00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 270, "People Pleasing and Kindness: What's the Difference?" Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:23

Welcome, hello there, everyone. I was just going to say good morning, but it may not be morning for you. It is for me. So glad to have you here. Thank you for joining me today and I appreciate you investing your time here. The things that we talk about have been life-changing for me and continue to be life-changing. I continue to have insights and understandings and figure things out and I love sharing with you the things that I'm figuring out because they're making a huge difference in my life and I believe that they can make a huge difference in your life as well. So thanks for investing in your emotional health. Thank you for investing in your relationships and I appreciate you investing your time here with me. We're going to get started today.

01:09

Here's a question that I get quite often: What's the difference between people pleasing and being kind, and how will I know the difference? Now this is a really great question because often people pleasing and being kind look the same. They have the same actions. We're agreeing to take a meal to someone in our neighborhood who is sick. We're offering to watch the grandkids for a weekend. We're heading to our mom's home to help her de-junk the storage room. Maybe we're agreeing to go to a hockey game with our husband or with someone who asked us out on a date and we really don't like ice hockey. So all of these things can be done from kindness and all of these things can be done from people pleasing. So how do we know the difference? The difference is in the thoughts and feelings behind the action.

 01:56

So let's work a couple of thought models backwards to show you what I mean. We're going to show you the action and then the feeling that created it and then the thought that created that feeling. So if we're people pleasing and our action is we offer to watch the grandkids, usually that offer would be made from a place of something like fear and the fear could come from a thought like "the grandkids don't like me as much as the other grandma" or it could come from "the other grandma does it all the time. So I probably should as well." So if we're doing it from kindness, again, the action could be I offer to watch the grandkids, but the feeling would be a feeling of love that creates that action and what thought creates the love? "I miss my grandkids and I want to get to know them better" or "I really want to give their parents a break. They're working really hard." The reason it can be confusing is because the action is the same whether we're people pleasing or being kind and we're often not really great at questioning our motives for the things that we do.

02:59

Now, we can be really, really good at questioning other people's motives. Right? Anybody else? Raise your hand, right? Like we can often look at other people and go, "ooh, I just don't, they're just not really in this. They're not ____," right? We see other people's motives more easily than we see our own. And it's just a normal thing. We might look at our action and think that we're being kind because it's some type of service to someone else when in actuality, we're coming from a place of wanting people to like us, wanting people to accept us, to think well of us, or to even just not be mad at us. Sometimes we've been people pleasing for so long that it just comes so naturally and we don't realize that we're doing it. But part of cleaning up our relationships with others and with ourselves is learning how to do things from a clean place where our motives are clean, from a place of love rather than a place of fear. And I know that we have talked about this so much in the past and here it surfaces again.

04:02

So let's start with some definitions. I did a whole podcast on people pleasing about nine months ago. It's podcast number 230 called "People Pleasing." So check it out if you haven't listened to that one yet and that will give you a more expansive idea of what we're talking about here. But Psychology Today gave this definition: "People pleasing is a person or people pleaser, a person who has an emotional need to please others, often at the expense of his or her own needs or desires." Somewhere along the way, people pleasers decide that everyone else's needs are more pressing than their own. They themselves on the back burner in their own lives and then end up feeling resentful, dissatisfied, or depressed. We are considering everybody else's needs before our own. Okay. In essence, I'm going to come back to the definition that I gave you in episode number 230: people pleasing is lying manipulation.

05:03

Now I know that this can sound a lot bit harsh, but let's explore it a little bit. Underlying our people pleasing behavior is a desire to make other people like us or to think a certain way about us or to feel a certain way about us. If I offer to watch the grandkids for the weekend, they will like me more, they will trust me more, or the parents and grandkids will put me in the "favorite grandma" spot. We're showing up the way we are because we're trying to control the other person. We're wanting to manipulate their feelings toward us by how we're interacting, by what we're offering to do. One reason behind doing what we are offering to do is because we are thinking that it will cause them to show up differently: "they'll like me more. they'll accept me more," whatever.

 05:56

When I'm working with clients, very often they will have expectations of how their spouse will show up when they change their own behavior. They may think, "so if I show up owning my own, circling back around and becoming really curious about their struggle and why they're hurting, then they're going to accept my apology and get curious about my struggle and the situation and they're going to start treating me better and be more emotionally engaged," right? Now, might that happen? It might, but no guarantees, right? If we're showing up the way we are in an attempt to control how they respond. I want my spouse to be more emotionally engaged. I want them to treat me better. I want them to accept my apology, right? If we're trying to control how they respond, expecting that their behaviors will change, that ventures into the land of people pleasing. Notice how we're trying to control their behaviors or maybe we're trying to control their feelings that they will like me or love me more. A spouse might think, "I did the dishes, they should want sex." "I made him dinner. He should say thank you." "I took the time to ask him or her questions about their frustrations in our relationship. They should care about and ask about my frustrations." Notice the inherent transactions in these ideas. If they do this, then if I do this, then they should do that. So first, notice the shoulds. This is a telltale sign that there is some people pleasing going on. We are trying to manipulate or control their thoughts, their feelings, their behavior by our own behavior. So people pleasing can also look like saying yes to a request in an effort to get people to like us more.

