There’s nothing wrong with people pleasing

Making someone else happy is one of the best feelings in the world.

Behavioural science backs that up in study after study:

We feel better doing something for someone else than for ourselves.

The problem comes when we please others at our own expense.

When we please them for validation.

Or so they will like us.

And that happens when we aren’t clear and confident in what we want in the first place.

There’s a kind of vacuum left by our own indecision and uncertainty into which the requests of others gladly pour.

It’s easier to absolve ourselves of responsibility for choosing what will please us and instead allow our time to become absorbed with fulling other people’s needs.

After all, if we don’t design our lives someone else will design them for us.

So the first step to people pleasing with proactivity, control and positive intention is, in fact, to choose to do it willingly.

Or else not at all.

To decide what it’s going to take to make ourselves happy.

And whether pleasing other people will do that.

So yes, being a little self-serving in our service of others:

Pleasing people to please ourselves.

There’s nothing wrong with that.