Introduction
Picture this: you’re constantly bending over backwards to keep everyone happy—your boss, your partner, your friends—while your own desires sit quietly in the corner, ignored. That’s people-pleasing in a nutshell—a behavior where people tend to prioritize the needs and desires and approvals of others over their own. At its core, more than anything else, it’s a strong desire to be accepted by other people. And this leads towards actions that are more about making other people happy than fulfilling your own personal needs and your own personal desires. For Luxrity readers—busy professionals, entrepreneurs, and tastemakers—it’s a trap that can clash with the poised, confident life you’re curating. Here, we explore how this habit takes root in childhood, morphs into adulthood, and, most importantly, how to break free with elegance and purpose.
The Childhood Roots of People-Pleasing
People-pleasing usually begins in childhood. Kids learn very early on that certain behaviors in their life and the way that they act get them praise from their parents and teachers and grandparents and people around them. It’s like, okay, certain behaviors get me reprimanded and certain behaviors get me praised. All a young child really knows about or cares about more than anything else, just so you know, is: does my mother love me and does my father love me? That’s all they really care about. I understand that sometimes children need to be reprimanded because children are wild, right? But to the child, the reprimanding feels like a retraction of love. And so what do they do? They will do whatever their parents want them to do to not feel insecure about their parents’ love.
A child, unconsciously—they’re not consciously doing this but unconsciously—will basically become a chameleon to make sure that they get their parents’ love. I’m so blown away the more that I learn about adults and how they were as children and early childhood psychology of how intelligent the unconscious of a child is to notice: when I do this, I get love. When I do this, I get reprimanded. Okay. So I need to do this to get love. So then they start to change themselves and they build themselves into basically who their parents want.
For example, a child might notice that getting good grades gets their parents to be happy and to praise them in some sort of way. That feels like love. Or, you know, when I’m really good in sports, my parents get really happy. I got my parents’ love. And so over time, the child starts doing these things more and more and more to get their parents’ approval, not just because they want to. Like, so many people I’ve seen are incredible at piano and they just don’t even really like playing piano. They’re just like, “Yeah, my parents made me do it.” I’ve seen some really, really talented people in sports and they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t even really like this sport that much. I just did it ‘cuz my dad wanted me to do it.” Or they go to a college and get a very specific degree and they go through 12 years of college and they’re like, “Well, yeah, I only did this because this is what my parents wanted me to do.”
It’s not the only way that it happens—I’m going to give you more examples today—but I just want you to understand how it happens in the beginning. And you know, there was a study that was done in 1978 and it was Dr. Murray Bowen, a really, really well-known family therapist, found that kids often try to please their parents to keep peace at home. And this is called the differentiation of self. And so kids often don’t feel safe expressing their true feelings. And when they do that, they learn to stop expressing their true feelings when things might be a little bit chaotic at home. And they learn to put others first so that therefore the chaos doesn’t happen. So they can avoid conflict. And so people-pleasing is a behavioral adaptation to your environment as a child. And it morphs into all kinds of these crazy things as you get older.
People-Pleasing in Adulthood: Where It Shows Up
For some reason, if you’re a people-pleaser in your childhood, you unconsciously thought that it would benefit you. And it did. It did have some sort of a benefit to you as a child. It made you feel safe. It made you feel loved. It made you keep the parental and child connection between you and your mom or your dad. But as an adult, you have to understand it can turn to being way too much on your plate—overwhelmed, stressed, burnt out, resentful of others. And at the core, the feeling is: I’m worried that I am not good enough as I am for somebody to accept me. So I need to change myself so that I’m accepted by other people. And it’s probably time now that you’re an adult reading this to let that thing go.
So how does it show up as adults? Well, as adults, people-pleasers have a really hard time saying no. They often feel really guilty if they do. And more than anything else, they really care a lot about what other people think about them, even if it means that they have to change themselves and stress themselves out and make themselves unhappy to be accepted by other people. And so they’re usually very concerned with other people’s opinions and judgments of other people. Here’s how it plays out:
At Work: The Overcommitted Professional
Where it pops up is at work, right? People-pleasers tend to take on too many tasks. They’re really afraid to say no to the people around them—the people that they work with, their boss, their co-workers—and they feel like they will be rejected if they say no to someone who’s asking something of them. And for instance, they would rather be stressed with too much than to feel like they’re being rejected. And so it can lead to overwhelm, exhaustion, stress, all of that stuff.