 07:39

 For example, we may be asked to serve on a community committee. We may not really be interested in the work the committee does or in investing the time, but we don't want to disappoint the person who is asking or we think that there'll be offended or not like us if we say no. And so we say yes. Anytime you say yes instead of no when you really don't want to do it, you are engaging in people pleasing. Or conversely anytime you say no when you really want to say yes, that's also people pleasing. We're doing it to please the other person, not caring about our own wants and needs. Now this isn't to say that you're going to love everything you say yes or no to, so check out the motive. If someone asked me to take them to the airport at 3am, I don't really want to do that. Probably I would never want to do that because at 3am I prefer to be in bed sleeping. If I say yes because I don't want to offend them or I think that they'll like me more or then I can expect the same from them in the future, then that's people pleasing. If I say yes because I really do value being able to help people when they need help and I want to help this person, then that's being kind. So when we're weighing the people pleasing kindness question, we have to get clear on our motives.

09:05

Now I remember a time when being a people pleaser kind of had an underlying idea that it was a really amazing, selfless thing. And I don't know if maybe it was just my world, but it seemed like a lot of times people pleasing was used in a way to say that "I'm just taking care of other people." "I value other people so much" was kind of the idea that came along with that in the circles that I was in anyway. And the idea was that if I did things for other people that I didn't want to do, that I was being selfless, that I was thinking of others before myself and that I was taking the higher road. Notice the one-upping going on there, right? And I think that our generation was inundated with the beliefs and the ideas that we always needed to put others first and ourselves last in order to be a good person, in order to be worthy of the label "good woman," "good wife," or "good mother."

10:01

But as the years have played out, we're beginning to see how dysfunctional and detrimental these ideas are. They base our worth as people on what we do, on what we have to offer rather than on the fact that we are just people of worth. And so we started giving and serving and putting ourselves last, hoping to feel better because when we felt bad, serving others, was the magic brew to fix our feeling bad, right? The problem this created is that we started to equate our worth on making others feel good. Which ultimately we have no control over how other people feel regardless of what we do for them. When our children told us at the end of the day that they hated us even after we'd spent the entire week running them to every appointment and practice and lesson available to them. We thought we were doing something wrong. How could they hate us? Because shouldn't they love us if we're serving them with no thought of ourselves? In many instances, we were using our children to shore up our own sense of self-worth. If they were happy, then we were a good mom. And the same concept with spouses or with our own mothers or our siblings or our friends. This idea that we can make them happy by doing all the things they want us to do. And when it didn't work, when people were still unhappy with life or unhappy with us, we figured we weren't serving enough, that we weren't selfless enough, that we weren't giving enough, that we weren't enough. When in reality, our actions were really people pleasing. We might have loved doing things for our children, God knows. We love them so desperately, we can hardly breathe sometimes. But often we were inadvertently and unconsciously doing it in an effort to manage their emotions. And that, whether it's conscious or unconscious is called manipulation. Now most of us would never be manipulative on purpose. So I know that this term is going to seem harsh and may give you a little jolt, but really it's what we're doing.

12:18

I'm not saying that running our kids to every appointment and practice and lesson available to them was a bad thing. We just have to clean up our motives behind it. Here's a tell-tell way that you can tell whether you were doing it from a place of people pleasing or kindness. Did you or do you feel resentment about it? Resentment is such an indicator of people pleasing because that means that we have expectations around how the other person should respond to our actions, that they didn't respond the way we expected. Kindness on the other hand, doesn't have expectations at all. Kindness shows up doing things for others just because we want to. It feels good. We love the other person and we want to make their lives easier or we want to engage with them in a certain way. But kindness doesn't have expectations that they will respond any way at all. They can say thank you or not and we're okay with it. Now, not that we don't appreciate the social nicety of someone saying thank you, but even if they don't, we're still glad that we did the thing. We don't plant or water a seed of resentment when there isn't a thank you.

