Next Level University

#1453 - “People Pleasers” Have You Experienced This?

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Are you constantly walking on eggshells, bending backwards to keep everyone happy? In this episode,  hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about the pervasive habit of people-pleasing, tracing its roots back to childhood fears and insecurities, and discussing its profound impact on our adult lives. They dive into the labyrinth of societal pressures and norms, examining the potency of peer pressure and the shackles of societal expectations. They also discuss the tightrope between asserting one's needs and maintaining flexibility, and the importance of standing your ground without losing sight of common ground. They also talk about the courage it takes to defy the norm of people-pleasing and the necessity of being comfortable with the discomfort it brings.

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Show notes: 
[2:28] Be afraid of losing yourself
[4:58] Conditioned to people-please
[11:8] Social pressure
[13:49] Kim thanks Kevin for going above and beyond in helping launch the Peaceful Productivity podcast
[14:54] Do what you want to do
[18:41] Servant leadership
[24:22] Honoring your goal takes courage
[27:48] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode, episode number 1452. Something important to know before you share your truth. Aka. Kevin is balding and Alan wants the world to know. Today, for episode number 1453, I'm very much kidding One out. One thousand one hundred fifty three people pleasers. Have you experienced this At this point? You and I have coached many people and talked to many people and met many members of the community and Even connecting the dots to old friends and acquaintances.

Speaker 1:

I think a lot of people are people pleasers and by definition, I would say a people pleaser is probably somebody who Put somebody else's needs over the needs of themselves because they don't want to deal with the repercussions. Maybe they have lower self-worth and they think that's the way it's supposed to be. They've been guilted in the past for not pleasing what somebody wants them to do. So, yeah, you get guilt tripped. Well, I made dinner for you and I've got your favorite dessert. Can't you just come over tonight? Why can't you come over tonight? And the people pleaser in you says all right, well, you know, I don't want my mom or dad to feel bad, let me go do what they want me to do, even though you don't want to do it. It's not on the top of your list of things to do and you probably have other things to do, so I thought this would be a really good episode and I'm tying it to the second reason I wanted to do this.

Speaker 1:

In one of our WhatsApp groups, jerry in on the NLU team, the wonderful Jerry in Posted this in the group and it's this quote that says don't be afraid of losing people. Be afraid of losing yourself by trying to Please everyone around you. And it says author unknown. They don't, obviously they don't know who made that quote, but that is the definition of Reversing being a people pleaser, something I've I've said many times.

Speaker 1:

Alan, I don't know if people really are Worried about losing Love and maybe love isn't the right word. I think we're more worried about losing people that take up space in our life, because if you thought to yourself Everybody that you're a people pleaser toward, maybe the reason is because you've been guilted in the past Wouldn't you be better off without that person? Technically? So that quote really jumps off the page. Be more worried about losing yourself to everybody else's desires than losing the people that are Creating that tendency in the first place. And that's kind of the jam for this episode. If you identify you self, identify as a people, pleaser, an obliger in the book the four tendencies by by Gretchen Rubin, then you Maybe this will be a heavy episode, maybe it'll be a lot of awareness, but I do believe it will be worth listening to.

Speaker 2:

Well, everyone think about their childhood and think about if you had imagine this hypothetical. This is a little kid who grew up with caregivers where every time they did something that was outside of what the caregiver wanted the parent, the father, the mother, the grandmother, the grandfather, whatever, aunt, uncle they got guilted, they got made to feel ashamed. Oh, you didn't do the dishes. So you know, I'm gonna be passive-aggressive and I'm gonna, I'm gonna punish you or whatever it is. And so when we're very, very young, we learn this people-pleaser thing. We learned that Doing what our caregiver wants us to do, being what our caregiver wants us to be, is safer.

Speaker 2:

Hmm, it's if you've ever been with an intimate partner or a friend, or if your parents or grandparents or whoever raised you were passive-aggressive or guilt, trippy or Toxic in their communication or maybe even physically abusive. You got conditioned to people please, because Maybe whenever you didn't people please, maybe whenever you actually did what you wanted to do, what you value, maybe you got punished or you got hurt or you got hit or you got yelled at or you got lectured or you got whatever. And so we grow up with this Happening to all of us to different degrees, different fashions, different approaches. But at the end of the day, we're all conditioned a certain way, we're all conditioned to be a certain way, and now we're adults and we don't have parents who can beat us or hit us or hurt us or yell at us.

