A lot of the time we tend to think of communication as being open, and easily recognisable:
- You say something, I hear it
- I say something back, you hear it
… and so it goes on.
Much of the time, though, we communicate indirectly and in subtle ways. We do this by the signals we give each other, through our behaviour and by the way we treat ourselves. People make ‘Subconscious Psychological Agreements’ all the time; subtle signals indicating what they expect from each other.
When we approach life from the belief ‘I have to please people,’ we unwittingly set up one of these subconscious signals that we really don't mind putting someone else's needs before our own.
The Pleasing People Agreement Goes Something Like This:
‘I will put up with your stuff; you don’t need to think about my needs, but I’ll always be understanding of your needs and make sure you’re OK. Then I can be happy because you’ll like me and think I’m a good person and want to be around me.’
Amanda’s Story
Like Amanda, one of my clients who said
‘I must have “TREAT ME LIKE AN IDIOT” tattooed on my forehead’. ‘Why are people so awful to me?
I try really hard to be nice, but they still treat me like dirt!’
Everyone in Amanda’s life; her family friends and work colleagues treated her poorly no matter how hard she tried to please them.
Amanda was always eager to give her friends a helping hand; she offered to babysit, she helped them decorate, and she walked people’s dogs and looked after their cats. She told me she was always offering to help other people because she thought that they would be nice to her in return. But these friends very often took Amanda for granted.
Amanda assumed that she was unhappy because of the way other people treated her. She hadn’t ever considered that by looking for validation from other people she was forgetting to look to herself. This realisation helped her feel more empowered. She began to see that instead of seeking happiness outside of herself from other people, she could start from within.
Amanda’s story is very common. We get so caught up in chasing approval from others that we forget to stop and look at ourselves and remember our own self worth.
If you want to stop being a people-pleaser, then you’re certainly not alone. Many people recognise this habit in themselves, it's one of the most common limiting beliefs which hold people back from having confidence and fulfilling relationships.
In Out Of Fear Into Love you will learn:
- To identify the four most common limiting beliefs and how they may be impacting on your life
- To use the incredibly powerful Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) to help you let go of those limiting beliefs
- To restore the four types of self-love that those beliefs block
- To work with an important step often overlooked in self-empowerment work—a step which will significantly help you to make the changes you want to achieve in your life
Out Of Fear Into Love: Life doesn’t have to be a struggle also includes easy to read case studies to help you identify with the methods and techniques in the book.