13:35

So how do we tell the difference between people pleasing and kindness when your spouse or a date invites you to go see an ice hockey game and you don't really like ice hockey? Can we say yes and have it not be people pleasing. Okay, so again, check your motives behind the yes. Are you afraid they won't like you or they'll be angry with you? People pleasing. Notice the expectation that they will like you, that they won't be angry. Okay, are you trying to be someone that you're not so that they will accept you more like saying, "Oh, I love ice hockey. I'd love to go to an ice hockey game," right? People pleasing. And yes, we do this even in longstanding relationships, not just when we're dating, right? Because notice the expectation they'll like you, they'll accept you, even though it's not the real you that they're accepting, because you're not showing them the real you, right? Okay, notice the expectations again. Are you worried they won't ask you out again, or they'll complain that you never want to do anything they want to do? People pleasing, right? Notice the expectation again, either expecting a followup date or that your spouse isn't going to complain. So just notice the motivation.

14:49

Okay, but what if you know that this person really loves this sport and you want to spend time with them and you want to support their interests? That's kindness. Also note the lack of expectation. You're showing up because you value the relationship and you see this as an opportunity to invest in it. Not people pleasing. You're not lying. Unless you're saying, "oh, I love ice hockey and you can't wait to go" and you're also not expecting any type of response from them. You're showing up because you're choosing to show up. A real life example: my husband loves watching bike racing like the Tour de France. Now, I've never been interested in this sport before. I actually never even gave it a second thought before I married him. However, I know that it's important to him. I know that he loves watching this. He loves all the strategy and the tactical moves, all that stuff. He thinks it's great. And I want to be a wife who supports his interests. So sometimes I'll sit down with him and watch the ending of a race. And I really am interested. And so I'll ask questions about the strategies that I never knew existed. And he loves to explain it all. And really, it's been super fun for me to learn about. Like I had no idea all these things that went on in bike racing. I am investing in our relationship because I love him. I'm not doing it because I think it will make him love me more. I think he's going to love me whether I sit down and watch that with him or not. But I want to invest in our relationship. I love that we can chat a little bit about biking. Now, not a lot. Mind you, because I haven't learned a ton. But I'm doing it not with any ulterior motive that he's going to behave differently. I'm not even doing it saying, "oh, so now he's going to sit down and watch a chick flick with me later on." No, like, I'm just doing it because I want to invest in our relationship.

16:49

Now, here's the deal. If he asked me to sit down and watch all four or five or six hours of a day's race with him, and I did, that would most likely be people pleasing. Because although I enjoy learning about it and I enjoy watching the exciting last 20 minutes of a race, I don't think I would enjoy watching four hours of people riding up and down mountains, although the scenery is gorgeous in France, right? But I get to check my own behavior. Am I sitting down and and watching this merely out of people pleasing? And if he says, "oh my gosh, watch the last six minutes of this race, this was amazing." And he he wants me to watch that. I again, if I'm people pleasing, then I have ulterior motives, I have expectations, I'm thinking that he's going to like me more because I sat and watched that with him and pretended like I was excited about it. But no, like, I'm happy. I love when he brings me a small clip and says, "oh my gosh, watch this strategy. I gotta show this," and he gets excited about it and he's showing me what the riders are doing. I think it's fun. It's fun to watch him be so excited about something that he loves and to just enjoy it so much. And I really enjoy investing that time with him. So I just get to manage my own motives and I get to say, "okay, am I doing this with expectations or am I doing this because I want to invest here because I want to?"

18:12

Okay, so here's another example. Your adult children keep showing up unexpectedly and you immediately drop or change all of your plans. Okay, first, check your motive for dropping your plans. Are you afraid of anything? Are you afraid that they'll get offended if you continue on with your plans and you leave, that they'll think you don't love them, that it will impact your relationship in a negative way, that they'll think that they're not important to you, that they won't feel welcome in your home? Any fear is an indication that you are changing your plans because of people pleasing. Also check, do you have expectations for changing your plans? That they'll open up and be vulnerable and you'll have a great discussion, that they'll notice your sacrifice and they'll express gratitude, that they'll take out the garbage while they are there or that they'll help cook and clean up dinner. And if your expectations aren't met, will you step into resentment at any level? This would sound like, "ugh, they just dropped by and expect me to drop everything and they will never help me at all. They're just expecting me to serve them the whole time." Again, expectations and resentment are an indication that you are people pleasing. However, you can also drop or change your plans from a place of kindness, from a place of love. Reasons for that would be that you just really love hanging out with your kids and it's been a couple weeks. Or maybe you can tell that they really just need somebody to listen and you want to make yourself available for that. Maybe you've set a goal to be more emotionally available to your children and you changing your plans aligns with that goal, that value. Or maybe you don't change your plans, but you let them know that you're so glad to see them and are looking forward to chatting when you get back and feel free to help yourself to anything in the fridge.

