A week of… pleasing myself

How one question can change your life

People-pleasers are… well, I’ll start by telling you what they are not. They are not simply kind folk who please other people by being nice. Long-frocked angel women who comb your hair for you and make you your favourite dinner and maybe even personally feed it to you as well. Strapping men who check your tyre pressure and sort your odd socks and maybe even actually find pairs out of them. These sound like lovely (make-believe) pleasing people; but people-pleasers they are not. (At least I don’t think they are, I haven’t met them).

The whole thing about people-pleasing is that it comes at a cost to you. “People-pleasers displease themselves to please others”, as Jay Shetty puts it. Or as Emma Reed Turrell says, “People-pleasing is a self-sacrificing behavioural compulsion.”

What sort of stuff do you mean? I sense you call out. Take special occasions. It is the people who spend time, effort, and energy planning and carrying out weddings (their own), birthdays (of others) and family events not for the love of it, but for the internal obligation. The people who will do almost anything in the pursuit of acknowledgement from an authority figure. The people so in-attuned with their emotions that they barely even know what they are.

When I wrote If you do this… you’re a people pleaser, I focussed on three key traits:

• Not communicating your needs

• Over apologising (for things that aren’t your fault)

• Conflict avoidance

Which got me thinking. How can someone communicate their needs if they don’t know what they are? How can you advocate for yourself if you don’t know what you need? And if you don’t know what you need, how can you work it out?

So this week I set myself the challenge of starting each morning with the simple question:

What’s the one thing I can do for myself that will make my day?

One week, one question. Here’s how I got on.

On the first day, I overthought it. I found it really hard to choose something. There’s lots of things outside of my control at the moment (mostly financial) and committing to doing *something* for myself meant committing to spending *something* on myself… which in turn might detract from my satisfaction of said thing. Anyway. You see what I mean about overthinking. When I came to my senses and realised we’re not talking about life-altering sums of money here whilst reminding myself that the prioritisation of me and my needs is exactly the point… I tried to look within.

I asked myself: what can I do that will make me happy? What would please me today? How can I please myself today? How can I make myself happy today? What will make me happy today?

I landed on a lunchtime burrito.

There’s a really nice little street food market around the corner from where I’m working. Whenever I go, I let my colleague decide. “I’m easy”, I say. This is not through dominance from them or meekness from my side… but because “I honestly don’t mind”.

I gave it a bit of an (over) think and came to the decision that if I am going to spend too much money on lunch, what would be the best lunch I could have? And for me, that day, it was a burrito. My colleague chose to get one too.

Consider myself pleased. Easy squeezey lemon pleasey.

Day two. Things already took a turn as I felt really unwell, so I woke up feeling pretty uninspired and resistant to the whole thing. I’d been thinking about ideas of what I could do and had already semi-settled on going for an afternoon walk for one of the days, so I locked it in.

I’d rattled around a few thoughts at the start of this escapade, and found myself coming up against some barriers. Including (but not limited to) when do I have to decide by? Can these things involve other people? What if I do it in the morning, is that ok? Does that count for the whole day? Do they need to be different every time? How different?

I reminded myself that I am the master of my own destiny, I make the rules, and also… it doesn’t really matter. Onwards.

I took myself out for a walk mid-afternoon and it was an absolute treat. I listened to a podcast, saw some sun, pleased my pooch (dammit, I’m supposed to be pleasing myself!!). It reinvigorated me; I came back to work clear-headed and happy.

Day three. An afternoon nap. Now we’re cooking with gas, that was easy. I took myself off for a 20 minute rest mid-afternoon with zero guilt. After all, I’m on an assignment! I hadn’t slept well as I was still under the weather, so this nap felt like a much-needed top-up. That it was. Completely restorative, absolutely heavenly, and exactly what the doctor ordered.

The rest of the week included an “up and out” (which is a first-thing-in-the-morning dog walk), a Friday night takeaway, lighting the wood-burning stove in the Shepherd’s hut, and… lying down on the grass.

What I noticed is that the key things that became do-able were the things I put off when it’s just down to me. Taking Coco out first thing, a short afternoon nap, and spontaneous true food choices are all things that are extremely accessible. But they are always the first things to be lost due to work pressures, illness, stress, etc.

It was the structure of this challenge that preserved those items on the list. They became just as important as writing that email, or making that phone-call, or prepping for that meeting. I was given license to prioritise those day-making tasks, and so I did them.

As the week went on, the more liberated I felt, the more outlandish my ‘one thing’ became, and the funner it felt. After the initial wide-eyed overthinking and double-guessing, it became just a really joyful thing to do.

That small shift of asking myself each morning how I could please myself that day essentially became hey, what would be fun to do today? It has really lifted me; it’s tickled me. It feels conspiratorial with myself, it feels cheeky, and fun, and light, and an all round a great thing to do. I highly recommend it.

STAT ATTACK!

2 of 7 = food related
2 of 7 = shall we say… ‘miscellaneous’
1 of 7 = first thing (because I wasn’t brave enough to have my thing won and done before the working day)
4 of 7 = outdoors
4 of 7 = lying down

… connecting with nature and lying down wins.

Tag me in your updates on Instagram @livingintentionallyuk and use #PleaseYourselfChallenge