Take Emma, for example. Emma grew up with parents who had very high expectations of her and they praised her mainly when she excelled in school or when she did really well in extracurricular activities. And basically what that taught her as a child is that she needed to achieve in order to earn their love and approval—whether it’s true or false, that’s just kind of what clicked in her head. And I see many people like this. And so as an adult, Emma constantly takes on extra projects at work and always strives to be perfect and does more and does more, and she often finds herself really late at work past the point where everyone else leaves. Then someone comes in and she’s, you know, “Hey, can you do this?” “Oh, absolutely.” She has a lot of trouble saying no to new tasks. And the reason why is ‘cuz she fears that she’ll disappoint her boss and colleagues if she doesn’t keep up with her high performance.
In Relationships: The Harmony-Seeker
In relationships, it might feel like they hide their true feelings to avoid arguments. So they’re like, “I’ll just make sure that I keep him happy and I’ll keep him happy and I won’t tell him how I really feel. So therefore, we don’t get into an argument. I don’t feel rejection.” And they kind of put themselves on the back burner, and it can really make relationships feel one-sided and unfulfilling.
Consider William. His home was really, really intense and had a lot of arguments with his parents. And so to avoid adding stress, he became very compliant. He was always trying to keep the peace, doing whatever was expected of him, never voicing his own opinions or needs. He just wanted to make sure that the chaos at home, he kind of was doing what needs to be done to keep everybody peaceful. And so he became the good kid, right? And so in adulthood, how’s it show up for him in his relationships? William avoids conflicts at all costs. He agrees with his partner even when he’s got a different opinion. He lets her choose everything that they’re going to do, every place they’re going to go. He never speaks up. He often goes along with plans he doesn’t enjoy just so he keeps the harmony, and it leads him to feeling unsatisfied in his relationship and actually resenting his partner, even though it’s not his partner’s fault at all.
In Social Life: The Selfless Giver
Another example is Sophia. Sophia was often praised for being helpful around the house, especially when her parents were busy or stressed or overwhelmed. And so for this, she was praised for being, once again, another good girl. So she learned that being helpful was a way to gain their approval and to feel valued. And so as an adult, she often puts other people’s needs first above her own. So she volunteers for tasks at work. She takes care of her friends’ problems. But the problem out of all of this is that she rarely takes any time for herself and to fill her own cup. And so she constantly feels like she’s drained because she’s unappreciated. She’s pouring from an empty cup. And most of all, she’s just like burned out. She hasn’t been able to fill her own cup up because she’s too busy trying to do everything for everyone else.
In Self-Expression: The Silent Voice
And then there’s Ava. Ava’s parents were emotionally distant from her. They just weren’t really good with emotions. So they were emotionally distant, but they were very critical of when she did something wrong or got bad grades or messed something up. And so to avoid this criticism in childhood, she learned to stay quiet and was told that children are supposed to be seen and not heard. I hear this so often from people—children are supposed to be seen and not heard. That was like a really popular phrase, it seems, because I hear it all the time. And so what she learned is she learned to shut up, believing that her opinions, everything she wanted, were just, her needs were less important than everyone else’s. So she learned not to take up space, and she learned to be small. And so at work, she never speaks up in the meetings or shares her ideas, even if she thinks, like, man, this is a good idea and I have a valuable contribution. Never speaks up. And she fears that her input’s going to be criticized and dismissed. So she stays silent, which affects her self-esteem because she doesn’t think that her thoughts matter much. She doesn’t think that she matters much.
A study from Psychology Today in 2012 by Dr. Susan Smith and Dr. Laura Riley found that low self-esteem often leads to people-pleasing. So people who have low self-esteem tend to people-please more often. And when people don’t feel good about themselves because it’s not inside of them, what they do is they look to other people and they seek approval from other people to feel valued in some sort of way, not realizing that, more than anything else, like, self-esteem comes from the self.