20:12

Okay, there are times that we are showing up the way we want to because we want to, not because we feel pressure or expectation from somebody else. If we feel pressure or expectation from someone and we cave for that reason, "oh, I gotta get them off my back," we are people pleasing. Again, we agree not because it's something we really want to choose, but because we're afraid of the repercussions if we don't. We're afraid of their displeasure, of them not being happy with us, of them not liking us or maybe talking to others behind our backs. Notice we're trying to control their thoughts, their feelings, their actions, right? None of these are good reasons to do something. All of these are reasons to say no to the request. I think that many of us in our generation learned to live the gospel from a place of people pleasing: fear of God's punishment, fear of being rejected by family or friends, fear of disappointing the people around us. And now in middle age, so many people that I speak with about this are finally learning to live the gospel from a place of love instead, myself included, because we love what it does for our lives. We love who we are when we're applying the principles. We have truly come to love God and we want to align our lives with His. Living from a place of people pleasing is exhausting because we're always pretending to be something that we're not. We're pretending to feel something we don't feel or to think something we don't think. Living from a place of kindness from love is exhilarating and actually energy-producing instead, because we are upholding ourselves, we're supporting ourselves.

22:06

So again, when we notice the fear-based reasons for our choices and also the underlying desire to control how the other person thinks or feels or acts, then we can go, "oh, I'm people pleasing here." It can be super subtle for sure. And sometimes because we've done it for so many years, we don't even recognize our people pleasing tendencies. We think we're actually just being kind, but the resentment and the frustration will give it away almost every time. Remember, people pleasing dips into controlling the other person's thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. It dips into the fear of their response and it also dips into our expectations of how we think they should be showing up in response to our behaviors. That is the manipulation part. People pleasing is a space where we are not honest with others or even ourselves about what we really want. And this is the lying part. Often it gets modeled because we're not recognizing what we really want. We have been so out of touch with our own wants and needs for so long that we're often not even really sure what we want and need. And when you're showing up from a people pleasing place, I promise you may be a really, really good actor, but your frustration and your resentment will ooze out of you somehow: your shifty eyes, the pull on your mouth, your forced smile, your body language, the tone of your voice, your word choice. I promise you're not that good of an actor. They will know. And that breaks down the relationship every time.

23:48

Remember at the beginning, we talked about how we don't question our own motives, but we're very good at questioning other people's motives. And why do we question? Because we see those things. We see the not making eye contact. We see the their tense mouth. We see their tight body. Like we see that and we question their motives. And that breaks down our relationship because then we're like, "I don't know if I can trust them. “Right? It's going to break down the relationship every time unless the other person is a narcissist and they don't care about your wants and needs in their relationship and are only focused on their own and they're using you anyway to get what they want. That's when it's not going to break down the relationship on their side, but it will break down the relationship on your side. Kindness, though, is the space where we show up the way we want to because it aligns with our values. We intentionally choose to engage the way that we do out of love rather than out of fear. And this is love for ourselves and love for the other person.

24:56

Now today is an amazing time to start figuring all this out. Middle age is when all the pieces start fitting together, when we can see and understand things we haven't before. We have a perspective and experience that changes our ability to see and engage. And we finally have time to catch our breath and to really ask ourselves what we want. Because my friend, our needs and wants matter. They matter a lot because we matter a lot. We matter as much as anybody else in our story. And I'm not going to be a narcissist. Understanding our wants and needs, honoring our wants and needs, and fulfilling our wants and needs is a huge part of putting a stop to the people pleasing and stepping into kindness and love for ourselves and for others. I love growing up because this is what it helps us grow up into. It helps us grow up into ourselves This is what middle age is really about: finding ourselves sometimes for the first time in our lives. Okay, good stuff, right?

26:10

 All right, If you would love some personal help from me ,if you want to talk about coaching and say "boy I am just in over my head" or "the pain has finally gotten so bad in this particular area of my life that I have got to do something," you can set up a call with me. You can go to the tanyahale.com "free consultation" tab at the top, and you can look on my calendar. You can find a time that works for you and we can sit down and we can chat about how to work through this stuff, about how to clean this up in your own life.

26:44

And I am really good at helping to create greater awareness around things that you're not aware of at all. It's one of my biggest jobs as a life coach, is helping you see the things that you're not seeing. My job is not to tell you what to do with those things, because you're smart and it's your life and you will know what to do. But my job's to help you see it so that it can be put on your awareness place where you're like, "oh, I see, now I can clean this up. So contact me, tanyahale.com. I would love to chat with you about coaching. I am just passionate about the work that I do here. And I just love working with my clients and I love putting this content out there for you as well. Some of you will never contact me and I still love that you're here. I really love that you're here working to create better lives because we're gonna change the lives of all the people around us when we get all the stuff cleaned up. Okay, that's gonna do it for me this week. Have a great, great week and I will see you next time. Bye.

27:54

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email, a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.