Success Q&Q
Reflection Questions
What encourages the desire to please others?
How does that interfere with your dreams?
What choices can you make to support yourself and your dreams?
I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
― Herbert Bayard Swope
What does encourage the desire to please others? I would be interested to know that answer. I’m thinking it might be two things – the environment in which we are raised, and how we each choose to mold ourselves over time – but I would be interested in knowing your thoughts on what actually does encourage us to please others?
Pleasing others doesn’t interfere with my dreams. I live my dream in the job I do – helping people and being involved in technology. It’s a place where older people, who were once extremely able, now deal with health issues, or for whom age has taken its toll. Now, some things are simply difficult for them. So many wee things make a big difference in their day – picking up an item that fell from a walking frame and the person can’t bend to retrieve it, sticking velcro on a mailbox so a low-vision lady can find hers more easily, carrying bags of groceries for a lady who just drove herself to and from the grocery store, but who is very hunched over and, walking by her car, it’s clear just how much tremendous effort she has to exert to manage her bags herself. How could anyone not help?
The choices I make to support myself and my dreams? I feel being able to make my choices in itself supports me and my dreams. Some of my friends quite often get a laugh out of the choices I make. Sometimes they say I’m weird, or that I’ve “lost it”, or that I’m crazy. They think I’m odd because I choose to be alone a lot, but I love that I can choose to be in my head and think about things, or choose to be in my hands and create things, or choose to be not busy and simply “be”. I can’t control every event that requires me to make a choice, but I can choose how I respond to it. I feel very fortunate that, over all, my dreams are kind of my reality, too.
Rae, The desire to please others that is being referred to here is the one that sacrifices who you are or what you believe in order to keep someone else comfortable or prevent conflict. It can stem out of the environment in which people were raised though the root of it is deeper than that. It often grows out of a place of low self-confidence or low self-esteem. The constant desire for outward approval when one seemingly can’t offer it to oneself. The child who grows up to be a lawyer because dad really wanted them to be a lawyer and they, themselves, are repulsed by the idea. The person who goes along with the in-crowd just to be seen as popular even if they can’t stand what they do or how they treat people. It’s the moments when one loses who they are to receive some external accolade or approval. The loss of oneself leads to the dissipation of dreams or feeling that there isn’t any ability within oneself to accomplish them.
Pleasing everybody also includes emotional caretaking of others, leading to self-judgment. Noticing how you feel if you speak honestly and someone else doesn’t receive it well. Do you feel guilty for ‘making’ them feel upset and then try to smooth things over, recriminating yourself for having spoken up in the first place? This would be a form of emotional caretaking. This may or may not be something that happens with all people. It may only be a co-worker, boss, parent, sibling, etc. If this is habitual, it, too, can lead people into believing their dreams aren’t worth pursuing because of how people already respond to them.
You have a beautifully clear sense of who you are, what you need/want, how you want to fulfill it, and what speaks to your heart. Your curiosity speaks volumes for your desire to live from your heart. ❤️?
Thank you for explaining – “The desire to please others that is being referred to here is the one that sacrifices who you are or what you believe in order to keep someone else comfortable or prevent conflict.” I completely misunderstood that difference and recall having that same misunderstanding before. Now, I finally understand pleasing and sacrificing who I am, versus helping and being who I am. I need to remember that. That’s a good point you make about the emotional caretaking of others, too. Thank you for taking the time to explain all of this. It feels good to understand it. 🙂
Continued blessings on your journey, Rae! ❤️?