The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Have you been questioning how to live your dreams and enjoy greater happiness, health, and wellbeing? I'm James Granstrom, male model turned international speaker and wellbeing teacher. Join me every other week for new lessons, tips, and conversations on personal growth, health, healing and spirituality with my inspiring guests or straight talk from myself. I'm here to guide you to become your best self and enrich your life, so you can tune and tap into your own natural state of wellbeing.
The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series
Breaking Free from People-Pleasing: Reclaim Your Self-Worth and Confidence
Ever wondered why you constantly seek approval from others? This episode promises to unveil the hidden influences from your childhood, particularly the roles of your parents, that have shaped your people-pleasing habits.
"When you put others first, it backfires 100% of the time."
-Abraham Hicks
Discover how behaviors learned from your mother, the embodiment of love, and your father, the figure of power and authority, have led you into a cycle of external validation. We’ll walk you through the process of breaking free from these patterns by cultivating new well-being habits, developing a conscious awareness, and releasing inherited traumas. Your journey back to your authentic self starts here.
Setting boundaries can feel daunting, but it’s a crucial skill for reclaiming your worth and confidence. We’ll explore the deep ties between people-pleasing and issues of self-esteem, worthiness, and confidence. Learn why sacrificing your personal needs for others' approval leads to dissatisfaction in multiple life areas and how self-care and self-acknowledgment are transformative.
This is episode will change the way you'll want show up in you daily life.
Ready for an upgrade?
One of the main human needs is to feel loved and appreciated. But have you ever felt that you're giving your power or your energy away to try and get that love and validation from other people? But it's causing you stress? That's called people pleasing and I'm going to share with you how to break free from that pattern. Hello and welcome to the James Granstrom podcast Super Soul Model series, where I help you tune and tap into a natural state of well-being. In this episode we're going to explore how you can break free from people-pleasing habits. If you find that your energy is low or you find resentment between yourself and anybody else, the reason why that is is because at some level of your your being even whether you're aware or not, it's because you are people pleasing. And as soon as you start to cultivate some new well-being habits, some understanding and awareness, which you have to cultivate first, then you're going to be free of this cycle.
Speaker 1:This was something that was stuck in for so many years and, whether you know it or not, you have learned this behavior. You've learned this behavior from your parents. It initially starts with the mother, which represents love, or the father, which represents power and authority, and whoever you spent more time with in your youth is where you picked up this energy. So if you are learning how to love from your mother, who is teaching you how to love, but if she's got self-esteem issues, if she had challenges with worthiness or overgiving, then you would have picked that up as well, and then you'll be trying to do exactly the same and emulate that behavior, because our parents are our models or our guides about how we're supposed to operate in the world. Now, if, with regards to your father, if you spent much more time with your father and you needed your father's validation sometimes with the father and the authority he wouldn't validate you until you did something amazing. And this can create a child that grows up where they may be very successful externally, but inwardly they feel tired and lack of energy because they are working so hard and to achieve success, finance and everything like that, but at the detriment of their own health and wellness the detriment of their own health and wellness and all because they needed their father's love and approval and validation.
Speaker 1:So, either way, your people pleasing some aspect of your being, either from your mother's aspect, which is the feminine, which is to do with love, or the masculine, which is the power element, which is to do with your father, and if you needed love or validation from one of those people, you would emulate exactly that, and so we become imbalanced as human beings and we need to return back to our center again, and the only way we can do that is through having conscious awareness, and in this episode, I'm going to share with you how to come back to your center again through some understanding, through some strategies, so you can reset yourself back to that person that you are, which was perfect when you came here, when you first were a little baby and an infant. You learn behaviors from people who already had traumas, who already had pain. So, in order to stop people pleasing, we need to release those traumas who already had pain. So, in order to stop people pleasing, we need to release those traumas of the people that guided us meaning your parents and then start bringing that attention back onto ourselves and open our heart again, because it's safe. So, instead of feeling like you have to work harder to get validation, or you need to give more to get people's love and approval, or you need to give more to get people's love and approval. What I'm suggesting in this particular episode is we'll explore how you can come back to your center and recognize that you're already perfect as you are and that it's healthy for you to have certain things in place to be able to stop the habit or the cycle of people pleasing so you just remain in your steady, beautiful glowing power.
