Assumptions About People-Pleasing

Most of us wrongly assume that people-pleasing behavior proves we’re generous. But when you think about it, always trying to please people isn’t a selfless act. It’s actually quite self-centered. It assumes that everyone cares about your every move. It also assumes you have the power to control how other people feel.

If you’re constantly doing things to make others happy and you don’t think they are appreciative of your efforts, you’ll soon experience resentment. Thoughts such as I do so much for you, but you don’t do anything for me will creep in and ultimately hurt your relationships.

Truths About People-Pleasing

• Worrying about trying to please everyone is a waste of time.
• People-pleasers are easily manipulated.
• It’s okay for other people to feel angry or disappointed.
• You can’t please everyone.

When Someone Asks You To Do Something, Ask Yourself These Questions Before Responding

• Is this something I want to do?
• What will I have to give up by doing this?
• What will I gain by doing this?
• How will I feel if I do it?

Live True To Yourself

Dying people often say they wished they had live a more authentic life. Instead of dressing, acting, and speaking in a manner that was pleasing to others, they wished they’d been more true to themselves.

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success
Amy Morin

 

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Amy Morin
. Amy Morin, LCSW
. Forbes Blog
. Psychology Today

Amy Morin is a psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and international bestselling author. She’s a highly sought after keynote speaker who gave one of the most popular TEDx talks of all time.

Morin’s books, 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do and 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do, have been translated into more than 30 languages. She’s a columnist for Inc., Forbes, and Psychology Today and her articles on mental strength reach more than 2 million readers each month.

Books written by Amy Morin include:

• 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do: Raising Self-Assured Children and Training Their Brains for a Life of Happiness, Meaning, and Success
• 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do: Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success
• 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Don’t Do: Own Your Power, Channel Your Confidence, and Find Your Authentic Voice for a Life of Meaning and Joy

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The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong – Amy Morin

We are at a crossroads: So many people say they have no time to talk, really talk, but all the time in the world, day and night, to connect. When a moment of boredom arises, we have become accustomed to making it go away by searching for something – sometimes anything – on our phones. The next step is to take the same moment and respond by searching within ourselves. To do this, we have to cultivate the self as a resource. Beginning with the capacity for solitude.

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
Sherry Turkle

 

 

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Sherry Turkle
born 1948

. MIT profile
. Sherry Turkle (her website)
. Wikipedia

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Turkle is the founder (2001) and current director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She obtained a BA in Social Studies and later a Ph.D. in Sociology and Personality Psychology at Harvard University.

Turkle now focuses her research on psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. She has written several books focusing on the psychology of human relationships with technology, especially in the realm of how people relate to computational objects.

Books written by Sherry Turkle include:

• Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
• Evocative Objects: Things We Think With (MIT Press)
• Falling for Science: Objects in Mind
• Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age
• Simulation and Its Discontents (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)
• The Inner History of Devices (MIT Press)

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Connected, but alone? – TED Talk by Sherry Turkle

Houdini’s fear of being imitated – his need to be unique, unprecedented, unthinkable – was matched by his desire not to imitate himself too much. He was a tireless inventor of things that might defeat him, of traps that could kill him. And all these stunts, as he called them – the word itself meaning a performance, a feat, an event – had that kind of uncanny symbolic resonance that made him an irresistible spectacle, a unique draw in a newly emerging and ever more powerful entertainment industry (Houdini would eventually start his own Film Development Corporation).

Houdini was determinedly and calculatingly a spirit of the age, but by using a vocabulary of familiar cultural objects – chests, trunks, beds, locks, ice (for freezing and preserving food) – he seemed to speak the strange language they seemed to encode, as though the drama of the age was claustrophobia, of the confinement created by new kinds of freedom.

The magic was to escape without damaging the locks, without even chipping the ice. It could all be done without violence, everything would seem the same. The grand illusion was that nothing had changed – neither Houdini nor his box – but everything was different. It was literally a revolution – a radical and irreversible reordering, and a repetition of the same thing unmodified, without apparent struggle. It was magic, an art form in which success was the concealment of difficulty, and the difficulty was deception.

Houdini’s Box: The Art of Escape
Adam Phillips

Background on Adam Phillips

 

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Harry Houdini
1874-1926

Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss) was a Hungarian born American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the US and then as “Harry Handcuff Houdini” on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can with water in it.

Houdini died, at age 52, of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix.