For a long time, I thought my people pleasing was just about wanting people to like me.
But I realised it went deeper than that.
A lot of the time, I wasn’t just trying to make people happy. I was trying to control how people saw me. I was scared of being perceived in a way that didn’t match how I wanted to be viewed.
In this episode of To All The Girls Out There, I’m sharing my own experience with the fear of being perceived, from staying quiet during my course because I didn’t want people to see me in the “wrong” way, to realising that no matter how much we try to manage other people’s opinions of us, we are always going to be perceived.
The question is: can we learn to become comfortable being seen?
In this episode, we talk about:
✨ Why being a people pleaser isn’t necessarily a bad thing and how it can actually be a valuable skill
✨ Where the fear of being perceived comes from and why our brains are wired to care about belonging
✨ Why “no one is thinking about you” isn’t always the answer — and why peace comes from accepting that people may have opinions of you
✨ The difference between controlling how you show up and trying to control how other people see you
✨ The concept of separation of tasks from Adlerian psychology and The Courage to Be Disliked
✨ How trying to avoid being perceived can stop people from ever seeing the real version of you
✨ Why being misunderstood doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong
✨ How to stop attaching your worth to other people’s reactions
✨ Learning to become comfortable being seen, even when you don’t know how people will respond
Chapters
00:00 – Intro: My Realisation About The Fear of Being Perceived
05:01 – Why People Pleasing Isn’t Always a Bad Thing
10:00 – How People Perceive You Is None of Your Business
13:10 – The Psychology That Changed My Perspective
16:26 – Layla’s Story: When Avoiding Perception Hides The Real You
22:41 – Is Separation of Tasks Selfish?
33:16 – Becoming Comfortable Being Perceived
34:44 – Reflections & Reminders 📓
Resources mentioned:
Episodes mentioned:
✨ International Women’s Day Episode
✨ Fear of Getting it Wrong Episode
Books Mentioned
✨ The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
🤍Reflection questions:
✨ What am I scared is going to happen if people perceive me differently to the way I want to be perceived? If that happened, what would happen next? And what would happen after that? (Keep asking yourself “so what?” until you get to the root of the fear.)
✨ How would I show up differently if I wasn’t trying to manage everyone else’s opinion of me?
✨ Where in my life am I making myself smaller to avoid being judged?
✨ Am I more focused on how people see me, or whether I’m proud of how I showed up?
Remember, the goal isn’t to stop being perceived. That’s impossible.
The goal is to become comfortable being perceived.
Thank you for listening 🤍
If this episode resonated with you, I’d love for you to share it with someone who might need this reminder too. Your support helps these conversations reach more girls. 🩷🩷🩷
Transcript:
To All The Girls (00:00)
Hey my loves, welcome back to another episode of To All The Girls Out There. As always, it is a blessing and an honour to have you girls here with me. So, today I’m speaking all about the fear of being perceived. So for any of my people pleaser girlies, buckle in, because you might need this one. I would class myself as a recovering people pleaser.
I would say that I’m not the people pleaser I once was, but I’m not fully out of it yet and I do find myself overthinking a lot of the time. There are situations where I’m like, don’t really care. And then there are others where I’m like, okay, I noticed that I felt a way or I changed myself here or I suppressed a part of myself, which…
you know, something that I’m working towards and something that I want to overcome. And one thing that I realised is like for us as people pleases, we find a lot of the time you’ll find yourself in situations where it’s like, that experience would have been so much more fun if I wasn’t in my head as much. And like, you didn’t truly allow yourself to enjoy and experience whatever it is that
you could have or wherever it is that you wanted to, you didn’t get the full package or momentum out of it because you were so busy like in your head thinking what are people going to think of me or that anxiety that’s like constantly on your mind and just overthinking every little step that you miss out on the essence on the enjoyment of the thing that you’re actually doing and
It’s just like, if I didn’t overthink it as much, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. And I realized that, it wasn’t just about the fact that I am a people pleaser. In particular, it was I’m scared of being perceived. So recently I’ve just finished my level three course, thank God. Alhamdulillah, got through it and…
One thing I realised is that during this course I’ve been particularly quiet, especially during group discussions and I wouldn’t speak as much and I’d be thinking, hmm, in the beginning I was like, yeah, cool, I don’t really mind and then later I was like, okay, I actually want to challenge myself to speak. Every time I tried, was just a block. I couldn’t figure out, it’s online as well, so all I had to do was press a button to talk, but I was like, I’m about to do it.