Overcoming People-Pleasing: Steps to Reclaim Your Authenticity
Realizing that you’re a people-pleaser is the first step to changing. Okay, I’m a people-pleaser. Cool. So here are some ways to overcome it, tailored for the Luxrity reader who values sophistication and self-mastery:
1. Identify Your People-Pleasing Habits
The first thing is to get really clear on what your people-pleasing tendencies are. I’ve got a lot of them for you. I’m just gonna go off of a list that I made of, like, what are the most common people-pleasing tendencies. I’m going to go through them. Identify—maybe one of them is you. Maybe all of them are you. But you have to get clear on what your people-pleasing tendencies are first before we go any further. Here they are:
- Saying yes when you really want to say no—you overcommit, you don’t want to disappoint people, all of that.
- Avoiding conflict at all costs—you’d rather just walk on emotional eggshells than risk someone being upset with you.
- Over-apologizing—even when it’s not your fault, you just say sorry. It’s just your job. You do this to avoid judgment or disapproval or to get any sort of fights.
- Needing external validation—you rely on other people’s approval to feel good enough. If someone’s upset with you, your whole day can be ruined because it must mean that something’s wrong with you.
- Being a chameleon—trying to fit in with everybody. You downplay your own opinions. You mute your preferences. You just mirror what other people do just so you can be liked.
- Feeling guilty for having your own needs—so you struggle with asking for help or rest or support or any of that.
- Taking responsibility for other people’s emotions—you know, if somebody’s in a bad mood, you feel like it’s your job to fix it. And so you become this emotional thermostat for every room that you go into.
- Fearing being too much for other people—or fearing being not enough for other people as well. And so you tend to censor yourself constantly.
- Over-delivering to prove your worth—so you go above and beyond. You exhaust yourself to feel approval or belonging or that you fit in.
2. Set Boundaries with Swagger
What you need to do is you need to start setting some really clear boundaries with yourself. This is what I will do from now on. This is what I won’t do from now on. And then you start setting really clear boundaries with other people. And you know, I always say there’s basically three steps to communicating and getting your boundaries and setting boundaries with other people:
- Get clear on what your new boundaries are with other people.
- Clearly communicate that with the other person. So someone says, “Hey, can you take this task on for me?” You need to say, “Hey, just so you know, like, I’ve realized I have completely overwhelmed myself at work. Frankly, it’s because I’m a people-pleaser and I say yes to everybody, but it’s really starting to affect my mental health and it’s also affecting my work performance. And so I would love to help you, but I just can’t. I just don’t have the time and the bandwidth to do it.”
- Stay firm in it. Now, that person will eventually come back to you again and ask you because they’re just used to that pattern. And so you have to stay firm and recommunicate with them.
It’s about figuring out who you want to be, becoming firm in those boundaries, and not getting away from that in any sort of way.
3. Master the Art of Saying “No”
You’ve got to get better at saying no. I want you to understand, in order to stop being a people-pleaser, your favorite word from now on should be no. Not yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And the reason why is because when you say no to another person, you are protecting yourself. When you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. When you say no to something, you’re saying yes to something else. So when you say no to another person in some sort of way, what you’re doing is you’re saying yes to yourself. And so you have to get better at saying no.
4. Build Inner Confidence Like a Boss
The last thing is: start to work on building confidence within yourself. A lot of times, what we’re seeking from other people and from the world, we’re actually seeking from ourselves. And so if your self-esteem is messed up, if you’re looking for approval from other people, if you’re looking for love from other people, what you’re looking for is love and approval from yourself. And so the biggest relationship that you’ll ever have is a relationship with yourself. And so few people will just push that relationship away. But I want you to understand, the more that you start to really understand that the whole thing that we’re doing here is building our own inner connection, you realize, oh my gosh, I’ve really abandoned myself a lot. And from this moment forward, I’m not going to abandon myself anymore. And so you’ve got to start saying yes to yourself and start building confidence in yourself by not being a people-pleaser as much.
Conclusion
And so that is what people-pleasing looks like. That’s how it starts in childhood. That’s how it becomes what it becomes in adulthood. It’s a dance of seeking acceptance that can leave you overwhelmed, resentful, and disconnected from your true self. But now it’s your job to start setting boundaries, start being firm with them, start being clear, and develop that inner connection with yourself. For the Luxrity reader, this isn’t just self-improvement—it’s a rebellion against mediocrity, a step toward a life as refined and authentic as the world you’re building around you. Hey, thanks so much for reading this article. If this struck a chord, dive into more curated insights on Luxrity.com.