Speaker 1:

Hopefully and some of us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hopefully some of us still do have parents that yell at us. But Even if it's something as simple as Dr Lawyer, engineer failure, these unconscious things that I have one client in particular that grew up in an environment and a culture where if you weren't a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or an engineer, you were basically a failure. That's conditioning. We don't approve of you being a rapper. We don't approve of you getting a tattoo.

Speaker 2:

We don't approve of you being xyz. We don't approve of you being bisexual or homosexual or a lesbian or whatever it is. We don't approve of xyz, that's not, that's not okay here. And so you get punished or you get hurt or you get Lashed out at, even in passive, aggressive ways, of just a reluctance of love or a or a taking away of love. If you're not gonna behave the way we want you to behave, we're gonna ostracize you from the group. You're not a part of the family, whatever it is, and that's how we get conditioned. So instead we learn this other response of Okay, well, I guess I better step in line, I better get in line and I better be what my parents want me to be.

Speaker 2:

And so, having dealt with so many different clients, there's very few humans that I've ever met that don't deal with this to some extent, where I mean I have a lot of clients where it's like, well, if I don't do that, then my husband's not gonna want to be with me, or if I don't do that, then that other person's gonna leave me, or if I don't do that, then my mom's gonna yell at me the holidays. A perfect example of that. I mean, how many of us are just going and doing holiday traditions that we just don't want to do. And then we justified after all, that was still fun and Christmas is fun or whatever, whatever holiday you celebrate, but you didn't invent that holiday. And and if it was up to you, and you really sat there and we're like you know what?

Speaker 2:

There's no peer pressure, there's no consequences. I'm not gonna lose love, I'm not gonna get lashed out at, I'm not gonna get that passive, aggressive text of you weren't there. I'm not gonna get guilt-tripped. You probably wouldn't go. We would all behave very differently if there wasn't social consequences. And so all all we're saying here is that, number one, you're not alone. Number two, everyone people pleases, sometimes even the people who think they don't. They definitely do. And and three, let's assess where your people pleasing and whether or not that's conditioning from your past or something that's actually serving you for the future.

Speaker 1:

I worked in Virginia I've mentioned that before I from my job that I had back in Before this 2017 I think it's probably 2017 we did a lot of work on the road and we travel a lot and I lived in New Hampshire at the time. We had a very big job in Virginia that I was running. It was the biggest job we ever had. So we were staying down there for weeks at a time and I think in total I stayed down there for three months or something and we had Kind of a sweet it wasn't a small hotel room, it was a big one that had two bedrooms and I had a kitchen and a living room because we were staying there for such a long period of time and there were two crews of us down there. So I think there was like four people, maybe six people, and we were all hanging out in my room and the roommate I had at the time and they everybody was like hey, we're going out tonight, let's get your stuff together, let's go.

Speaker 1:

And I was like I'm not going out, I don't wanna go to the bar with you guys, I'm not interested. And it was like four on one. They were like come on, kev, you gotta come out. You can't just hang out in here by yourself. Come on, be fun, you're boring all this stuff. And I was like I'm not coming out. You say whatever you want, I'm laying in the couch, I'm not coming out, I'm not interested, I don't wanna come out. And when they got back, one of the guys was like yeah, dude, good thing you didn't come out.

Speaker 1:

It was kind of an S show. This guy, bobby, got super drunk, as he always does, and we actually got into a fight when he came home. Then I punched him in the face because he was egging me on. So I get a little one. It wasn't hard. I just I had to put him down. I didn't let him know Come on, man, you're messing with the wrong one.

Speaker 1:

But there's a lot of pressure, you're putting some respect on it. I put yeah, I was putting some respect on my name, bobby. What are we doing here, man? You know better than that. There's a lot of peer pressure. There's a lot of I'm gonna be ostracized by the group. Are they gonna talk bad about me when they go out? I don't really care. Whatever, I don't wanna go out, that's it. I don't care, you can say whatever you want, it's not gonna bother me. I'm going to the gym tomorrow. I'm gonna go out with you guys and do stupid things, probably getting trouble. I don't wanna do that, but I do understand. It's a very, very.

Speaker 1:

There's, at times, shame around that, the shame of saying are they right? Am I boring? Maybe should I just go out. Should I just listen to what they say and just go out and have fun and let loose for once, let my guard down. Is that who I wanna be? It is. It is a challenge. I'm pretty good at this, I would say all things considered, but I still. I've had a lot of times in the past where one of the reasons I'm good at it is because I've sat through so much of the discomfort in the past of just saying I'm just not interested, I don't wanna do it. I'm very stubborn when it comes to that. Now, that's also. That has detriments too.

