Why It Doesn't Pay to Be a People Pleaser

Why It Doesn't Pay to Be a People Pleaser
greatergood.berkeley.edu

Anyway, I'm hearing the whole stance of "everything is good, I'm so happy" is a cultural thing, very common in the US but not so in the rest of the world (Europe especially). I wonder to what extent this is true and how does it affect people's well being.

There is utility in people pleasing that does not end with self-satisfaction. There are costs, sometimes immediate, to conveying your thoughts and feelings directly. Examples from the workplace:

Your colleague is a bit chatty and annoying, so the last thing you want to do is start a conversation about how bad your weekend was. It takes more mental energy to deal with them than not, so smile and say 'My weekend was great!'.

More seriously, it is necessary for your boss to want to keep you around and letting your emotions hang out on topics not related to work may get them wondering about your focus and productivity. This is particularly important if you're supporting a family, and in practical terms, you really have to be judicious about being true to yourself vs. keeping your job. Not that it's that precipitous, but over time, you'll establish an image.

From the boss's perspective, people respond well to confidence, and letting your team know you're true feelings needs to be thoughtfully considered in each case. Showing lack of confidence in the right places can elicit helpful ideas and volunteers. In the wrong place, it can really kill your team.

So for me, it's a trade off. I know when I'm being less than truthful, and it is deliberate and purposeful in each case.

If the question is always to be answered with "fine", then is the person you ask ever going to notice if you don't ask it? You don't care about what they feel either way and they know it.

As a prescriptive piece of advice though, it has a semi-fatal flaw. It is based on the concept of what you "really" feel and what you "really" think. Which of course isn't how the human mind works at all. Some days we think our job is the best thing in the world and we're grateful for it, some days we think it's the one thing holding us back from glory. Sometimes we feel connected to a person, sometimes resentful of the same person.

What do we do if our rational brain says that our boss is totally being a reasonable person but our lizard brain wants to choke him because he just told to do something all over again. Must we not speak the white lie that it's "no problem"?

What if one finds their emotions are all over the place, and just not evenly regulated, and you have unexplained and somewhat destructive impulses to say tactless and hurtful things to people? Should we go ahead and do that because it's a more "transparent, honest, authentic" version of ourselves? Or should we aim to be more stable, and do our best to "fake it" until it becomes second nature?

Here's a secret nobody tells you: The internal conflict and struggles in life you encounter are almost never of the bad/good variety. Such problems create failures of will rather than failures of reasoning, since choosing between being purely cruel and being kind requires little insight.

The conflicts that vex us are are between two positive things we value, like balancing giving and sharing and being a team player with independence and growth and looking out for ones self, or balancing being responsible and consistent with being adaptable and curious.

Or in this case, balancing being authentic and honest with being focused, professional, and pleasant to be around.

You'll never reduce the tradeoff between those values down to simple rules of thumb, they will always be complex, outcomes will always be uncertain, and scenarios will never present themselves again in precisely the same way.

You'll have to mostly make it up as you go along, forever. Get a helmet.