What's with the People-Pleasing?

On a countertop near the kitchen we have a countdown-to-Christmas trinket. It's a little rustic wooden box with a Santa and a tree on top and numbers that you change each day to show how many days are left till Christmas. 

In years passed, as I watched that number get smaller and smaller, my stress-bucket would get fuller and fuller, until the night before Christmas when it was supposed to be this magical, silent, awe-filled evening my stress overflowed. What was supposed to be, "Peace on Earth" and "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" just really wasn't.

Almost every year after I had children, the last 24 hours before the big show have been a frenzied, sweaty, irritated-but-trying-not-to-yell, last-minute-food-shopping-and-present-wrapping tizzy, and I have been totally disconnected from the generosity and good cheer that this season is supposedly about.

But this year is going to be different.

Because I am different.

And maybe you are too.

2024 has brought me face-to-face with some of my most beloved and yet most dysfunctional coping strategies. I have faced these inner-friends-turned-jailers and have started to build new relationships with the unhealed parts of myself as I venture out on this cutting edge of consciousness where we dare to see ourselves as beings that are bigger than simply a body and a brain. 

The most insidous and hardest inner-jailer for me to face has been (drumroll please!)..... people-pleasing.

I learned about people-pleasing in 1995 when I went to a workshop called Consenus Leadership. This was my first experience of doing healing work in a group setting, and the concepts I learned challenged my 15-year old brain profoundly. People-pleasing was taught through the lens of a concept I had never heard before: approval addiction.

Approval addiction.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Approval addiction is the unquenchable desire for other people to think well of you. And just like any addiction, you are always left wanting more. And just like any addiction, you lose yourself in the chase for the high.

Let me say that again: You lose yourself in the chase for the high.

But who is the YOU that you lose?

Enter The Expansion Project. In this community, we talk about who we REALLY are - beyond our habituated patterns, beyond our coping mechanisms, beyond the beliefs and stories that have shaped and formed our lives.

Who are we, really?

We are a manifestation of Love.

We are eternal, spiritual beings who are experiencing a three-dimensional environment for a period of time.

We are a hologram of the Oneness, of Source Energy.

We are not what we have been taught to believe we are...we are so much more. 

What we are is so profound that it's sometimes hard to put language to it. But I will keep trying.

Still with me? Let's keep going.

Another aspect of who we are is that we are connected to All That Is - we are not seperate, individuated beings as mainstream psychology and medicine have tried to convince us. 

I find this is why many of the behaviour-based interventions that are offered in standard, individual counselling sessions often lose juice after awhile - there is only so much counting to ten and leaving the room you can do before it starts impacting your reputation and relationships. 

I have noticed in my practice that as we move away from the behaviour-and-thinking-based interventions which focus on "doing" and instead help people access the "being" of who they are in a supportive community environment, they begin to heal. And as they heal, they start to remember who they really are. As they remember, they connect with a source that is bigger and bolder and braver than anything that they have known before. And as they connect, they want that connection for their loved ones.

But their loved ones may or may not get it.

So let me tell you this, with authority:

As one person starts to change, the whole system gets re-calibrated.

Even if your loved ones never take one step in the direction of wellness and expansion, it's okay. Maybe you are the one taking that step for the whole family. Maybe part of their journey (this lifetime) is to find their way back to their authentic self through a completely different path - one that makes absolutely zero sense to your logical mind. Maybe they'll get there, maybe they won't. The question is: What energy do you want to hold in the meantime?

Which brings us full circle back to people-pleasing and the holidays.

As I enter into this 2024 holiday season, I am listening to that wise voice within. And the voice has been telling me some weird, non-spiritual shit, like "Bake sugar cookies," and "Watch this cheesy holiday movie," and "Sleep in last year's Christmas pajamas". To be honest, nothing very deep or profound or game-changing has been going on.

But as I listen to the voice, I feel freedom and flow like nothing I have ever experienced before.

A lot of what I am doing looks the same on the outside as it did in years passed. What's different is as I listen to the voice I end up showing up in the right place at the right time for the right reasons WITH THE RIGHT ENERGY. So even when things go wrong, I can flow with it, I can move through it, and eventually, might even learn something suprising about myself, the world, or the moment.

None of this is possible if I am people-pleasing.

You see, people-pleasing means I am listening to the voices OUTSIDE of me to decide my next steps rather than the voice inside of me. Approval addiction means my worth and value comes from someone else rather than me feeling the authentic power of who I am deep in my own bones. And, to further complicate matters, what happens when the voices outside of me want conflicting things? 

We can't please everyone all of the time, and some people we can't even please ANY of the time (you know who I'm talking about, grumpy grandpas!) so what if we decided, atleast for this holiday season, to put the people-pleasing and approval addiction aside so we could begin to hear our soul's own guidance for us?

Now, one last caveat before I sign off: beware the egoic mind.

The egoic mind (the part of you that wants control, predicatabilty, safety, and to always be in charge) would love to take all these ideas and twist them into yet another way to seperate you from others and isolate you from the Love that is waiting to be let in.

So as you enter into these next few days, I invite you to turn away from that which is un-generous, that which promotes score-keeping and comparison, that which pits you against others, and move towards that which comes from a place of sacred service, inner guidance, and openess and inclusion of all.

Maybe then we can all have just a little more magic this 2024 holiday season.

Learn more about The Expansion Project here and get ready for even more magic!