The People Pleasing Problem

The unseen comprises the seen by Joseph Yaeger

I was arguing with my dad the other day about my inability to make decisions. He told me that I need to stop trying to please everyone all the time, and I sat on my bed and cried and told him I don't know how to not please everyone all the time. 

I've got a serious problem with the way people perceive me. I'm terrified of disappointing or disagreeing. I'm seriously concerned that I'll walk away from an interaction and leave a bitter aftertaste.

This stems partially from my own insecurity and doubts about myself. I have so little confidence in my existing abilities and character that I doubt anyone else's ability to appreciate me, which means that I bend myself around whatever I think everyone else wants in an attempt to satisfy them. 

Another cause of people pleasing is the desire to make people happy, and the refusal to believe there's a limit to how happy I can make them. I want to believe that my interactions with people and the things I do for them can be enough to make them satisfied and bring them joy in every single circumstance. I want to see people happy and have full confidence that I can be the source of that happiness. 

If everyone's happiness were dependent on who I am, that would be fine. If I could be the person that they needed me to be, that would be even better. But that hypothetical situation only works practically if they all want me to be the same person, and that is where the issue begins. 

Some people need me to be quiet and unproblematic and constantly in agreement. 

Others need me to be bubbly, happy, and outgoing. 

Another needs me to be intelligent and analytical. 

A fourth says I need to be more understanding and forgiving. 

If only one of those requests existed, it would be fine. The issue begins, however, when all of those people and their requests exist simultaneously. I can't make everyone happy by being just one person, no matter who that person is, because everyone wants different characteristics for that person. Just like the problem with being pretty, everyone has different desires and ideals, and I can't fill them all while still being one whole person. 

There are several solutions to this problem. If one person can't please everyone, the first solution is to not be just one person. Be intelligent around the academic friend, funny around the awkward coworker, and polite around Grandma. Instead of displaying one well-rounded personality, present the pieces people want and satisfy everyone. Until Thanksgiving, when all those people are in one place and you don't know how to put together the various puzzle pieces you've taken out of the box, and suddenly the cognitive dissonance has totally disrupted your sense of self, and you have no idea who you are. 

The second solution is the opposite. Be so unapologetically yourself that people can't help but see you, at which point most of them will take to disliking certain attitudes and characteristics you possess, the majority will discard you to their pile of secondary, less necessary friends, several will reject you outright, and a small handful will find you completely delightful and stick by you. 

No matter what you do, someone's upset. People pleasing is fundamentally impossible. No matter what you do, you cannot possibly meet everyone's contradictory expectations, and you are guaranteed to let someone down, to disappoint them, or offend them. 

So why bother? If you're going to upset someone anyway, why bother trying not to? I'm not at all saying to abandon general social norms and manners, but why on earth would you (or I, for that matter) stretch yourself to the limits in a vain, impossible attempt to please everyone, when you're going to fail anyway? Why not just do what you want to do and be who you want to be, and make friends with the people who still like you afterward?

As cringey and common-sense as it sounds, being yourself really is the only option with any merit. I, for one, listen to the Lorax soundtrack first thing in the morning, and had four and a half cups of coffee (hence why I'm awake and writing at 1AM). So why on earth would I even attempt to make friends with someone who believes fundamentally that caffeine is a sin against the Lord, or who thinks kids' movies are stupid? Why would I sacrifice aspects of myself and my life that bring me genuine joy for the sake of a person who wouldn't lift a finger to help me when I actually need it? I wouldn't. That's the logical answer. 

I'm me. And you're you. And neither of us needs to be someone else to get the other to like us. I can just be me, and you can just be you, and if the two of us work out, that's great, but if not, so be it. Quit trying to accomplish a Sisyphean task, and just go live your life and drink your coffee.

"What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him. Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain?" 

-- Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending