lisa Firestone says:

“The critical inner voice is defined as a well-integrated pattern of negative thoughts toward one’s self that is at the root of an individual’s maladaptive behaviour.”

My well integrated negative thought patterns were first established from primary school when my sister and I relocated to a new school and were racially bullied. Constantly being taunted and picked on for looking different, it didn’t take long to develop a feeling that something was wrong with us.

This bullying progressed into the less than wonderful teenage years of being ridiculed for our physical appearance of being too thin. My sister and I had a major growth spurt, and combined with a killer teenage metabolism, we just did not put on weight no matter how hard we tried.

This bullying pushed me even further away from loving the person I was. I looked at all the other girls in my year and wished I looked like them. My self-confidence plummeted and I fell into a spiral of self-hatred and internalised anger.

Many scenarios and events in our lives, all contribute to the way we view ourselves. Some people unknowingly or knowingly put us down throughout our life and this has an impact on whom we become. These people can be our teachers, our parents, our friends, our husbands and wives, and other significant people in our lives.

Sometimes people care about us and want to help us, fix us, or shape us by commenting on the way we should talk, behave, the way we should dress, what job we should be doing etc. All to make us fit into a better image of who they think we can or should be. These comments eventually add up to make us feel inadequate, like we have less to offer than other people, that something about ourselves is missing, that we are less than whole.

We can start to develop beliefs that we are unwanted, unlovable, and unacceptable.

We can start to experience shame for being who we are.

“The critical inner voice is not an actual voice that speaks to us, rather it is experienced as those self-limiting thoughts and attitudes that exists in all of us and keep us from achieving our goals.”

Little did I know that the bullying I experienced would take its toll on my life. I had no confidence; I always thought people were judging me which lead to the unpleasant symptoms of social anxiety. I just didn’t know how to accept the person I was. I thought I was destined for less than great things. I always put myself down, I never had any goals, I never strived for anything, and I always tried to get the acceptance and love I was craving from others in my relationships.

Thankfully my life lead me onto a journey that has helped me to transform the way I view myself. Like everyone else, still have some bad days, but I am happy to say most of the time I can change those bullying words into loving, self-accepting words I know I deserve to hear instead. And I must say, I am grateful for my killer metabolism now!

Here are my 3 tips to silence your inner self-critic and guide you towards a beautiful life of self-acceptance instea

1. Become aware of its presence

Becoming aware that you have a part of you that criticises you is the absolute number one powerful tip you can take on board. If you are aware of it, it means you can change it.

Write down on a piece of paper all the things your inner critic is telling you. Trust me this is going to be a an easy task because most of the time it is on replay all day long, you just have to put pen to paper.

Now have a think about where this critical voice came from. Whose voice is this? Is it the bullies, your parents, teachers, old friends, toxic partners? Identify it and write it down next to each criticism.

Becoming aware of this critical inner voice means you can now separate this voice from your real voice and realise that those criticisms aren’t you, they were someone else’s and you don’t need to carry them around with you anymore.

With all this negativity in your head, how do you think it has stopped you from achieving your goals, speaking up or striving for your dreams? Where has this critical voice spoken up and stopped the real part of you from having a voice?

2. Turn it around with positive self-talk

It can be frustrating and challenging to engage in positive self-talk especially when you have an inner-critic telling you you’re worthless, unwanted or don’t deserve to be happy.  Positive self-talk is a good step in the right direction to feed your inner cheerleader and loving part of you.

Positive self-talk can help to uplift you and has the power to transform negative energy in a heartbeat. It helps you shift yourself away from the darkness you are sitting in and let some light in.

No matter how hard it is, when you notice your inner critic is trying to take the stage, acknowledge it wants to have a voice, and choose some thoughts that are a little more positive. These positive words do not have to be the opposite of the inner critic. We want you to move yourself towards positivity, not laugh at it.

For example:

Inner Critic: You can’t go for that new job position, they will never choose you, you don’t have the qualities that other applicants will have, don’t be stupid, you will just be laughed at.

Real Loving Self: I think you should apply for this new job role, it feels exciting, you have some great experience, and you a lot to offer. Do the best you can.

The more you practice this, the more your real self will naturally start to have a say.

3. Breathe life into the real you

This means breathing life into the real part of yourself (not the critical self) – the beautiful, courageous, limitless, quirky part of you that wants to start taking charge.

It wants to be so bright it drowns out that inner critic inside of you.

Take some paper and write down all the great things about you. Your strengths, positive qualities, achievements, the magic in you that you know is there. If this is hard for you to do, write down all the positive things your best friend, parents or partner would say about you. This is often a lot easier to do.

Look at each strength or quality and sit with it.

Allow its positivity to sink into your soul until you feel tingly all over. Allow these qualities to be a part of you, because they already are, they are what makes you wonderful in your own unique way, you just need to breathe a little more life into them.

Carve some loving time out for yourself each week, and do this. Do this until it becomes a part of you, until this voice speaks louder than the critical voice that isn’t yours.

I would love to hear what works for you to drown out your inner critic. What do you do to allow the real loving you to take the stage?