And then I’m like, nah. Or I’ll just freeze. I couldn’t bring myself to just press the button to just put my hand up and speak. And I remember just sitting there and thinking, hmm, why? And I realized it was because I didn’t want people to see me in a certain way. So I wouldn’t want to be the know-it-all in the class, or I didn’t want people to see me as someone who.
you know, like she thinks she’s smart but she’s not all that smart or she thinks she said something so deep but it wasn’t really that deep, you know, and I didn’t want people to, I didn’t wanna be all high and mighty and people didn’t perceive me in the way that I wanted to be perceived. And so because I was scared of people looking at me like that, I stopped myself from.
enjoying and experiencing because I was so scared of what other people were gonna think of me that I didn’t get to, I wouldn’t say I had a poor experience, I think I had an amazing experience to be honest, but I’m just saying it would have been a lot more different if I allowed myself to be perceived and this is something that I noted that it wasn’t in the course, the course was just something that really allowed me to see it but in other areas of my life it happened a lot and I realised like I would go out or something and it’s like.
like I didn’t really talk, I didn’t really do something and it would have been a lot more different if I was okay with being seen.
And yeah,
Sometimes that overthinking is basically just a way for you to try to control how other people see you because you know there’s a certain light that I want to be seen that you might want to be seen in and it’s important for you to be seen that way and so that’s the thing that you’re trying to control you’re trying to make sure that people see you the way that you want to be seen which I understand.
but then the question is, how much can we actually control the way people see us?
Here’s the thing,
being a people pleaser isn’t actually a bad thing. Being a people pleaser, it kept me safe and it probably, if you are people pleaser, it probably kept you safe too.
There might have been situations before where, you know, you needed to people please to be able to keep yourself safe, to avoid turmoil, to avoid conflict or problems. You might have had situations where being a people pleaser has avoided an outcome that you might have won and it has kept you safe.
Our brains are evolved to care about what other people think because
Belonging, that sense of belonging, that is a thing that once meant survival, right? We operate in tribes, we want to be accepted because if you don’t have your tribe, if you don’t have your set of people that you belong to, then there’s a risk and that lowers your chance of survival, right? So thousands of years ago, being rejected by your group literally meant you put your life at risk. So I understand that.
Being judged can feel so threatening today. It does make sense. But whilst our brains Still react as if rejection is dangerous The reality is that not everyone liking us doesn’t threaten our survival anymore.
It’s not that we don’t need a tribe, but it’s just that…
you don’t, it’s not that like you have a choice as to what tribe you fit in and it’s not that hey it doesn’t matter what tribe I’m in I just need a tribe. Now it’s more like there’s plenty of tribes and there is somewhere that I can find to fit in and it’s okay if I don’t find the right one. But yeah it’s not something to hate your brain for. I think sometimes it’s like why am I such a people pleaser why do I care what people think and
when we try to overcome it, we can get so annoyed at ourselves. Like I could sit there and be like, why didn’t I just press the button? Why didn’t I just talk? But it’s a way of our brain trying to protect us and keep us safe. So I think it’s important to be thankful to our brain because it’s really and truly just trying to do a good thing, right? But it’s about now working with it to kind of say, hey,
We are okay, we are safe and we can make other decisions. And here’s the thing, being a people pleaser is also a valuable asset. Think about it, when you people please, you learn valuable skills. A lot of the time you are able to read people, you see people and you can notice that, they reacted like this to when I said this, they reacted like this to when I said that. This shifted the energy in the room.
And it teaches you how to adapt and make people feel seen and make people feel heard. And yes, I understand that sometimes constantly doing this, can take you away from experiencing, but making someone feel seen heard and being able to read the room and read people’s emotions, those are valuable skills.
that can definitely be used to your advantage. It becomes a problem when you have to constantly disservice yourself to do so. So when like
something really makes you happy or you’re excited to speak about something and then you see someone’s looking at you in a way where it’s like, maybe they’re judging me for liking this thing and now you’re kind of like putting yourself down or you don’t want to share that because you feel like you’re being judged. But that’s something that generally brings you excitement. It generally makes you happy. But now you’re pushing that down because you don’t want to be perceived because you want to people please. That’s when it becomes a problem.
but you can also use that stuff, use those skills to your advantage, but don’t ever make it a reason for you to sit down and say, hey, I’m gonna dim my light just so you can feel better.
