People Pleasers

-
People pleasers are often seen as being nice, but in reality, they never quite had the chance to find out if they actually are. I used to be one such person, and still am trying to improve. In trying to please everyone I met, I never quite figured out what is right (for me). Wrongs become right, and rights become wrong, all for the sake of validation. People pleasing is not only dangerous for my mental health, but it can also distort insight, resulting in unwise actions or speeches that may cause harm.

I am thankful for the few in my life who accept me as I am, with no judgment. Although no one but myself can break the vicious cycle, their acceptance of me has helped me greatly. I do not feel like I need to please them, but instead, I want to do the right thing because I love them, and that is worth much more than any amount of self validation that I so craved.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Idle Hands and Impermanence

-
Impermanence (anicca) is one of the fundamental characteristic of all things that are perceivable by the mind. Indeed, I have found that to assume something to be permanent is always a fast track to suffering. Be it wanting your beloved pet to live forever, or wanting the happy times to last forever, all of these misunderstandings result in suffering. We are all born with a time limit, and only after accepting this limit can we continue to live the correct way. Upon further inspection, there is a connection between procrastination and this kind of misunderstanding (that things are permanent). If you think about it, procrastination has an embedded assumption that "tomorrow will be the same as today". There's no rush to finish what must be done, because I can do it tomorrow, and the conditions will be the same tomorrow. This is fundamentally untrue. As an example, I learned this the hard way when I procrastinated on doing a batch of laundry, putting it off day after day. Th...
Read more

About Wisdom and Obedience

-
Like most kids from my culture, I was raised to be obedient. In a way, this is a good survival technique for a child. If the world is hostile, follow a capable leader. However, problems arise when this understanding of life is carried into adulthood, into morality and how I conduct myself. At school, the teachers' morality become my morality. At work, the boss's morality becomes mine. Sometimes even confident friends or particularly vocal people on the internet would become my moral guide. This logic fails in the face of reality that sometimes (actually often times) the leader is misguided. Many leaders in my life taught me how to survive the environment that they are familiar with, but not truly what is what. Believing them results in a somewhat functional life in the short term, but upon closer introspection, this was a slow drip of poison that would cause great suffering in the long run. Had I not embarked on this journey to see things truly as they are, I can imagine myself...
Read more

Passing Thought

-
If you present a false self, you are safe from potential enemies who seek to find your weakness, but you will also block yourself from finding the potential friends who seek to help.
Read more