Transcending the People-Pleasing Pattern
Most of us were not taught how to love, and not shown the
importance of making ourselves an equal if not top priority in our
lives.
We were most likely taught to first please our parents, and others, before ourselves.
The relationship we had with our parents directly affects every relationship we experience as adults. (Until we do the inner healing work.)
The most important things a child needs from their parents are unconditional love, acceptance, and complete acknowledgement.
A child deserves to fully be seen, heard, and honored for who they really are, not for what they do or accomplish.
However, because of the times they grew up in and their own limited awareness, most parents just did not have the tools and capacity to teach us anything different from what they were taught during their own upbringing.
Our parents also came from an ancestral lineage that passed down to them unresolved traumas.
These traumas often take up so much inner space that they prevent parents from knowing how to manage their own emotions by using coping behaviors.
So of course, because these parents are unable to manage their own emotions, they have little or no idea how to support their children in managing their emotions.
This pattern has a great impact on us as children.
One of the biggest impacts, is that it teaches children to people-please in order to receive love and acknowledgement.
It makes the child contort themselves to fit into whatever their parents want them to be.
The child begins to do more of the things their parents deem as good, and starts to reject and hide the parts of themselves their parents deem as bad or useless.
Every person just wants love and acceptance, and wants to be viewed as a good human being. No one wants to disappoint their parents.
This is why most sensitive and in-tune children people-please.
As we do our inner healing work, we expand our awareness to understand that we don’t need to please people any more in order to be loved and accepted.
We become such a wellspring of unconditional love to ourselves, that we no longer need to contort ourselves to fit into what others think we should be.
We become so self-sustaining that we no longer need everyone to like, love, and accept us.
We become the emotionally mature parent—to our inner child, and that our own children so deserve and need.
This is us freeing ourselves from the people-pleasing pattern.
February will serve as an excellent month for us to untangle ourselves from this pattern, once and for all!
If you’re feeling that some of your relationships could use a bit of refining right now, the process below can help support you in that.
The Mirror Process
Step 1: Think of a current relationship in your life that you desire to improve or refine.
Step 2: Write down all of the ways in which you think that relationship could benefit from some refinement or improvement.
For example: Better communication, greater appreciation of one another, or a more balanced exchange of love and support.
Step 3: Look at what you have written, and ask yourself, Are the items I listed something I want the other person to change about themselves? Or are they something I would like to improve within myself?
If the answer is the latter, you now have clarity on what you can give to yourself in order to build a strong and nourishing relationship with yourself.
That is vital, because our relationship with our own inner self is the foundation from which we experience all relationships.
If you noticed that your mind wanted to make it about the other person, please continue to Step 4.
Step 4: Ask yourself: How does it serve me, to want to change or control how others treat me?
Usually the core answer to that question ends up being something about safety and self-protection.
The desire to change and control others is a survival pattern the mind has identified with, as a result of forgetting what our Spirit has always known: that It—our true essence—can never be controlled, because it is infinite and eternal.
It is everything!
At your core, you do not really desire to control anyone. That impulse is just the mind’s way of protecting itself.
Doesn’t it feel lighter to know that?
With this new awareness, you can then begin to understand that the relationship was just a mirror, reflecting back to you how you have been treating yourself.
These are patterns that exist on both a conscious and subconscious level, as a result of your upbringing, and personal experiences you‘ve accumulated throughout life.
Step 5: With the awareness that everything you wrote on your list was just what you desire to give to yourself, go back over the items on your list, and read them out loud in the following statement:
“I desire to give myself _______________ (fill in the blank), so I now choose to give myself this.”
Repeat the same statement for all of the items you wrote on your list.
Step 6: Thank the person you originally thought of, for being the mirror that showed you what you weren’t fully giving yourself.
Step 7: Thank yourself for being so open and willing to understand that the whole situation has only ever been about how you treat you.
Step 8: Make the decision to give yourself everything you ever thought others should be giving you, and give yourself that on a daily basis.
This is you, coming back into your power!
As you become the one who gives yourself everything you thought others should be giving you, you will find that your happiness and fulfillment quotients magnify Big Time!
You will begin noticing that the people who are unable to do these things for themselves, such as increased self-respect, will start to lovingly move into the background of your life, while those who can do that for themselves will increasingly begin to show up for you, in extraordinary ways.
emmanueldagher.com
We were most likely taught to first please our parents, and others, before ourselves.
The relationship we had with our parents directly affects every relationship we experience as adults. (Until we do the inner healing work.)
The most important things a child needs from their parents are unconditional love, acceptance, and complete acknowledgement.
A child deserves to fully be seen, heard, and honored for who they really are, not for what they do or accomplish.
However, because of the times they grew up in and their own limited awareness, most parents just did not have the tools and capacity to teach us anything different from what they were taught during their own upbringing.
Our parents also came from an ancestral lineage that passed down to them unresolved traumas.
These traumas often take up so much inner space that they prevent parents from knowing how to manage their own emotions by using coping behaviors.
So of course, because these parents are unable to manage their own emotions, they have little or no idea how to support their children in managing their emotions.
This pattern has a great impact on us as children.
One of the biggest impacts, is that it teaches children to people-please in order to receive love and acknowledgement.
It makes the child contort themselves to fit into whatever their parents want them to be.
The child begins to do more of the things their parents deem as good, and starts to reject and hide the parts of themselves their parents deem as bad or useless.
Every person just wants love and acceptance, and wants to be viewed as a good human being. No one wants to disappoint their parents.
This is why most sensitive and in-tune children people-please.
As we do our inner healing work, we expand our awareness to understand that we don’t need to please people any more in order to be loved and accepted.
We become such a wellspring of unconditional love to ourselves, that we no longer need to contort ourselves to fit into what others think we should be.
We become so self-sustaining that we no longer need everyone to like, love, and accept us.
We become the emotionally mature parent—to our inner child, and that our own children so deserve and need.
This is us freeing ourselves from the people-pleasing pattern.
February will serve as an excellent month for us to untangle ourselves from this pattern, once and for all!
If you’re feeling that some of your relationships could use a bit of refining right now, the process below can help support you in that.
The Mirror Process
Step 1: Think of a current relationship in your life that you desire to improve or refine.
Step 2: Write down all of the ways in which you think that relationship could benefit from some refinement or improvement.
For example: Better communication, greater appreciation of one another, or a more balanced exchange of love and support.
Step 3: Look at what you have written, and ask yourself, Are the items I listed something I want the other person to change about themselves? Or are they something I would like to improve within myself?
If the answer is the latter, you now have clarity on what you can give to yourself in order to build a strong and nourishing relationship with yourself.
That is vital, because our relationship with our own inner self is the foundation from which we experience all relationships.
If you noticed that your mind wanted to make it about the other person, please continue to Step 4.
Step 4: Ask yourself: How does it serve me, to want to change or control how others treat me?
Usually the core answer to that question ends up being something about safety and self-protection.
The desire to change and control others is a survival pattern the mind has identified with, as a result of forgetting what our Spirit has always known: that It—our true essence—can never be controlled, because it is infinite and eternal.
It is everything!
At your core, you do not really desire to control anyone. That impulse is just the mind’s way of protecting itself.
Doesn’t it feel lighter to know that?
With this new awareness, you can then begin to understand that the relationship was just a mirror, reflecting back to you how you have been treating yourself.
These are patterns that exist on both a conscious and subconscious level, as a result of your upbringing, and personal experiences you‘ve accumulated throughout life.
Step 5: With the awareness that everything you wrote on your list was just what you desire to give to yourself, go back over the items on your list, and read them out loud in the following statement:
“I desire to give myself _______________ (fill in the blank), so I now choose to give myself this.”
Repeat the same statement for all of the items you wrote on your list.
Step 6: Thank the person you originally thought of, for being the mirror that showed you what you weren’t fully giving yourself.
Step 7: Thank yourself for being so open and willing to understand that the whole situation has only ever been about how you treat you.
Step 8: Make the decision to give yourself everything you ever thought others should be giving you, and give yourself that on a daily basis.
This is you, coming back into your power!
As you become the one who gives yourself everything you thought others should be giving you, you will find that your happiness and fulfillment quotients magnify Big Time!
You will begin noticing that the people who are unable to do these things for themselves, such as increased self-respect, will start to lovingly move into the background of your life, while those who can do that for themselves will increasingly begin to show up for you, in extraordinary ways.
emmanueldagher.com