And it’s one of those things where I remember I spoke about it with my episode with Marisa because she was someone that I met who was very comfortable with like just being herself and not really changing herself for other people. And the things that came with it is like realizing that, hey, people are going to see me how people are going to see me, but I’m not going to change.
how I am or dim my light because I’m too much for someone else, like that is their business. And that brings me onto my next point of how people perceive you is none of your business. And I know it can sound like, well, like what the hell, like it is how they think of me
And it’s like, you want to try to control that. You want to try to keep yourself safe. You you want to be seen in a certain way. You don’t want to disappoint your family or your friends. So you’re going to think, yeah, if I can control that, I’m going to try to control that, which I do understand. But.
But wait, before I actually talk about that, I wanted to mention that when we are people pleasers, I feel like people always tell us things like, it’s not that deep. Like most people are thinking about themselves anyway. Most people, you know, are too worried about their lives to think about you. And yeah.
all of that is true and can be true, but that’s not always true. And the thing is, is that you have to take it into account is that some people are going to think about you. Some people are going to have opinions of you. Yeah, they might not be talking about it every two seconds, but people are going to perceive you. People are going to think they might actually think, well, she’s really bossy or, she does think she’s a know it all and
I realised that it’s not about thinking, nobody actually cares, nobody’s actually thinking about me. It’s about being okay with it if they do.
and yeah and that was the realization that I had and that was the things that like for example I saw in Marisa and I realized that hey it’s not about thinking no one cares it’s about like if they do care
I need to be complacent with that. I need to be okay with that. And I realized that you can sit here and try to control how someone perceives you, but you don’t have that much control and people are gonna perceive you how anyway, like regardless of what you do to try to control how someone perceives you, you’re always gonna be perceived. So for example, let’s say in my course, I…
didn’t speak, I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t say what’s on my mind, I didn’t share my opinions and whatnot because I was scared of being perceived. Now people are probably just perceiving me as a quiet girl anyway. So it’s like, she didn’t really speak that much. And in me trying to control how I was being perceived or me not wanting to be perceived period, I was still being perceived and I was being perceived as a quiet girl.
I don’t know whether that’s a bad thing or a good thing, I don’t really care either to be honest but like it’s just saying that in me being scared of being seen in a certain way I’m still seen in a certain way and it’s not something that I control. So what’s the point? I will only find peace if I make peace with the fact that people are going to perceive me, people are going to think about me.
And that’s when I realised, okay, I need to be complacent with being seen. valuable notion is from the book, The Courage to Be Disliked, which I haven’t finished because, I don’t know, but it takes from Adlerian psychology. And in the book, they mention the separation of tasks and…
is basically speaking about how…
in life like there’s certain things that are our tasks and there’s certain things that are our responsibilities and then there’s others there’s other people’s responsibilities but sometimes we try to take on the responsibilities of others and so knowing to separate and ask yourself wait whose responsibility is this so for example
Someone else’s perception of me isn’t my task. It’s not my responsibility. can’t control how they think of me and how they perceive me. Of course you can influence it. I can try to change myself to influence it, but how they see me ultimately comes down to them.
and it can be applied to so many different places. Some people use it for parenting, some people use it for other things. And it’s just like sometimes we generally try to take on the roles of other people and we don’t think, okay, well, what is my task here at hand?
So let’s say I want to be perceived as chatty and in my course whatever I speak a lot more, I say things or I ramble on and I don’t stop talking. I could do all of that. My task is how I show up and what I decide to do. Fine. How someone then sees me, I cannot physically control what is going in their brain. So that is their task. Someone can literally see me be the most chattiest girl and think, nah.
but she still doesn’t talk that much though, but she still, I don’t know, never really has anything of substance to say. They can still think things. And when you study psychology as well, and you understand schemas, which is basically mental shortcuts that your mind takes and people’s ways of thinking, and they might have cognitive biases, which is distortions.
in the way of their thinking.
So they might have negative way of thinking as one of them. Let’s just say that they have a negative way of thinking. so when their brain processes the information, let’s say the information of me being a chatterbox, it can then change the way that they think of me or just think, she just talks too much rather than, she’s a social butterfly. They just think, no, she just speaks too much.
And that’s what I’m saying where like, I can’t control that perception because that might be their way of thinking. I can’t control the way that they think. I can’t control the way that they see me. I can only control how I show up, right? And.
I’m going to give you guys an example to put it into perspective. So we have Leila who is at a workshop. So she signs up for a weekend workshop because she’s genuinely excited about the topic. So she walks in, sits down and the facilitator asks everyone to introduce themselves. And immediately her heart starts racing. She’s like, what if I sound awkward? What if they think I’m trying too hard? What if I say too much?
and when it’s her turn she keeps it as short as possible. Hi, I’m Layla. That’s it, done. Like she doesn’t say anything else. And then throughout the day she has ideas that she wants to share but every time she goes to put her hand up she puts it right back down.
And then she will laugh a little bit quieter than she normally would, which is something that I actually do. But that’s because I actually laugh crazily loud this actually, I don’t even know. But anyway, yeah, so she stops herself from asking questions. At lunch, she notices that another girl is sitting on her own and then she thinks to herself, hmm.
She seems really nice, maybe I should go over and speak to her. Instead, what does she do? She stays on her phone and scrolls on it until the break is over. She leaves the workshop thinking, it was alright, but on the journey home she feels a little disappointed. And it wasn’t because the workshop wasn’t good, but it’s because she never actually let herself experience it.
In this situation, it-
looks like that Leila is just quiet, right? But I feel like what’s actually happening is she’s constantly managing how she’s being perceived. She’s just avoiding herself from being seen or being perceived in a certain way. And every decision she makes is filtered through questions like, will they think I’m weird? Will they think I’m annoying? Or will they think I’m speaking too much? Am I trying too hard?
She’s spending so much energy trying to avoid being seen in the wrong way that she isn’t actually showing people who she is.
Somewhere down the line, one day she overhears someone from the workshop describing her. Imagine, they’re like, she’s really quiet. Another person says, yeah, and she’s really hard to get to know. And then she has that like stomach drop feeling because…
She knows that deep down that’s not even her. She knows that she’s quite funny. She’s curious. She has loads of thoughts and…
She loves connecting with people, like she loves to get to know people, but she didn’t allow anyone to get that version of her, to see that version of her. And the irony is
She spent so long trying to avoid being perceived negatively that she gave people a chance to perceive her
but not the real version of her.
And you see, people are still going to perceive you even when you don’t want to be perceived. So the thing you’re trying to control, how much control do you really have over it? Imagine if Layla went to another workshop later and she’s still nervous, she still worries about what people think, but before she goes in, she reminds herself, okay, cool, people are going to perceive me regardless.
My job isn’t to control how they perceive me. My job is just to show up as myself. So this time she’s gonna ask questions. She’s gonna laugh how she laughs or introduce herself instead of waiting for someone else. And at lunch she goes and she speaks to someone. And she might say, you know, like, hey, you mind if I sit here? And maybe they become friends. Maybe they don’t.
Maybe someone still thinks she’s quiet, maybe someone thinks she’s confident, maybe someone doesn’t even click with her at all. She has no idea, but for the first time she leaves feeling proud not because everyone liked her, but because she allows herself to fully experience even if it meant that she’s gonna be perceived.
And that’s the valuable thing. The thing to take away here is that
We spend so much time trying to control how other people see us or so much time scared that people are going to see us in a way that we don’t want to be seen. But we can still make that effort and still not be seen the way that we want to be, still be mischaracterized or we can get rewarded for it. Some people will see us the way that we want to be seen, but everyone filters things and
makes decisions based on them, their way of seeing things, their experiences with you, the things that they’ve heard, their way of thinking. And so although I can control this person, maybe this person have thought of me the way that I wanted them to, it’s harder than make the next person think like that because they have a different feeling or a different way of thinking. Or even me just avoiding being seen in general, I’m still being seen some type of way.
I can’t control that. So if you’re spending all of that energy and you’re still not getting the results that you want, you might as well just leave it. You might as well just turn up as your authentic self because people are going to see you regardless. And I know it sounds easier than said than done.