Speaker 1:So people pleasing really stems from the inability to say no, feeling guilty about prioritizing your needs above other people's and the constant need of an approval and validation from the external world to make yourself feel good. Now, whilst we all need to have some sort of balance with this, of course we want to be validated and of course we want to be able to to say yes to things, but when you are doing it at the expense of your own energy, then you really need to become a little bit more conscious, because feeling guilty about prioritizing your own needs above others is really tricky, even and especially if you're a parent. You know they say in the airplane make sure you put that oxygen mask on first before you help a child next to you, because you're no good to anybody if you can't take care of yourself first, and often when we are people pleasing, we're trying to put others before ourselves without having filled up our own cup. One of the rules of abundance is let your cup runneth over. That's what it kind of says in the bible, and what it's trying to say is fill yourself up, then give. But if you're doing it from a position of I'm giving because I don't feel worthy, then then that's not great. I'm giving because I'm not good enough, so maybe I'll get validated by somebody. That's not the way this is supposed to be.
Speaker 1:People pleasing is putting other people's needs before your own without even taking care of your own energy first. The root causes of people pleasing comes from self-esteem issues, worthiness issues, confidence issues and the inability to speak up. And if you've got any of those challenges on right now, then that means you are people pleasing at some level and it means that we need to address those. And that's exactly what I want to do with you. And come from a position of power, because as soon as you change your perspective on this, you're free and you become liberated with the amount of energy you have and you start to feel more and more confident in your day-to-day life.
Speaker 1:So how does people pleasing pay out in your life? It can play out in a myriad of different ways, and I've looked into my own experience. It's funny for me to laugh back at it now because it was just a pattern, but it can. It can show up in the form of not making the money that you want, not making the promotions that you want or getting the job that you want. It can play out in terms of less than satisfying relationships. It can play out by being close but never quite getting or hitting the mark of something that you really want. Maybe it's even in sports to some extent.
Speaker 1:You know, this was me for years, and then I realized I was like what's the common denominator here? The common denominator here is at some level of my being, I've picked up a pattern or a thought form which I'm playing out, which is I'm not enough. And as soon as I started to turn that around, my life changed, and yours will too, because you have to remember this premise is the universe will respond to the emotions that you're feeling on a day-to-day basis. And in order to change the emotion, sometimes you need to change your perspective first. And as soon as you change your perspective to a healthy perspective and realize the truth of who you are, which is you are beautiful, you are good enough, you're strong enough, you're more than enough. Then the world will begin to shape from this new way of thinking that you have. This is how my life transformed, and yours will too.
Speaker 1:When you realize you're enough, there is enough. There will always be enough for you, and one of the best ways to recognize that you're enough is by spending a lot of time in nature. Nature is one of the best ways to recognize that you're enough is by spending a lot of time in nature. Nature is one of the best teachers for us, and I've just come back from the alps now, and I was spending some time there with a friend and I was looking at all the mountain streams that flow continuously all day long with immense power. Even if you look at something like Niagara Falls, it's like it flows a volume of about a billion gallons a day. That never turns off. And that's the same with you. You are enough, you are more than enough. There will always be enough there. You never sort of stop thinking, oh, there's no air to breathe anymore. There's always more air to breathe in.
Speaker 1:So you've got to recognize that shortage is just a consciousness. Self-esteem is just a level of consciousness. Knowing that you're good enough and worthy enough is just a level of understanding that you need to be reminded of and I think that this needs to be sort of taught in schools that all kids, that you're beautiful enough, you're good enough, you're strong enough, you're smart enough. We're not all the same, but we all want the same thing, which is to be reminded of who we really are, and that's what the purpose of this particular episode is.
Speaker 1:So if you're feeling any lack right now, if you're feeling struggling, you feel stuck, then it's really time to address this issue once and for all. That maybe you are people pleasing to get validation from the world rather than validating yourself, or you're working extremely hard to get the validation and approval of a parent, but in actual fact, the only validation and approval you need is your own, because you came alone, you're going to die alone and you're going to leave uh footprints behind you, because your life and how you live it is your gift back to the universe. So one of the first solutions to break free from the cycles of people pleasing is learning to say no gracefully and assertively. And if you're not prioritizing your own needs, then you're going to be in real trouble because essentially, you're still trying to get love and validation from other people, and people just are really thinking about themselves and not always thinking about you. And if you can't communicate your needs to other people and what you will and will not do, or what you will and will not accept with clarity and confidence, you're always going to feel like you're going to get trampled on, and it's really important that you respect yourself enough. That word respect yourself is huge because it's basically saying this is what I will tolerate and this is what I will not tolerate.
