If you try to please everyone, you might as well kiss your ass goodbye. How far do you agree with this statement?

It is imperative that you love yourself as you are and that you try to make your own life happy and fulfilling. Caring for others can come out of that.

Trying to please everyone else is a no-win game.

Ask yourself how often people you know try to please you when making their important life-decisions.

Agree 10,000 %. Usually extreme people pleasers form an identity around being seen as caring and helpful, often they neglect themselves, say “yes” when they want to say “no” and in general, run the risk of becoming codependent martyrs. Not a good thing. A good clue is if you find yourself complaining that others don’t do for you or you feel unappreciated, this means that your motives in doing, giving, helping are really self serving and not genuine.

Another clue is that if you have not been specifically asked for some sort of help or favor and you automatically volunteer then feel taken advantage of, well….refer to above. lol

Balance is important. Frankly, we Americans aren’t the best example of balance with our “Screw what everybody else thinks, I’ve gotta be me!” ethos. Other cultures are unbalanced in the other direction, with an overemphasis on meeting the expectations of parents and society.

Balance weighs everything and finds middle ground. That means being open to guidance from others, considering the possibility that they may be right (without blindly accepting that they are). It also weighs your sense of what matters most to you. There will often be conflicts between these external and internal factors, and there’s no easy formula for finding the perfect resolution. Sometimes, others will simply have to understand that your sense of integrity requires you to follow your own heart. Sometimes, you will have to put your own desires on hold for awhile. Sometimes, you’ll have to admit that others are right.

To never take others into account in plotting your life course is a pretty self-centered way to live. To derive your sense of self-worth from the approval of others is just as pathological. It’s left to each of us to navigate between those extremes.

To quote Ricky Nelson:

But it’s all right now, I learned my lesson well.You see, ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself

^^^ Thanks bunches, now I will be singing that song all day. lol

If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that it is totally impossible to please everybody. In fact, sometimes it’s impossible to please anybody. (Try spending your career working as a creative person in the advertising business and you’ll see what I mean).

I wouldn’t say trying to please everybody means “you might as well kiss your ass goodbye.” But Rick Nelson was right. It’s you you have to please.

I would probably mostly agree. People pleasers want everyone to be happy and set themselves up for being taken advantage of by others. I am to a certain extent a people pleaser although not as much as I once was, I would be the one who volunteered to work extra and certainly wouldn’t say no to any favors that might be asked of me. I wanted to keep people happy and was seeking their approval. By saying yes when I really wanted to say no, I was pleasing other people and losing my own self in the process. I now have set boundaries and do say no to things that I really don’t want to do and have become acquainted with myself.

Kind of a stark alternative.
If you try to please everyone, you may at times forget to look out for your own interests.
That can be a problem for sure, and you may waste some time.
But kiss your ass goodbye? Maybe not.

@Khajuria9 The trick is to find the balance, just like everything else in life. I want to be selfish sometimes, but it’s going to bite me in the ass. It’s finding the balance between your wants and needs and others wants and need.

Be true to your real self. There is nothing wrong with being kind and doing things that enhance the lives of people whom you value and who reciprocate your friendship and kindness. Not everyone deserves such treatment and its not your task to serve everyone and their needs. Invest your time and energy in your own life and your important goals. By all means, do what you can to help others who deserve your efforts. Our own children are often people we want to help, especially while they are growing up. There are times when we help them most by encouraging them to call on their own experiences and personal resources to find their way in life. We continue to love them and listen to their concerns even while we encourage them to find the solutions best suited to their own lives.

The main obstacle is our core belief that we can “make someone happy”. We can’t make anyone do anything…people decide to do things based on whether or not they want to experience or avoid experiencing certain results.

Understanding this concept is key because it allows you to drop the illusion that you’re the cause of what someone else feels. A person can decide to be happy under the most horrendous conditions. A person can also decide to be miserable under the best of circumstances.

It’s always up to the individual how he chooses to feel.

So now that you’ve awakened, you’re free of your self imposed obligation to make anyone happy. You can’t do it anyway, so you may as well direct your energy toward a worthier goal:

Allow yourself to be happy.