But I think it’s something that we should all work towards because it’s just energy that we’re spending on something that it’s just wasted energy essentially because we’re trying to get to something that we know we have no control over. And one thing that I want to point out is I know that a lot of the time when people speak about separation of tasks,
and this kind of thing of like not my monkey, not my circus Yeah, that’s the saying People sometimes think it’s selfish and I absolutely get where people are coming from. I think sometimes it can promote this idea of individualistic culture and each man for themselves, not caring about others or trying to…
help and think of others, I understand why people think of that and…
I think
When it comes to separations of task, it is only selfish if you make it that way. If you operate from a place of, I don’t care about anyone else, anyone else is not my business. I don’t agree with that. I think we live on an earth that we share together. So it’s important that we think about each other because this is not my earth alone. It’s not your earth alone. We live together. So we need to think about each other. Separating.
Tasks to me. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do good for people or you can’t be kind to people It’s just that you do it without trying to control the outcome, right? For example, I might pay someone a compliment I might say my gosh, you look really pretty today My my intention is to spread that love and hopefully you make that person feel good, right?
But that doesn’t guarantee that that person’s gonna feel good or that doesn’t guarantee that I’m gonna get the outcome that I want. So they might not smile. They might not even say thank you. They might actually look at me like I’m crazy, right? And it’s like, but that’s not my task. My task was to spread that energy to pay the compliment, to try to make the person feel good about themselves. And usually when you pay someone a compliment,
It does have a good outcome, but it doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean that is guaranteed. And that is a part that you can’t control. Removing yourself from how it is that they react. Don’t attach yourself to the thing that you’re trying to do. If I go to someone and I try to help someone and they don’t appreciate it or they think they still think bad of me, they still think like this, that’s when
You have to sit there and ask yourself, wait, whose task am I taking on right now?
I did the nice thing, I knew where my heart was at and I can be content at myself for it because I did what I had control over and I knew my intentions behind it and I knew the energy that I was trying to spread. How that person then reacts to it, I leave that to you. I leave that to them because a lot of us were taking on the task of them. We’re not thinking about what we did but we’re looking for the reaction of what we get out of it, which I understand because
If you do compliment someone, if you do help someone, you do want the recognition, you do want someone to tell you thank you. I’m not saying that we’re bad for that, but at the same time, it’s just important to remember that we can’t have control over that outcome. So we need to learn to separate ourselves from it, especially as people pleasers. Because when we do it, when we do things, a lot of the time we’re looking for that reaction out of someone.
We want someone to validate us from giving that compliment, from doing that help. But then sit there and say, you actually sat there and helped someone. You actually sat there and paid someone a compliment. You validate yourself because you actually did the thing. Their reaction has nothing to do with you. It shouldn’t be that we are attaching ourselves to their reaction. When you actually deep it, we’re looking for
how they feel to make us feel good rather than what we did to make us feel good.
And I think another thing that a lot of people speak about when it comes to, you know, getting rid of people pleasing or whatever it is, and the fear of being perceived is about being the villain and being okay being the villain. It is not cool to be the villain. I don’t think it’s cool to actually want to try to be a villain in somebody else’s life. I believe that is so low.
and why would you go out of your way to try and make someone’s life a misery? Right? And sometimes we take that and we’re like, we try to glamorise being the bad guy or being a bad person. I don’t think anyone should strive to actually step on somebody’s toes and make their life more difficult for themselves. It’s not a cool thing and it’s not something to be proud of. However, with that being said,
There are going to be moments where, unfortunately, you are going to be the bad person in someone else’s story, but it shouldn’t be because you have actively gone out of your way to make someone else miserable.
sometimes it’s just that a decision you make and a choice you make is not going to sit right with someone else and in that sense you have to be okay with people not always agreeing with you and being the person that’s might actually cause a bit of I Don’t want to say turmoil but a bit of like
in someone’s life. So for example, what I mean by this is, let’s say I go to a restaurant, because this has happened to me before. I go to a restaurant and someone gets, and I go to the, I order, I take my order, whatever, go to a restaurant, yada yada, get my order and they’ve got my order wrong, right?
I would feel bad to go to the waitress and be like, hey, I actually ordered this instead because it’s like, I don’t want to be a hindrance to you. might be busy. You might have so many things to do. And me sitting here telling you you got my order wrong means you have to go back, change the order, probably, I don’t know, throw the food away, da da. I didn’t want to be like that, especially because I had kind of worked in hospitality, whatever you want to call it. And I knew that sometimes it could just be like, inconvenient.
I never personally got angry, I’m trying to think at that, if I got something wrong, especially if the customer wasn’t mean about it. But I understand how it can just be frustrating. So I would feel bad. I wouldn’t want to tell them. However, that is your order. What are you going to eat? And also you paid for that. So.
realistically I should speak up about it and as a recovering people pleaser now I will speak up about it I would say to the waiter hey like I ordered a da da da da da but this is what I got could I get my da da da of course being respectful with it and I think that’s the thing there’s ways of approaching it not like you got my order wrong and being mean you don’t need to be
mean you don’t need to go out of your way to cause misery to someone else. It’s not cool, it’s not cute. But at the same time you do need to speak up for yourself
Just so that you’re not being trampled over, essentially. And yeah, but it’s just important to get, to have that balance of understanding that, okay, look, if I do tell the waiter, they might get annoyed, but I’m gonna be, I’m gonna say it. I’m not gonna be mean about it, but I’m just gonna say it. And how they take it is how they take it. But at the end of the day, I actually need my food because I paid for this. You know, and not.
going out of your way to actually be the mean guy.
And yeah, sometimes it’s hard to get that balance, especially when like some people, you might need to be a bit more firm with some people in certain scenarios. And I feel like that’s a whole nother thing within itself. But when it comes down to those situations, it’s important for us to sit here and reflect like, have I actually done something wrong? Or am I just uncomfortable with someone not liking my decision? Sometimes.
unfortunately people are not going to like our decisions and I think that’s something that Alhamdulillah I’ve been able to kind of like that’s something that I’ve been working on a lot recently being okay with people not liking my decisions and it’s been soo hard
And there’s certain areas now where it’s it’s easy as heck. I’m not gonna lie, like, cool, you might look at me like that, but I couldn’t care less, because…
I just don’t care. But then there’s some people who mean a lot more to me. And I care a lot more. And I’m like eek. But at the same time I’m not actively trying to go out of my way to step on anyone’s toes. I don’t want to make anyone angry but at the same time like…
Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, guys. It’s just, that’s just how is. That’s just how life is and not everyone is gonna get their way and sometimes people are gonna do things that we might not like and we’re gonna do things that people don’t like and that’s gonna happen. That’s just how life is. We’re all different, but.
Trying to actually be the mean guy and the bad guy in someone’s life is not cool. Like it’s just loser behaviour. Don’t think any of us should strive to be that. And I hate that people are pushing being a B-I-T-C-H and being a villain. Like that stuff is not cute. But I get where they’re coming from and I get the positioning of it. Don’t let people take you for a fool.
Anyway, but yeah, so after the course, after I had the course and I actually sat down and I realised, wait, I am actually scared of being perceived after, what’s the word?
A string? I don’t know what is a string. A series of events, that’s it. Like a series of events that happened that led me to realise, okay, I’m actually scared of being perceived. I made a promise to myself that from now on, I am going to make the effort to be comfortable with being perceived. And so I was like, okay, next time.
when I have the option to make a contribution towards something I’m going to make it and next time I go out I’m gonna do something that I wouldn’t usually do so for example sometimes I laugh really loud and I will cover my mouth after I laugh maybe I just don’t cover my mouth or maybe I contribute one time or maybe I ask a question you know and just do Nike rather than overthink before I
say something or just get to know someone.
that’s what I said that I’m gonna do. So I don’t really have any social setting or any social outings right now set. So I don’t know when I’m gonna do that. But when the time comes, I will inshallah.
I want one reflection question that I actually have for you guys and is one that I had to sit with and I asked myself was what am I scared is going to happen if people perceive me differently to the way I want to be perceived?
And when I went through it, I realised like, so I was like, okay, cool. I’m scared that people are gonna look at me funny. And then I was like, okay, so what?
now they’re not gonna wanna speak to me. Okay, so what? I was like, then we’re not gonna speak. Okay, so what now?
