I’m probably going to end up misquoting this, but I remember sitting in the waiting room at my doctor’s office, reading a Psychology Today magazine, and I came across this (or something very close):
”The problem with trying to make everyone happy is that you end up with everyone being happy, EXCEPT yourself!”
It was actually an article about breaking the habit of putting too much stock in the words of others, especially those who seem to ”care” about you, yet seem to criticize and find fault with all your choices… particularly when those choices are not in alignment with the choices that person would have made.
I think about that, and I always come back to the core idea of whose life are you trying to live, anyway?
It’s my life, after all.
I think back to the way my own mother was never really happy with my choices because they didn’t revolve around the relentless pursuit of money, influence and status. I have little doubt that she was well-meaning in her criticism, but it was rooted in her paradigm of what was important, not mine.
My paradigm was never rooted in wanting the ”country club lifestyle.” I suppose I was also inherently lazy in certain ways… at least to the extent that I viewed being able to chill out and relax with friends and my interests as more important than being enslaved by my drive for ”success.”
I have previously written about how we all have our individual definitions of ”success,” and mine clearly was not in the same universe as my mother’s.
That is not to say that I didn’t get to experience the (sad, for me) reality — on a very general sort of scale — that what I felt was important in life was not in alignment with the broader societal narrative, at least here in the US of A. In retrospect — from my vantage point as one of the oldest members of ”Gen X” — I was probably more aligned with the core ethics of my native Denmark than the USA.
There’s a certain irony in all that, in the sense that my parents were definitely Danish, but they both lived in the USA for many years before starting a family, and they both more or less loathed the Danish way of pursuing happiness and connection, rather than success and influence. "Small minded and near-sighted" my mom would call it. And then I ended up in the USA… mostly to get away from their eternal meddling and influence!
Don’t tell me the Universe doesn’t have a sense of humor!
Whereas I wasn’t exactly trying to please them, I was at least trying to minimize their influence and ”aggressive guidance” by choosing University in the States.
In my later years, one thing I really learned about my essential self is that I hate feeling beholden to other people and their influences. The vast majority of people in our lives who suggest what we ”should” do with our lives really don’t have our best interests in mind, but instead are trying to guide us towards a version of ourselves that suits their needs, or makes their lives more comfortable... and allows them to not have to look at the deeper implications of their choices.
The sad reality is that we are more like a chess piece in creating their reality than we are a living breathing person with feelings, fears, wants and desires of our own.
For those of us who are generally deeply feeling and empathetic, that can be a difficult and often bitter pill to swallow… because in order to pursue our own sense of well-being, we must — in the end — be willing to make someone else disappointed and even angry.
Which takes us back to ”whose life are you living, anyway?”
So… remember to choose yourself!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great few final bits of your Sunday!
How about you? Do you pay much attention to the words and influences of others? Have you ever been called a people pleaser? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)
Created at 2025.02.23 14:15 PST
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