Speaker 1:And I noticed that the clients that I work with particularly are very, very good at setting healthy boundaries. In business, this is what I will and won't accept, but when it comes to personal relationships, that line can be blurred. And the reason why that can be blurred is because there's emotion involved, and in business usually there's no emotion, but when there's family ties, then there can be a lot more emotion involved. So we need to be very clear with our borders and our boundaries, just like when you have a property, you need to have a boundary of your property to make sure that this is your space, and that's the same with your energy, that's the same with how you live your like day-to-day life. So how good are you at being able to say no when you mean no and yes when you mean yes? I'll give you an example. Recently I had a neighbor that asked us out for dinner and they wanted to drink and I don't drink. And so, whilst we all live very close with one another, they said we'll drive and we'll pick you up. And I was like well, number one, I don't drink and number two, you want to drink, so I'm not getting in the car with you. If you drink, even if it's one glass, I'm not interested, so I will drive and if you choose to drink, you can drive yourself.
Speaker 1:Setting healthy boundaries involves being really good at communication and it's going to be tricky at first, because saying no to people that you really care about and have an emotional bond with usually it's family saying no gracefully and assertively requires a level of confidence. And these are people where you've been validated and loved all your entire life and you feel like if you say no to them you're going to be judged and they won't love you. But if you don't prioritize your own needs without guilt, you're in trouble, and then you're a slave to that, and that's how people find themselves in very difficult relationships, particularly with family members. So it's really imperative that you learn to communicate your limits clearly and confidently, even with people that are up close and personal. You've got to say this is what I will and won't do, this is what I can and I can't do, and make your needs an absolute, pressing priority.
Speaker 1:When I first started stopping drinking alcohol and eating vegetarian, my family thought it was the weirdest thing in the world drinking alcohol and eating vegetarian. My family thought it was the weirdest thing in the world and, although I thought I might be judged for being very different from them, it set me free because I was listening to my body. I was listening to what my body was trying to tell me. My soul was trying to tell me which was. It's okay to be different. It's okay to put your needs first. It's okay to not have to follow the crowd, even though you think you may be judged. I'm listening to this inner guidance that's coming from within. So saying no to alcohol for me was a real blessing because it saved my life and improved the quality of my relationships. So saying no, gracefully, to things that I knew no longer served me any well was such a confidence booster for me, especially with the people that I'd grown up doing things that weren't good for my body with.
Speaker 1:So what are the solutions to breaking free from the cycle of people pleasing? Well, the first one is setting healthy boundaries. If you can't communicate your needs, then you are a slave. You really need to learn how't communicate your needs, then you are a slave. You really need to learn how to communicate your needs to other people and you've got to learn how to say no gracefully and assertively. And you've got to prioritize your needs without guilt to other people and communicate your limits clearly and confidently.
Speaker 1:Sometimes that's super tricky, particularly with family members, and this is what I will and won't tolerate, because essentially you get what you tolerate. You know, when I'm working with my clients, like big CEOs, often they are fantastic at setting healthy boundaries and limits in their business, but not that great doing it in personal life, and the reason being is because there's emotion attached to family members and so you always want to please that family member, because maybe some of the people that I work with aren't always around at home, so they want to spend extra or give extra to the family members. But sometimes that's done without balance and that causes challenge. So setting healthy boundaries is super essential for your well-being and your state of mind, and if you're always saying yes rather than no, you're not in balance. And if you can't prioritize your own needs first before like giving way too much, then you're going to be feeling resentment for over giving, perhaps. So it's really important that you communicate your needs and your limits of what you will and what you won't do, and one of the best ways to do that is keep your promises to yourself and do what feels right to you, regardless of whether you're going to be judged or not.
Speaker 1:So in my case, years ago, when I first started stopping drinking alcohol, you know that was a really alien way of behaving, according to my family, because we all drank alcohol, we all partied, you know, and it was. This is the way that we connect with one another. But I knew it was hurting my body and, more importantly, I'd nearly died from like going out and partying way too much and I was like this just is not for me anymore. So I had to stop that behavior and say no gracefully to my entire family and just saying, look, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this at celebrations, I'm not going to do this at Christmas. I'm not going to do this at birthdays. I'm just going to have a soft drink. And at the beginning everybody found that really weird, but I listened to myself and I learned to say no gracefully. And it's also the same when going out with parties with other people. You know, can we catch a lift with you? Well, you can catch a lift with me, but I'm going to be driving home early. So if you want to catch a lift back, you got to get a taxi. You got to say it straight. Or, in my my case, not drinking alcohol. If you know, you're a big group of people going out saying just to let you know, I won't be playing for everybody who's drinking alcohol, because I'm only drinking water.
Speaker 1:So communicating your needs is super essential for your own state of well-being. This is just a little example of how I learned how to set greater healthy boundaries in my life and develop more confidence, without feeling bad about saying this is who I am and this is how I'm rolling. So look into your own experience. What you, what do you tolerate and what won't you tolerate? What will you tolerate in relationships and what won't you tolerate? Same in work, same in the money that you're making.
Speaker 1:If you don't like the job that you're doing, then you've got to learn to either find something really good in it right now, so that you can improve your frequency, or start looking for something that's going to make you feel so good, because that's where you're essentially spending a lot of your energy. So you've got to use your gifts, talents and abilities in a way that's fun and profitable, but at the same time, by keeping your healthy boundaries up. Is the work that you're doing actually helping people or not? You know, do you like what it stands for or not? All these things are based upon what you value, and if you are overstepping the mark with your healthy boundaries, meaning you're not giving to yourself, then you're going to be challenged. You know every relationship you have is based upon how you feel about yourself, and the more clear, the more confident, the more poised you are, the better your relationships will reflect that.
Speaker 1:The second area to break free from the cycles of people pleasing is to build self-worth and confidence, and that comes from your solar plexus. This area is your power center, and you've got to be able to learn how to say I can or I could have that that's possible for me. And your self-talk needs to be really positive, it needs to be optimistic. You've got to have like little notes over the house saying, yep, that's possible for me. When you see a car or a property or someone succeeding in their life, you've got to think to yourself that's possible for me, I could have that. Because if you're not thinking that, then all you're thinking is is I'm not good enough, and then you default back to that old program which you've learned, and then you need to unlearn that and start this new program. You've got to start these new wheels in motion and law of attraction will give you more momentum to that which you focus on. So if you're saying I could have that or that's possible for me, then what? You're giving yourself more momentum in that direction.
Speaker 1:And it takes a little time before that catches up, but then after a little while you well, anything's possible and that's why you look at athletes and they just go. I just believe that it was possible for me and you need to believe that it's possible for you. So have a little post-it note saying it's possible for me. Or when you see something beautiful in a magazine or you pass a property or a car that you thought, oh, that would be nice. Just say yourself yeah, that's possible for me, I could have that. That develops confidence, that self-talk and being able to look in the world and just go. Do you know what I could have that if I found a way? That would be amazing. You're not asking to find the way at that moment, but you've got to just go. Yeah, that's possible for me, because if it's possible for someone else, it's also possible for you.
Speaker 1:One of the best ways that you could start to build greater self-worth and confidence that I love is playing the what if game with a positive sense oh, what if I had that? Or what if I went there, and what if this worked out? And what if this worked out. That type of game is allowing the mind to really imagine what's possible without any resistance, and it really helps break free from people pleasing, because you're looking at what's possible for you, and that develops great confidence and also celebrating your successes daily. So at the end of the day, you may have a gratitude journal, but do you have a daily wins journal? And I have a daily wins where I'm like, yeah, I was celebrating this win today and this win today and this win today. So I think about three types of good wins I've had through the day. Maybe it's receiving a new client referral, or maybe it's some content I put out that I'm really proud of, or some money I've made. Whatever it's, whatever my successes are, I always write down a daily wins list. This starts to again compound your good feeling inside of your body and build self-worth and confidence.
Speaker 1:The next thing to build more self-esteem is joining classes and gym groups and social groups. It's so important that you hang around the right people because by osmosis, you're going to pick up that energy too. So being in gym classes or yoga classes and you feel like you're in a community. This is going to build your self-worth and confidence, and at the beginning you might be pretty rubbish at going to a gym class or whatever, but stick with it, because everybody is climbing their own mountain and when you commit to a project and actually see it through, that also builds confidence as well. So, whatever you're going to do, if you haven't finished something that you've started, try and finish it, because that actually creates a confidence with inside your mind saying I can start something and I can finish it, because starting something is easy but finishing something is particularly hard and if you ever run a marathon, you'll recognize that. It's easy to run the first 13, but as soon as you get to about the 18 mile mark you're out of gas and it requires six more miles of intense mental pressure for you to actually want to finish. So whatever project you've got going on, when you see it through, the greatest thing that you're going to learn on the way is the confidence to be able to start and finish.
Speaker 1:Also, another way to build self-worth and confidence is just by the way that you stand in your physiology. Tony robbins talks about it, but in more detail, amy cuddy talks about it in a tedx talk, which is like standing in the wonder woman pose or the superhero pose. They've scientifically proven that just putting your hands on your hips for two minutes changes the testosterone levels inside of your body, which gives you more confidence. That physiology transfers into the body. The more open your body, the more confident you are. The more closed your body, the less confident you are. So just look, how can you open your body? How can you stand tall? How can you stand with your chest out just a little bit more like in a military pose? That one millimeter of changing that chest can open the heart valve, making you appear more confident, even if you didn't feel it just in that moment.
