We’ve all done it: compromised our needs, energy levels and time to make someone else happy. Stretches of time where we’ve scrambled to help someone get their life in order, lent them money, given them 90% of our life fuel– only to look back and think: “What in the world was I doing— why was I assuming responsibility for their happiness and trying to rescue them?”
People pleasing and clawing for approval outside of ourselves is one huge exhausting and ineffectual trap. We might meet someone (whether it be a friend or a potential partner) and we’ll want to prove to them that we’re the bees’ knees. So we’ll problem solve, give, fix, juggle and help help help— subconsciously searching for that big proclamation of gratitude and praise which we often can’t give ourselves.
Usually, despite our best and biggest efforts, the gratitude often comes in a muted form which doesn’t hit the spot. It’s not enough- and so we try harder, work faster and be everything. At some point, we start feeling taken for granted and resentful and then before we know it, we’ve thrown a commanding dummy spit which leaves the other person wondering where all that scary, disproportionate anger came from.
So where does this leave us?
Well I think that if we acknowledge that we can never actually do anything to keep someone permanently happy (because there will always be something else which creates stress, anxiety and discontent), we can step off the spinning hamster wheel. Just let it go: you are not someone else’s Happiness Supply.
Instead, you have a huge reservoir of strength and wisdom which you can transform into self-acknowledgement that you don’t need to prove your worth to anyone: it’s just fact.
Stay cool, you elegant cucumbers— it’s gonna be a scorcher, today! xxx
