How To Stop People Pleasing – Amanda Weber, Ep. 48

Podcast about how to stop people pleasing with happiness coach, Amanda Weber

Amanda Weber is affectionately known as a Happiness Coach and recovering people pleaser. She helps people discover their happiest, healthiest and most successful version of themselves amid the often chaotic nature of life. Through one-on-one coaching, group workshops and speaking, and through her blog and podcast called “The Full Life,” Amanda helps bring clarity, perspective and what she calls the full life to those with whom she interacts. She also helps people learn how to stop people pleasing.

Subscribe to the podcast:

Listen:  Apple Podcasts (iTunes) |  Google Podcasts |  iHeart Radio  |  Spotify  |   Stitcher

Amanda knows from experience what it’s like to arrive at a certain point in your life stressed out, unhappy, and waking up at three in the morning feeling like there must be something more to life. An inherent people-pleaser, Amanda had to embark upon a journey of self-discovery, which she sometimes had to do against her initial instincts, in order to find peace of mind and joy for herself. She tells that story with remarkable clarity and honesty in this conversation. She had to learn how to stop people pleasing.

We can learn it

I know all kinds of people whose default operating system is set to pleasing people. And there is a certain level of that which is noble and helpful, especially in a world where so many bring an air of entitlement and expectation of instant gratification. What ends up happening is that those who are only too willing to pass the buck, leave message for the people pleasers to clean up. When that happens, the Pleasers engage in that, trying to be good but to their own detriment.

We can only take 100% responsibility for our experience. Taking more than that is enabling others and throwing ourselves out of integrity. Taking less is being a victim. And while the pleasers don’t completely realize it, by overdoing it, they are both throwing themselves out of integrity and enabling the behavior of the others. This is not an easy thing to overcome. But as evidenced by Amanda’s experience, it can be overcome. We can learn how to stop people pleasing

Some of the key points I took from my time with Amanda include:

1.  Take care of yourself so you can take care of others – Listen for her story of how she recognized that by depleting herself, it was affecting her kids, and how she describes her “3 a.m. promise” to stop being reactive them.
2. Life Gets Away – This happens to a lot of us without us realizing it. It certainly happened to me. If you don’t stop to consider where you’re going and why, life will carry you along on its own … and it won’t always take you to where you’d like to go. As Amanda says, “I think life kind of got away on me … I got that first job, and it led to the second, and it led to the third, and the more that I people-pleased and got stuff done, the more the next-best opportunity would come. And so I think life kind of took me somewhere versus me deciding where I would go, and I’m not sure it lines up at all with that little person that I started out as.” Sound familiar? Yeah, it does for me, too.

2. Recognizing Adversity as Opportunity – Her story of being grateful to her husband for leaving is powerful.