Yes, I’m one of them. I’m a people pleaser. Has it gotten me very far in life? Not at all. In fact, I’ve learned you can help people and please people as much as you want. People will still treat you badly unintentionally. What’s missing is that they don’t have respect for you. How do you gain respect from these people? I have no idea. Of course you have to respect yourself, I understand that. I’m still going through a learning process over here. The fact is, I’m very passionate about helping people. Sometimes it costs money, but often it costs time. What bothers me is that I am rarely properly thanked for my generosity, whether it was my time or my money spent helping people. This is where most of you will say, you shouldn’t help people for the recognition. I completely agree with you. I don’t need to be recognized, but I do feel that I should be properly thanked. I think with technology we’re becoming slack. When someone has truly spent a lot of time and money to help you, they deserve more than a text message saying “thanks”. Write a thank you card or send an e-mail. Make sure people know that you are grateful for their help.
Sometimes we help people when they didn’t really want or need help. We can’t get upset about not being thanked, because it’s difficult to be grateful for something you specifically said you didn’t need help with. Understand where I’m going with this? Help those who want to be helped and don’t push your own agenda on those who don’t want your help. This might be difficult for some of us. We have intentions of being helpful, but in the end we are just pains in the butt who don’t listen. Listen to people and know when you’re needed and when you’re not. I know this is difficult. For some people, no really means no. For others no can mean yes. Because this can be confusing, I have asked some of my friends what their no’s and yes’s mean. It’s ok to talk about these things.
People pleasers, we do it for a few reasons. We please and help people because we want them to like us. We want them to include us in their lives. When they don’t, we are confused and hurt. It’s because they don’t respect us. Those aren’t the only reasons why we help people of course. We do genuinely care about the well being of others and want to be there as much as we can. We are, for the most part, good people who just like to help. I do think we need to learn to say no and not always offer our services. I also think that we need to stop helping those who are not grateful. There are plenty of people who would really appreciate our help, who will not hurt us. We just have to find them! We keep trying to please the wrong people. I’m here with you to learn this year how we can change that. I think volunteering is one of the better ways for us to help people. As long as you take care of yourself and don’t get burnt out. We can do this friends. We can put an end to our hurt and disappointment. All can be well in our worlds!
