People Pleasing #1: You Don't Need a Reason to Say No

Have you ever noticed that you feel like you need a really, really good reason to say no?

Like donating-a-kidney-level good.

Because somehow, "I don't want to" doesn't seem like enough.

In this episode, we're talking about why so many of us treat other people's wants like they're our obligations, and why that habit is quietly draining our time, energy, and nervous system. 

In this episode of Climb Your Mountain, I'll share four mindset shifts that will help you stop people pleasing, say no without making up elaborate excuses, and finally believe that protecting your time isn't selfish. It's part of being the person you're here to be.

If you've ever said yes with resentment, rehearsed fake excuses in the shower, or spent way too much energy worrying that someone might think you're mean... this one's for you.

Coach With Sarah

Sarah offers a 6-month nervous system coaching program for humans who are neurodivergent, sensitive, and highly creative. Learn to rewire your brain for calm, load up your stress toolkit, and address the root causes of overwhelm . To learn more and get started, schedule your free consult or email sarah@sarahmaurercoaching.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Climb Your Mountain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use coaching, neuroscience, and mindfulness to overcome life's challenges. I'm Sarah Bauer, a certified life and performance coach, transport facilitator, and trans team. Each week I show you how to change your brain fast before good and without struggle. Whether you're training to climb an actual mountain, building a business, dating, or claiming a fucking rebellion, these tools will help. Listen and learn so you can enjoy more of what you want. Happiness, fun, conviction, creativity, courage, and the occasional mountaintop moment. Ready? Let's do this. Hey friend, how are you doing? I get an F in podcasting. I did not put an episode out last week. And it welcome to the inner workings of my mind. I blame it on Riverside. I'm trying to do a video podcast. And every time I sat down to record, I would look at myself on the video and be like, I look a fool. My hair is not done. Should I go put on some makeup? What am I wearing? I'm probably wearing what I wore when I recorded the last podcast episode. Now everyone will know. I'm a life coach that works from home, and I sometimes wear the same clothes like two days in a row for shame. So, in the spirit of getting some podcasts out before I head out on vacation here, I am back on good old garage band. A few of you told me you didn't like the sound on the riverside one anyway. So now you'll have hopefully perfect sound. And it will sound like me, and we'll worry about Riverside when I get back from vacation. So, thanks to all who tuned in for the series I did last month when I was talking about investing in coaching. I got so much good feedback from this, by the way. I feel like it answered a lot of questions for people. So I am diving into a new series. The series don't necessarily like line up exactly with the months, but we'll probably be talking about this topic through July. And I would really like to dig into the whole topic of people pleasing. I feel like I coach on this so much. And sometimes it's classic people pleasing, the person who is overextended, can't say no, even when they want to, kind of sacrifices their purpose in life for doing everyone else's purpose and taking care of everyone else's purpose. And I think sometimes people pleasing shows up in kind of insidious ways. I think it can show up in parenting, it can show up in relationships, it can show up in just kind of how we're living our lives. So we're gonna talk about all things people pleasing over the next few episodes. And I think this is important because a lot of us are saying yes to stuff that is draining our energy and keeping us from doing our most important work in the world, which is something I'm gonna talk about today. And what are we what are we focusing on today? We're gonna dive into this whole idea that in order to say no, you need to have a really good reason. So, this is what this often looks like for my clients. A request comes to you. So the example we're gonna use in this episode is Becky from your book club needs a ride to this month's meeting. And Becky is really nice, but she's not a close friend. She's just someone that you know from book club. You've met her a few times, and for whatever reason, she can't drive herself. So the two of you got to talking. You gave her a ride one time, and now every month when it's book club, Becky texts you and asks for a ride. And let's say Becky's perfectly nice, she always offers you a few bucks for gas money, but she lives 10 minutes out of the way, and you're tired of being her go-to ride every month. You want to say no, or at least say no sometimes. But you feel like, in order to say no, in order to be a good person and still say no, you gotta have a really good reason. Something that no one can argue with. Simple reasons like wanting to use those 20 minutes to relax or catch up on housework. They definitely don't seem good enough. With this poor woman, she can't even drive. You feel like you need a real reason. Something along the lines of donating a kidney, but you can't use that one because you are going to book club, and it's possible Becky's going to find another ride to book club and see you there and know that you weren't donating a kidney. So, in this situation where you feel like you can't say no without a good reason, it's gonna be tempting to do one of three things. First of all, what a lot of you are doing is you're just gonna keep taking her because you don't want to deal with the guilt of having to say no. And you're gonna tell yourself that by taking her, you're being nice. But are you really? Because as you're driving her, when you don't want to drive her, you are not having the nicest thoughts and feelings about her. You're taking her and driving her in your car while you have resentment in your heart for her. And if you think about it, that's really not nice. Like, if she knew that, how would she feel? The second thing you're gonna be tempted to do is to say no, but be really freaking weird about it. That might look like apologizing profusely, overexplaining all the reasons you can't take her this time. Maybe you even exaggerate a little and make things up. Like, maybe you say that your dog threw up in the car and it smells so bad that you can't possibly drive anyone else until the car gets cleaned. And the problem with this approach is it's kind of like kicking the can down the road. Because now, to keep not taking her, you have to make the story even more complicated. Like, oh my god, it's been a it's a month later, and the car detailer still can't get that awful smell out of the car seats. And now, if your friend Susan from Book Club also wants a ride, you have to say no because Becky might see you pull up with Susan and then wonder about that. Or if you decide to chance it and take Susan anyway, and Becky sees you, now you're gonna come up with another lie. Like maybe you gotta tell her that Susan has no sense of smell, and that's why she's the only one that gets to ride in your car. She had long COVID and she totally lost her sense of smell, and so that's why you're driving her. But you can't drive Becky, because Becky can still smell. You can see how ridiculous this could get. And then there's a third thing you might be tempted to do. And I feel like this one happens kind of unconsciously, even to really nice people, and that it's that you start to justify not wanting to drive Becky and saying no to driving Becky around by making Becky the bad guy. You might tell yourself seemingly innocent things like, oh my gosh, Becky's so needy. That's weird. Why can't she drive? That's not normal. There must be something like really wrong with her. Maybe she's like a closet drinker with lots of DUIs. And then this sucks, but it's also not uncommon in order to protect your ego to kind of start to try to pull other people into your story. So you might start asking the other girls at book club, don't you think Becky's kind of weird? Why doesn't she drive? Why is she always asking for rides? Have you noticed this? And you can kind of see how this goes. And notice that this is way more mean than actually just saying no to Becky when she asks for a ride. Like that would be the way less mean option than making her this giant villain and then talking to other people about it because you're wrapped up in your own story. So now that you've seen the options, who do you want to be? Do you want to be resentful, weird, or mean? Or do you want to be someone who just gives a simple no? Now, in next week's episode, we're gonna talk all about the simple no, like how do you actually do that? I'm gonna give some you some tips on exactly what to say, and then just handle some different situations that can come up after you say no that make it more complicated. But right here, let's talk about how to actually get to know how to say no without feeling mean, selfish, or guilty, even if you don't have an amazing reason. So, four tips I'm gonna give you. First, I want you to notice when you confuse a desire with an obligation. Women in particular are socialized to be very pleasing and to fulfill the desires of everyone around us. And I think because of that, sometimes we might have a hard time separating a strong desire. Like Becky would really like a ride to book club from an obligation. And the obligation is like, I need to give Becky a ride, or I'm a mean, selfish monster hobag. So if you're having trouble with this one, if you're like nodding along, you're like, yeah, I can see myself doing this. Here's a really good trick. I want you to think about your desires. You probably have desires for lots of people to do lots of different things for you. So, for example, you might want your partner to wear stylish clothes instead of bag baggy old t-shirts. And you might like your coworker to message you on Teams instead of sending emails. And if you have a kid in college, you might want that kid to major in pre-med and become a plastic surgeon, and then in your old age take you on lots of cruises. And notice how none of your desire creates a moral obligation in the other person. Now, you can certainly make requests. You can, if you're smart, say, honey, why don't you put on that cute black button-down shirt and wear that to the party? Because you look so hot in it. And when you're wearing it, all I can think of secretly is about sneaking you out to the car and smashing you in the back seats. And if you're smart, you might say something like that. But even then, you can't stop your partner from wearing their Jeff Leopard t-shirt from 2003 to the party if they really want to, and it doesn't make them a bad person. And just like your desires, even your very strong desires don't create obligations in others, others' strong desires don't oblige you. Disappointing others is not a moral failing. And here's a bonus secret: just like you, most mature adults can handle disappointment without dying, freaking out, melting down, melting down, or hating you forever. So, second tip. This one's a question, and it's kind of a weird question, but I think it creates a lot of perspective. And what you're gonna ask yourself whenever a request comes in that you maybe want to say no to is this Would I pay money to make this happen? If Becky needs to get to book club, would I pay for an Uber to pick Becky up and take her to book club? Let's say the Uber costs $20 each way, so would I pay that? $40? And the answer is probably no. Why? Cause duh, you just wouldn't. That would be weird. We're not expected to just give money to other adults because they would like some money. We feel pretty comfortable saying no when there's actual money involved. Now consider, how is it true that by picking Becky up, you're actually paying Becky? Not in money, but in time and energy. And especially as women, we're not taught to assign value to time and energy like we do money. But that's one reason a lot of us end up overextended. In a lot of ways, your time is way more precious than your money. If you're short on money, you can always get a second job bartending down at the dive bar. But once time is gone, it's gone. If you try to assign a monetary value to those 20 extra minutes you're giving Becky, it would probably be worth more to you than an Uber ride. Think about if you use that time to clean your house, how much would you pay a cleaning service? If you use that time to relax and work on your mental health, how much would you pay a therapist? Probably way more than $40. Way more than the Uber ride. Which brings us to tip number three. We're gonna call this one the moral duty to self-care. We think it's mean to say no. However, there's a school of thought, and I'm not just talking like personal development stuff. This is actual ethical philosophers with PhDs saying this. And what they say is that the meanest thing we can do is to overextend ourselves. We have a duty to take care of ourselves. So, one thought I'm always working on with my clients is this you are an asset in your own life. This could be true to your family, your coworkers, your close friends, your customers, if you are selling something, your patients, if you are a healthcare worker, your clients, if you're a service provider. However, this is true even if you have zero of the above, even if you're not a parent or a service provider or an employee, you are here on this planet for a reason. You have medicine the world needs. And your number one job in this lifetime, to the extent you you can be said to have a job or a purpose, is to become more of you, to follow what lights you up so that the world can experience more of you and your medicine. And too many of us don't have time in our lives to really fulfill our true purpose because we're running around trying to fulfill other people's desires that really don't matter that much. And when we stop trying to fulfill other people's desires, we tell ourselves that we're being mean when really by stretching ourselves too thin, we're actually being mean to ourselves. And Bestie, if you're throwing down what I'm saying, what about the people who need your medicine? What about the people who need what only you can give? When you're using yourself up by people pleasing, you're being really mean to the people you were meant to serve. So let's get busy serving. And I think this concept really got driven home to me. I'm a life coach, I have my own practice, but I still work part-time in my corporate job that I've had forever, and I love it. And my job is working with emergency room doctors who are very stressed-out people. They're very prone to burnouts. And so, one of the great perks about working in that job is that get access to a lot of free training about mental health and taking good care of yourself, self-care, burnout prevention. One of the big things they teach in that course is that we have a moral duty to self-care. And this is true for the doctors because when they are burned out and stressed, they might make more mistakes, they might miss things in an exam. They also might be short with patients. The patients might not connect with them or like them. And that actually matters because patients are more likely to comply with treatment when they like and trust the physician that ordered the treatment. So there's such high consequences to people's health of the doctor being well taken care of, of the doctor filling their own cup, of the doctor being very, very responsible about their own self-care. So we say that doctors have a moral duty to take care of their time and energy. And I would like to posit that if it's true for doctors, it's true for all of us. Because, like I was saying, we all have work to do on this planet in this lifetime that is just as important as doctoring. And by the way, if this argument feels weak because you're not sure what your purpose could possibly be that you're supposed to be following, that is a really excellent reason to sign up for life coaching. We will figure out exactly what it is, and chances are you will be surprised to find out it's something that you are already doing to some degree. But I digress. Let me give you my last tip, and that's that one of your adult responsibilities, this is part of adulting, is to be a good steward of your time and energy. A steward is a caretaker, right? And this is important. It is important to steward your time and energy because they are finite resources. So, for example, think about if you had a hundred dollars to spend on your kid's birthday party, which in this day and age really isn't much. Those of you who have planned a birthday party know for sure. What would you spend it on? You're not gonna spend it on fancy designer invitations. You're gonna think instead about what's most important the cake, some presents. Maybe you put some money toward a simple venue like Chuck E. Cheese where the kids will have a lot of fun. By the way, does Chuck E. Cheese still exist? Is that just an 80s thing? I'm 50, y'all, so I don't really know where kids have birthday parties now. I also don't have any kids, so I am way behind on this. This might be the worst analogy ever. But anyway, you you spend the money on the most important things. And for the invitations, maybe you don't even buy any at all. Maybe you just tell your kid, go invite Bobby and Freddie and Jenny and whoever to the party. And here's what a lot of you are doing: you are acting like you have infinite time and energy when you don't. You're using time on things that aren't really a priority, like giving Becky a ride. And anytime you're spending energy on Becky, you're taking that energy and that time from other things that might be more important: your self-care, your downtime, your deconditioning time if you're a human design person. A question I want you to get in the habit of asking yourself is anytime a request comes up, ask, does saying yes take me closer or further from my priorities? So in some cases, taking Becky to book club, it might actually get you closer to your priorities. Maybe you have a priority of making new friends right now and you would like to make a friend out of Becky. Or maybe doing acts of service is a high priority for you. Because while saying no and having boundaries is good for your mental health, there are times when being of service can also be really good for your mental health. So that may be something that you are consciously wanting to do. But maybe your priority really is to take care of your nervous system because it's really been a tough week at work, and in that case, taking the extra time to go pick up Becky, instead of relaxing, it's moving you away from your top priority. It's worth asking yourself, how good of a steward of your time and energy are you in general? On a scale of one to 10, where would you rate yourself? If you're not sure, you can do an exercise in coaching that we call a time audit. For one day, pause every 30 minutes, you can set an alarm if you want, and write down what you've been doing for those 30 minutes and how it felt emotionally to be doing those things. And if you are my client, you could bring that to coaching, we could look at it together. But even if you're doing this on your own, you're probably gonna notice, even as you're doing it, lots of things you are doing that may be good things to do, but they're not necessary. They're not moving you toward your priorities, and that is a great opportunity to fine-tune. So, friend, next time you are tempted to people please and say yes when you actually want to say no. Four things to think about. Notice if you are making someone else's desire into an obligation. Notice if you would pay money to do this, notice if this is interfering with your ethical duty to self-care, if it's cutting into time that you use to relax or calm your nervous system, it probably is. And notice if it fits in with good stewardship, if it gets you closer or further from your priorities. And now, having noticed all that, then make your decision. Hopefully, I've empowered you here to say no, even if you don't have a fancy reason. And hopefully I've convinced you that I don't want to is often a good enough reason. What you want and feel matters. That is always what I am trying to like help my clients take on board. Which, though, now that you've made your decision and it's to say no, that brings us to another question. How do you go about delivering the actual no? Should you try to soften the blow? Should you explain? Should you lie? What if Becky says, Well, okay, but can you take me the week after or the month after? What if you get to book club by yourself and Karen says, Where's Becky? Why didn't you give her a ride? Next week on the podcast, we're gonna dive deep into how to say no to a request gracefully and talk about some of the scenarios that might come up and how to handle them. So definitely tune in then. Take care.