In a recent article in The Guardian, Oliver Burkeman describes how to be liberated from people-pleasing:
“Great news! I found the cure for my anxiety!!” the author Sarah Gailey once announced on social media. “All I need is for everyone I know to tell me definitively that they aren’t mad at me, once every 15 seconds, forever.”
I know how she feels. For years, I possessed a remarkable superpower: I could turn almost any work opportunity that came my way into an unpleasant emotional drama, simply by agreeing to do it.
Once I’d accepted a deadline or signed a contract, there was now another person in the world who might be growing impatient that I hadn’t finished yet, or who might end up disappointed in what I produced. And the thought that they might be harboring any negativity towards me felt hugely oppressive. This same overinvestment in other people’s emotions meant I was always saying yes to things I should really have declined, because I flinched internally at the thought of the other person feeling crestfallen.
It bears emphasizing that the people you’re worried might be angry with you, disappointed in you, or bored by you almost never actually are. The liberating truth is that they’ve got their own troubles to worry about…. As the novelist Leila Sales observes, poking fun at this tendency in herself: “It’s weird how when I don’t respond to someone’s email, it’s because I’m busy, but when other people don’t respond to my emails, it’s because they hate me.”
The liberating truth about life as a finite human is that…you’re never going to please everyone, or do everything, or accomplish anything perfectly. So, what would you like to do with your life instead?
