Eliminate People Pleasing in 5 min/day

• The impact that people pleasing has on your relationships and workplace (5:08)
• The ongoing effort to eliminate people pleasing (6:41)
• Gaining your power back by owning your preferences (8:55)
• Using your voice confidently (11:05)

“[People pleasing] is actually blocking us from being able to follow our own desires, from us understanding our preferences and knowing who we are.”

“People pleasing really does sneak up on you. It becomes your mode of doing things, and you have to constantly catch it and nip it in the bud over and over again.”

“I am a fan of you understanding the moments when it is important for you to speak and then not holding back to do so. A lot of that comes from moving out of that people pleasing place, identifying your own personal power, this bigger sense of who you are, and then following that to be in your personal power.”

“People like people who have clarity, who know who they are, who know what they want, and they respect it as well.”

NICOLE

Welcome back to the School of Self-Worth. I am your host, Nicole Tsong. So we are almost at the very end of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. May is the full month of celebration of that, and in that context, I wanted to complete this month with a really powerful conversation around a topic that I know so many Asian American women struggle with. It’s something that took me most of my life to even recognize existed, and then took me years more to still squash it, and just sometimes, like weeds in the yard where you spent your whole weekend  getting them all out, and then you somehow missed one and it just pops back up and you’re like, oh, dang, a week later, you got to dig it back out!

That’s what people pleasing can be like. It is just this constant, rigorous weeding of the yard because these old patterns can be a little bit stuck, stubborn, and it is possible for us to reprogram ourselves to really eliminate the people pleasing. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today. I give you some really simple steps to practice five minutes per day to start to eliminate it completely for yourself, so that you can truly reclaim your personal power. And I would say, on a deeper level, really reclaim your voice, because that’s actually what’s happening for us, with people pleasing, is that we are squashing our voice. We are squashing who we are. We’re not really allowing ourselves to be in full expression.

That’s really the depth of this conversation today. But before we get into it, if you’re an Asian American corporate leader who wants to learn the five hour workday system, and still be next in line for promotion, DM me five on Instagram @ Nicoletsong, I have got something for you.

Okay, friends, let’s dig into this conversation. Welcome to the School of Self-Worth, a podcast for ambitious women who know they are worthy of an astoundingly great life. Join us weekly as we get on the right side of your intuition, redefine success, and reclaim your self-worth. I’m your host, Nicole Tsong, an award-winning journalist who left it all behind to become a best-selling author of three books and work/life balance expert, helping ambitious women unlock their intuition and step into a life of fulfilment and radical joy. Every single week, I will bring you diverse and meaningful conversations with successful women from all walks of life who share insight about what it takes to be brave, joyful, and authentic every day. Every episode is thoughtfully designed to leave you feeling empowered with tangible tips and advice that will lead you to your next breakthrough.

All right, everybody. Hello! For so many of you, people pleasing starts young. It starts when you’re a kid, and I am no exception to that. As a child, I was totally indoctrinated with the idea of being a rule follower and being a people pleaser. I don’t think I even knew what was going on, because it was just the norm. It’s just what you did at school. You listen to the rules, you follow the rules. You don’t make a fuss. You don’t stand out at home. I followed my parents rules for the most part, until I got into the rebellious teenage years. But I just did what they said, and it never occurred to me to do anything different, because they were the same way.

They followed the rules with work. They always did what they were supposed to do. They paid their bills on time. They were model citizens, and when I look at it from the perspective of being the daughter of immigrants, you know, they didn’t want to stand out, of course not. There’s so much risk to being an immigrant in this country before you get all your paperwork settled. And even once you get all of that settled, you still don’t want to stand out. You don’t want to bring attention to yourself when you already get so much attention, just for being yourself. My parents had accents, and all of those things draw unwanted attention. Looking different, right? Not being white, all of that comes in.

When you think about it, and I look back at it, we were in that idea of, better toe the line. And then you add on top of it, Chinese culture, which is very much about revering your elders and following the rules and obeying. At school in particular, of course, that was the rule. So you layer in all these complex pieces, and what it did is, it built this perfectly pleasant, high-performing people pleaser, known as Nicole Tsong. It created all of those things in me, and even to this day,  I am somebody who will stop at a stop sign even if there’s nobody else around and there’s no cops in sight. I am definitely the kind of person who would stop at a stop sign. So I also like to add in and layer in for us to not be so hard on ourselves about this, because humans naturally want to be part of the herd, part of the crowd. It’s built into us. We are designed to be in community, and it is safer in community. So that’s also part of what’s actually occurring. But it’s still important for us to understand when this people pleasing is getting in the way, when it’s actually blocking us from being able to follow our own desires, from us understanding our preferences, and knowing who we are.

I’ll say I was an adult when it started to work against me. I was a ‘go to for everything’. I was the person who was your reliable backup. I always was on time for everything, so you could totally count on me, and I actually still, in fact, like being that kind of person. If I say I’m going to be there, I will be there. But what changed after I really worked through my people pleasing, is that I do not do everything that I used to do when I was younger. For sure, I always, always,  would go the extra mile. If you asked me to do an extra work project, I would do it. If you needed me to work late, I would do it, because I knew how to say yes. I knew how to make people happy. I knew how to get good reviews at work. I knew how to be the person who never complained.

But what happened is, and this snuck up on me, I was eventually getting into positions where I was doing things I didn’t really want to be doing. I didn’t really know how to express my own voice. I was just trying to be the version of myself that made other people happy, rather than being the version of myself that was true to who I really am, like a really authentic version of Nicole. And people pleasing is like that. It really does sneak up on you. It becomes your mode of doing things, and you have to constantly catch it and nip it in the bud, over and over again. So I could give you so many examples of when a people pleasing has blocked me. But I will say in personal relationships, in particular, it has really been challenging for me to own my voice.