I know, I have one less person that I talk to. So what? That’s just a person that isn’t for me. That means that there’s space for someone else who is for me. If I sat there and I adjusted myself. so that I could be
cool with this person or so that this person could perceive me the way I wanted to be, I would be friends with someone who was friends with a fake version of myself. So all I’m actually doing is narrowing down to have real authentic people around me.
Sometimes we don’t really ask ourselves so what so what so what so I want you guys to sit down and just when you ask that question of what am I scared is gonna happen if I’m not perceived the way I want to be perceived keep asking yourself so what so what so what and what and eventually get to a point where it’s like yeah
So what? Just like Miss Dennis told me, If you didn’t listen to my episode on International Women’s Day, powerful thing, because when you think so what, and you keep so what in yourself, and you get to the bottom of it, you’re like, it was never really that deep. It’s crazy. But, yeah.
And then one more reflection question is, how would I show up if I wasn’t trying to manage everyone else’s opinion of me?
sit with that.
because
Actually, I’m not gonna talk too much, but sit with that.
Maybe.
People aren’t the thing that’s stopping us. Maybe it’s the story we’ve attached to being perceived. You’ll always be loved by someone. You’ll always be judged by someone.
what if peace came from asking, am I proud of showing up? Or am I proud of how I showed up instead of what did everyone else think of me? I want you guys to know and I want you guys to remember that overcoming this fear of being perceived or people pleasing, whatever you want to call it, isn’t something that’s going to change overnight. It’s a hard wiring that we’ve had.
And like I said earlier on, it’s something that’s probably kept us safe from moments before in our life. And also our brains wiring of wanting to be kept in a tribe and be safe in terms of survival. So it’s not something that we’re gonna change and wake up and it’s like, hey, I’m not a people pleaser anymore. Opportunities are gonna come up where it’s like we can avoid people pleasing or we can, this is my chance to.
speak up for myself or ask a question or say the thing that I was scared to say, those opportunities are going to come up and not every day you’re going to take it. And we might get up and be frustrated at it, but we have to remember our brain is trying to work to save us. So we need to work together to teach our brain that it is okay and to not be hard on ourselves.
But when those opportunities come up, practice, we can practice our fear of being seen. And it’s not gonna be easy because I have, trust me, it’s not. Even me working on this journey is, Honestly, but slowly and slowly and slowly you become okay with it. That’s why now there’s sometimes when I’m perceived, I really couldn’t give a flying fudge cream.
But there’s other times where I am perceived and I’m like, no, I don’t like it. I don’t want to be here like, ugh, you know.
But we have to remember…
that if one time we mess up it’s ok
ay next time we come back we bounce strong we we give ourselves grace because we can’t sit here and be like i didn’t do that this time i’m so annoyed maybe we can just look at it and understand our block but remember confidence isn’t about controlling them it’s not about falling into this trap of even if i do show up here it’s funny yay they’re gonna see me as funny no it’s
about surviving that, it’s about not caring what they think. I’m gonna show up as me, if they find me funny, great, if they don’t, then cool. You know, every time you choose authenticity over perception, you’re teaching your brain that you are safe, that constant repetition, that constant learning. It’s like my episode on the fear of getting it wrong when I spoke about classical conditioning, which is basically…
learning by association
so associating authenticity with safety and constantly repeating that and constantly teaching yourself that hey if I show up as myself I am safe you will eventually be okay with being yourself I don’t think it’s something that we’re gonna get over tomorrow though it’s not something that we’re gonna wake up tomorrow and be like hey
But it’s a journey and it’s a journey that I’ve committed to and I think you should commit to too. Remember, there’s so many women who have done it before. There’s so many women who have mentioned that there were people pleasers before the like of the wizard Liz. I don’t know, bare people online. I’ve seen that like, you know, I was a people pleaser before and they speak about how they overcome it. But I don’t think it was an overnight thing. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think a lot of them have like a hundred percent overcome it. But.
It’s a learning curve, right? Every day we’re learning up and we’re getting better. But if another woman can do it, then we can do it too. And I want you to remember that. But thank you guys so much for listening to me. And I hope that you have seen yourself in the mirror or if you resonated with it again.
Thank you for listening. love you. And remember that the goal isn’t to stop being perceived. The goal is to become comfortable being perceived. I’ll see you guys next week. I love you guys so much. And yeah, bye.