Speaker 1:Now the next thing to break free from the people pleasing cycle is to develop mindfulness. For me, my therapy was meditation. Learning how to silence my mind every single day for like way over 20 years now has been absolute heaven for me to be able to see thoughts, behaviors, patterns and things that have helped me back that I wasn't even aware of. And whilst we have things like podcasts here of what I'm sharing, of how you can break free from the patterns, sitting still and recognizing your own patterns in the silence is incredibly powerful for you. And then, as you're sitting in the silence, you'll notice that your behaviors are either serving you or not serving you, and that becomes a really wonderful indicator and I love this like analogy of what I call meditation. Meditation is basically like downloading what you need to know from a stream of consciousness that sort of gets unfolded throughout your day, and you downloaded some new information that you don't get to see until something shows up during the day and you'll be like, how about that? Oh, I see clearly now on this topic in my life, or I see clearly about how to respond in this relationship in my life. Or I can see why that's life, or I can see why that's working and I can see why that's not working. And I can see where I need to value myself more and I can see where I haven't been valuing myself enough. And that's what meditation can offer you. It's so profoundly helpful and has helped me eliminate so many bad habits that I had, which, quite frankly, have saved my life and made my life significantly better.
Speaker 1:And also looking at yourself having a journal where you're focusing on your positive aspects of yourself, is going to vastly improve the quality of your relationship with yourself and people. Pleasing only is really happening is because you're not valuing yourself. And when you're looking at the best in yourself, your strengths enhance. But when you're looking at the worst in yourself, then that too will enhance, because law of attraction just gives you more of what you focus on. So focus on your strengths, and if you have weaknesses, fine, but give more attention to your strengths and notice how much more they'll become prevalent in your experience. And when you're looking at other people, look at other people's positive aspects as well. It's not always going to be easy, but what you focus on is what you're going to get more of. So focus on the good in you and in other people too, and you'll notice that you won't have the need to constantly people please, because you'll be filled up from within side of yourself.
Speaker 1:First, meditation fills you up. Exercise fills you up. Taking care of your physical form and your body through nutrition fills you up. Positive self-talk fills you up. Being around good people who are fun and uplifting fills you up. Being in nature fills you up.
Speaker 1:And any time that you're trying to overexert yourself to get validation from the external world, just stop and pause. You're saying is this actually helping me or not? Is this taking me where I want to go or not? Am I trying to get validation from somebody to feel loved or not? And sometimes we're looking for validation from people on social media. I need them to like me so that I feel special. I feel loved by them. What you really need is to feel loved and special by yourself. And then, when you do and you're not bothered about what happens on the external world, then usually what happens? The magnets change and people come to you.
Speaker 1:Don't chase attract, and you attract by filling up your own cup by filling yourself up with these beautiful well-being habits and strategies and recognizing that you're always enough. And if you find that difficult to say that you're enough, just say well, why am I enough? And that question starts to change the train of thinking and the train of emotion going on inside of your body. And to conclude with this is all a journey. Learning to be completely at one and at peace with yourself and knowing you're enough is a journey.
Speaker 1:You're not going to get it right every day, so be gentle with yourself. You know this requires a great deal of self-awareness and commitment and practice, but you're worth it. You're worth showing up for yourself and prioritize your own needs first and your own energy first, so that you're filled up, rather than depleting your energy trying to please other people, to get validation, which you're never really going to get. Fill yourself up, follow your heart and do what brings you joy. And when you fill yourself up, you will be naturally validated by the external world, because you're not needing the validation, because you're already validating yourself by the good feelings that you have.
Speaker 1:If that's the only message you take from this whole episode, let it be that one. But most of all, be gentle with yourself along the way, because being gentle with yourself and not criticizing yourself for for not being further ahead than you think you should be right now is basically, like you know, shooting yourself in the foot. There's no need for that. You are your own mountain, you take it at your own pace, but recognize that you're beautiful, you're strong enough, you're good enough, just as you are right now, and you're work in progress, and life is just going to get a lot better. From this beautiful stance and way of being.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to say thank you for all the people that support the show, all the people that subscribe, the people that support the show, all the people that subscribe. I love you all. I could not do this without you. Thank you for being in my life. I so appreciate sharing this content with you. You guys are amazing. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and, until the next episode, I wish you a wonderful week ahead and green lights all the way.