In my career, it also was a lot of work for me to own my voice on a much deeper level, and be able to speak up, and actually be a leader in a deeper way than just working really hard to make people happy. When you can really move out of that people pleasing, that’s when stepping and standing up in your voice, being more commanding and in your own power, is actually possible. So for those of you who are struggling with that piece of it, that you’re being told to speak up more or to do more at work – and I’m not necessarily a fan of advice to speak up more – I am a fan of you understanding the moments when it is important for you to speak, and then not holding back to do so. A lot of that comes from moving out of that people pleasing place, identifying your own personal power, this bigger sense of who you are, and then following that to be in your personal power.

So today I’m going to share two simple things I did to end people pleasing, and I’m going to give you the two exact steps. I will say this about these steps:  They are really simple. They’re very straightforward, but require a lot of discipline and diligence. My own clients know these, and they work on them. A lot of times it can be a real struggle, because life gets in the way, you get really busy, lots of things are going on, and it requires a deep level of self-awareness and accountability to stay on top of it, to do it every day, because it’s not something where you do it once, and all of a sudden magically, poof, you’re no longer a people pleaser. It doesn’t really work like that. It works from consistent self-work, consistent awareness, over and over again. So I’m going to get into this, and again, it’s just mostly an awareness practice, but it’s such a really powerful one if you can do it for yourself consistently.

The first step is to identify your preferences. Now this is the thing I see missing for most people, is understanding what it is they actually want. So a common example of what people say to me is like, ‘I want to work less’. Okay, you want to work less. What do you want to do instead? If you got 3 hours of your day back, what are you going to do with that? And some people don’t really know, because that hasn’t occurred to them, what that life would look like. So your preferences might be, and this is really important, to spend time with your kids, or is your preference to actually go to the gym? And are you just saying you should hang out with your kids because you think you’re supposed to, but what you really want is an hour to yourself? This is important to really start to dig in and be like, what is my preference? What is the thing that actually really matters to me?

I like to go even more granular and simple, and this is where people pleasers can struggle the most, when someone says, ‘let’s go to dinner’, and you say, ‘I’m easy, whatever you want’. If you’re someone who says that I’m easy, definitely people pleasing is running in your blood. What is it that you actually prefer? Because you do have a preference. I know that you do. You just might not actually be saying it. And people, by the way, will be so grateful if you start to express preferences. I used to be really afraid of it. I thought that they would not like me, or they get frustrated or upset that I was being challenging. In fact, if I say, hey, let’s go to dinner and someone suggests something, I’m like, awesome, now we have something to work with! So it’s important for us to understand, that actually, I would really love to eat a burger or I’d love to go for Thai food, but I definitely do not want fish and chips, then people are like, oh, fantastic. Now they know. So what you need to do is to start to identify the preference. Know what is it that you actually want.

The practices would be something like a meal. I think that’s a really great way to start to practice. What do I want to eat? What works for me. Instead of me making a meal that works for my whole family or works for everybody else, what do I actually want? And then the next thing to do is to act upon it through language, through your voice, through speaking up. You say to the other person, this is my preference. Now I am not talking about dominating. I am not talking about forcing other people to bend to your will. I am simply telling you to say what your preference is. This is what I would like to do. This is what works best for me versus, oh, whatever works for you is great for me. Do you see the difference in the language and then the tone? And when you can start to practice this on a daily basis, one time per day, you ask yourself, what is my preference? And then you follow that preference by voicing it or acting upon it. Then you can start to do it in different places. Like if somebody, your boss comes to you with a project, you pause, you identify your preference, and you’re like, well, my preference is to work on this project versus that one, but there’s a cost to me taking this on. You tell them what actually works for you and what doesn’t, and now you have a conversation. You are owning your personal power in that situation, you actually feel like you have a say in the direction of your life, and this all starts with you saying, I want to eat Thai food or a burger. Like you really starting to understand, own, and have a say in the things that matter to you. And I love food, by the way, it really matters to me, so that’s a place I had to start in practice. I really want to eat dumplings tonight. Not everyone wants to eat dumplings every day. Especially when I was younger, when I was hanging out with friends who weren’t Asian or Chinese, I wanted to eat dumplings all the time, and it was very scary for me to say I wanted to eat dumplings.

The second step is starting to own and act on your preferences. How do you start to own who you are, all of who you are, and then let others respond to it in the way that they will? I promise you, they actually are going to really like it, because people like others  who have clarity, who know who they are, who know what they want, and they respect it as well. What you’re doing is now training other people to engage with you in a different way, from that place of personal power. So all I’m inviting you to do is, those two simple steps. Identify your preference, act upon it, and then let me know how this goes. Dm me on Instagram @nicoletsong. Let me know if you’re doing it, what it’s like to do it, and how you bring that discipline in. And if you’re an Asian American corporate worker who really wants five hour workdays, and still be next in line for promotion, DM me five on Instagram, and let’s have a conversation.

 All right, everybody, thank you so much for today’s rich, deep topic. I can’t wait to hear from you. Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. Before you go, don’t forget, if you are a high-achieving woman who wants to uncover your biggest blind spots preventing fast, intuitive decisions, I’ve got a 72-second assessment for you, so make sure to dm me quiz on Instagram @nicoletsong.

Thank you for being here and for listening. We read every note that we get from you about how the podcast is making a difference in your life.

Please know how much we appreciate each and every one of you. Until next time, I’m Nicole Tsong, and this is the School of Self-Worth.