Weekly Food for Thought - People Pleaser or Self Lover? or Why We Do Things that Don't Please us?

Dear Friends,

Imagine a situation in which you went and entertained others, you were a clown, and you neither enjoyed it nor did any of it contribute to your growth. I am sure that you have all been in those kind of situations - I’ve been in them countless times. At one point of my life, this was almost a way of being for me.

These kinds of socializing-by-default events in which we were the favourite character and the main animator have all, as by the rule, ended in discontentment, hollowness, and feeling of guilt - for we have yet again wasted our precious time on conversations and people who had already assigned us to the formed, familiar, and written roles.
If we already know and are aware of all of this, why wouldn’t we ask ourselves the simplest question in the world: Why do we do it?
Why do we put ourselves in situations that are not pleasing for us? Why aren’t we courageous enough to turn down an invitation to socialize, when we know in advance that we would be left empty and drained afterwards?
Each one of us has different answers to this questions, and they are all probably valid and true, but at the core of most of these answers lies our need to be loved, accepted, included, sought after...

All of this is connected with the lack of self-confidence, with insufficient faith in oneself, with the feeling that we are not worthy enough and don’t deserve better. And instead of raising above and making a decision to step out of the vicious cycle, we say “Yes” when we think “No”, showing a greater disrespect to ourselves each time.

What needs to happen so that we could free ourselves from the roles that we’ve imprisoned ourselves in?

To start with, maybe we need to be honest. With ourselves, as well as with others. We need to learn to value ourselves, to respect our time, to heed our needs. What we don't need, is to think that the needs of others are more important - to do so is in essence to risk an affective personality disorder. The disorder of people who have a cyclothymic structure - who are not stable but move between extremes on a cyclothymic mood scale.

The more we take on the second position, the more we move ourselves to the background and value others more than ourselves, the more we will oscillate between the superficial pleasure of others approval and the empty hollowness of not being ourselves!

 This pattern of behaviour you cannot change unless you decide to do so.
It certainly is not easy to do, but it is doable. It is always hard to say what we really think in the beginning, but trust me, that is the only way. No one else can do it for you.

With this in mind, I invite you to come up with at least one role that will focus on strengthening your self-confidence. To find at least one way of interacting with others that will strengthen YOU - and start giving a higher priority to those interactions. Do what you want to do, do what pleases you instead of pleasing others and neglecting yourself.
Give yourself a little bit of love!

Wishing you an inspiring week and sending you oceans of love!

Your entraining trainers,
Lidija and Thomas

Lidija Markovic, NLP trainer and NLP New Code Trainer
Thomas Björge, NLP trainer and NLP New Code Trainer