Speaker 2:

But what are the detriments to that?

Speaker 1:

Because I think I think your mind's made up. You don't do it when your mind's made. I remember this years ago I was dating one of my old partners and she told me earlier in the week. She said dinner this weekend if you wanna come with my family, and I said I don't really want it. I don't really want it. I think, I was traveling for work or something. It wasn't just that, it was. I'm gonna be getting home Friday night. The last thing I wanna do is go to lunch on Saturday.

Speaker 2:

I'm probably gonna wanna sleep Real quick. Even you saying it like that, you're concerned that people will think that you're a bad partner, that is social pressure.

Speaker 1:

It's okay. Well, I think that's a little. I think if I said it that way, I think that would be a little discusive?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, of course. Of course it's not necessarily constructive, but also even just not wanting to go out with your partner's family. That is socially not as acceptable as you think. Yeah, it's like you're supposed to want to go to lunch with your partner's family. That's what you do as a good boyfriend. See these labels, how they control us. What does a good business owner do? What does a good leader do? What does a great husband do? Or a great wife do? You see how these hats that we put on like you're a husband. Now, what is a good husband? What makes a good husband? And if you're not in alignment with that, does your partner's parents approve of you? And again, this is hypothetical questions, but, dude, I'm telling you, we all get put into these boxes. It's like, well, you're not a good friend. Okay, compared to what you value in a friendship. Yeah, maybe that's true, that's fair.

Speaker 2:

But I think I'm a great friend and who's to say who's what and what is a good friend? I think that I want everyone to kind of understand, and this is what I told Emilia at the beginning of our relationship and I know that you and Taryn kind of do this too I said we're gonna create our own rule book. We're not gonna do Christmas because everyone does Christmas. We're gonna do Christmas because we wanna do Christmas. And even if we do do it which I don't think we're gonna we're gonna do it differently. We're not gonna inherit all of these beliefs. We're not gonna inherit all these core values. We're not gonna inherit all these things that we don't actually think make any sense anymore. That's like. That's like you know, growing up in a family farm and now you're still a farmer, not because you ever really wanted to be, but because the family needs you to be a farmer. And I understand that. If that's the responsibility you wanna take on, I do, I get it okay. But what if you wanna be an entrepreneur? What if you wanna be an actor? What if you wanna be a writer or a podcaster? You don't need to be a farmer because your parents are gonna shun you.

Speaker 2:

I used to give speeches at colleges, often early in my speaking career, and I went to Clark University and there was these two kids who were literally crying about how they wanna be engineers and they wanna play soccer. And let me rephrase they wanna play soccer professionally and apparently they were very good, but their parents want them to be engineers and their parents are gonna disown them if they, if they pursue soccer. And I remember telling them you got to do what you want to do. I'd rather you try to play soccer, get disowned and be fulfilled, then live a life that you're gonna regret Because it was someone else's dream, not yours. And again, I know it's easier said than done, but that's what we're talking about here, and so I get really fired up about this topic and kept, you're not very controlled by social pressure, it's.

Speaker 2:

It's so fascinating to do episodes like this with you, because Usually you're on the end of. I don't know if he fully understands what people are going through. I'm on that end with you where it's oh, you don't really struggle with this that much, like almost at all, it's no but I, I empathize with those who I mean.

Speaker 1:

I, I understand it, it makes sense. It makes sense. You just got to look at the track record. I I started doing weird stuff in high school. I trained to be a fighter. I didn't go to college, I didn't. I decided pretty early on that I kind of want to do things my way. I've always wanted to do things my way and at the end of the day, the the people who are judging me, aren't helping me be successful, so it's not up to them. That's my belief.

Speaker 1:

But I also understand that's. That's very very intellectual.

Speaker 2:

That's very.

Speaker 1:

Logical.

Speaker 2:

It's logical, but it's not, but emotionally it's way harder than that, and so, of course, yeah, it makes perfect sense, but doing it is actually more difficult. Well, there's a.

Speaker 1:

Downside of it is I'm very stubborn. So even in that example, when my mind is made up that I'm not doing something, it's very hard for me to do it. You've experienced that like if you and I said we're gonna do one episode and you're like, hey, man, we got to do two. It would be hard for me to do it. I've already decided, I'm doing one and I want to do two. Let's do it another day. It's just the way. My, my, I'm very final with things. It's like, oh, that's what we're doing, maybe it's a certainty thing, I don't know. I I like the certainty. So once I have certainty, the adaptability is lower.

Speaker 1:

Definitely yeah, flexibility.

Speaker 2:

You've had to come up on that flexibility. I'm working with me. You have to, you have to do a lot of that flexing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, taran said the other day. She said I, you, you've been working a lot of your flexibility. I appreciate it because I'm very rigid in a lot of things. I'm very rigid when I might, when I make my mind up I it's very hard for me not to do it, regardless of what it is Like if I say I'm gonna go to the gym, I want to go. I want to go Even if it means skipping something else or not getting enough sleep. That's one of the reasons I don't get enough sleep sometimes is if my mind's made up to go to the gym, I need to go to the gym, even if I don't sleep. It just is what it is. I said I was gonna go to the gym, I want to go. That's, that's a part of it. So the downside is there is a potential stubbornness of your so good at not falling into this that you almost take pride and not Right, because yeah it's definitely a strength, but, again, like every strength, that comes with a potential weakness, for sure every single one.

Speaker 2:

So people pleasing if you're on the high end of people pleasing you're probably very flexible, very adaptable. You probably get along well with others. You probably are really good at a restaurant, when, when we want to order a pizza for the table Versus Kev would be like no, I want my own pizza and I want every time pepperoni every single time, see and that's okay, I'm not making Kevin wrong or you wrong, but I do know that Kevin Will always struggle in large groups of people To get along with everybody, and you probably always have.

Speaker 2:

In large groups of people that actually makes sense because it's hard for you to put the group above yourself and the less it's something that you believe in, like NLU, and I Think people pleasers are the best support players in the game. I really do. I think you're gonna be a great EA or you're gonna be a great Leader one day, but there's there's something called servant leadership. Kevin, christine and I are chief officers of NLU and we assessed our leadership and Servant leader was Christina's first. She's the best support player in the game, but she burns herself out. She doesn't say no, enough Right, we all they all have strengths and weaknesses. Best support player ever and that's a huge strength and honestly, that has gotten her to really great places. But it comes with these weaknesses. So if you're high on people pleaser, that Comes with a lot of benefits, but you also are gonna have to find five and that's that would be my next level, nugget.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my next level nugget would be I Do believe to some degree we all have to do people pleasing. I do, because Unless everybody in your life thinks the exact same way as you, there's probably gonna be some sort of flexibility to meet in the middle somewhere. Try not to overdo that, obviously. But I guess my next level nugget would be Try to stand your ground a little bit more and just get familiar with the discomfort that comes with that. So maybe for you it might be hey, are you coming to the party on Saturday? Instead of saying yep, absolutely, I'll be there, maybe say maybe I'm not sure yet. See what happens.

Speaker 1:

Somebody might say, well, come on, we really want you there. Okay, maybe that's a little bit of peer pressure. Somebody else might say, okay, well, we hope you can make it. If not, we totally understand. Hmm, interesting, okay now, if you want to go, great opportunity to go. If you don't want to go, great opportunity not to go. Quite, quite literally, they're giving you an out. And if you don't want to go, this is a great opportunity to practice it, because if you are people, please, you're probably thinking about what's going on there when you're not there and maybe you have FOMO.

Speaker 1:

That's a. That's a whole nother layer. Or maybe you're worried about our people talking about you. What's happening? Are you the topic of conversation? So I do. I think one of the reasons it's so hard to reverse this is there just so many reps in that direction, where for me it's the opposite. I have so many reps in the other direction. I'm not you're. If you're looking for a people, please, or I'm not, I'm not the one, it's just it would be very hard for it to ever get me to go that direction because I have so many reps in the other way. So, yeah, that would be. My next level nugget is dip your toe into putting up a boundary and to see what it feels like, and then, from the response you get, you can make a more or Measure decision is what I would say.

Speaker 2:

My mentor taught me this, one of my early mentors. He said, alan, in a relationship, never do anything that feels too unnatural. And that was some of the best advice I ever got. He was someone in his 50s, he had been divorced and he was very, very successful in his career. And I said what would you do differently? He said I would have been more honest with myself early on in my first marriage and he said just be careful, never do anything that feels too unnatural. And at the time I was in a relationship where I was doing a lot of things that didn't feel super aligned for me, but I thought they were things I had to do in order to Be a good partner.

Speaker 2:

And now I try really hard to Share with Kev, with Emilia, with friends like my truth I don't actually want to go to California to your wedding. I I don't mean to offend you. I just I'm not gonna take a week off of my mission to go spend four days in California. I don't. It's not aligned for me. I, I and hopefully the listeners in anyone watching or listening to this like think about how hard that would be to hear. Imagine you're a really close friend of mine and you really want me there and you have a belief that if I actually care about you, then I also want to be at your wedding. That's not my belief. That's not my truth. I can care about you and not want to be at your wedding 100%. I Can also really care about you and also not want to take four days off of my mission and Spend money and all this kind of stuff again. At the end of the day, the hard truth is I don't really want to be there. It's not worth it to me and to even just sit in that. Some people listening right now are actually villainizing me for that. But what if that is the actual truth? And, by the way, I'm not expecting him to be at mine. You're not. I'm not expecting you to be at my wedding.

Speaker 2:

It's that, it's it's. It's a different core aspiration, it's a different core value, it's a different core belief. And You're, you're gonna fall into circumstances with people who have different beliefs than you and and they're going to get offended when you don't Honor their beliefs or their values. And it takes courage, tremendous courage, to say I care about you, but that is not aligned for me. That is not aligned for me, that's not aligned with my goals and and if you do have big goals and big dreams, you're gonna have to sacrifice a lot of those other things that because the moment you have a goal, a lot of stuff becomes unaligned very quick, even if you just want to lose 20 pounds in 20 weeks, immediately most things become not aligned, which is why it sucks so bad to set goals.

Speaker 2:

But if you Honor your goal, you're probably not honoring some of the core values of other people, and I think that that takes tremendous, tremendous courage and I think as you get older you start to realize that that's the only way to really be fulfilled anyway, because I I spent a lot of my years people pleasing. That's very clear in this episode. And if you're doing that, my next level nugget the second one I guess would be never do anything that feels too unnatural, because you can't sustain it anyway.

Speaker 1:

Strong work. Yeah, it's a heavy one, to heavy. It's a heavy episode. Maybe a lot of awareness if you're, if you resonate or you identify as a people pleaser. But it doesn't mean you can't Shift, that. It doesn't mean you can't trend in the direction you want to trend. It's just us. It starts small. You know you're not gonna, most likely, just say no directly to someone If you, if you find yourself on the the far end of being a people pleaser, and that's okay, just like you're not gonna go to the gym for a year straight, most likely if you've never been, it's just not, it's not a good goal to set. Anyway For you. The goal is to just dip your toe into the pool and see what it feels like, see what the water is like, and then go from there.

Speaker 1:

Next level nation. As we have been mentioning, our 12th round of group coaching starts on October 10th. It was October 3rd until we were told that one of the dates, one of the calls, would end up on Halloween and many of the Participants of group coaching our parents, and if you want to take your little one out for trick-or-treating, we want to make sure that you can attend the meeting. So we pushed it back a week. It is October 10th, 6 pm Eastern Standard Time. That is the first call. This is the 12th round. We've done this with amazing humans. We would love for you to be in the next group of amazing humans. If you're looking for more clarity, if you're looking for more Necessity, if you're looking for more accountability, peak performance partners, next level group coaching is the way. Link will be in the show notes with the discount code We'll give you.

Speaker 2:

It'll end up being 96 dollars and 60 cents a month again, very, very affordable for what we are providing if you resonated with this episode and you feel that you are a A people pleaser or struggle with people pleasing, and that you are someone who will do more for others than you will for yourself, coaching is going to help you stay accountable. A lot of my clients track habits for me more than they do for themselves and I've actually started to leverage that in the coaching. I have one client I was on with earlier today. She tracked every day for 57 days. I tracked the data and she didn't miss.

Speaker 2:

But it's because I said listen, I'm not going to coach you unless you track. And I wasn't doing that because I'm a mean coach. I was doing that because I know it's going to help her. So if you people please and you struggle with this, you might do more for me in the coaching than you will for yourself, but it's going to be for you and I do a free 30 minute session to see if it's aligned. I've actually been very, very clear with everyone in those calls that if it's not aligned for me, I'm not going to do it, and vice versa. So we got to make sure it's a good fit. So the link will be in my calendar or the link will be in the show notes to book on my calendar and I hope that.

Speaker 1:

I hope that we can meet tomorrow for episode number 1,454, one of our favorite styles of episodes. Three common growth myths. Busted is what we're going to do tomorrow. There are many. There are many growth myths that we've talked about and we try to be as honest and transparent when it comes to those. So, again, at the end of the day, awareness is an opportunity. Hopefully we can create some awareness for you in that episode. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you at NLU, we do not have fans. We have family. We'll talk to you all tomorrow, keep honoring yourself.

Speaker 2:

Next, civilization Boom. It's a good one.

Speaker 1:

That was a good one.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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