Shadé Zahrai

They enjoy making people happy.

This is what the trait of agreeableness is.

It's one of the big five personality traits.

Right.

And that's a really positive thing.

Yeah.

When we then ask people, okay, well, what about people pleasing?

When someone is so afraid of rejection that they end up becoming a people pleaser, we get other traits or other characteristics like saying yes when you mean no, prioritizing the needs of everyone else and ignoring what you need.

bending over backwards to make sure other people are happy, and then sacrificing yourself.

So it's this idea of agreeableness on steroids, and it becomes really damaging.

It's called sociotropy, where we have this compulsive need for people to be okay with us.

Because if they like us and accept us, then we can like us and accept ourselves too.

And that relates to the first attribute of acceptance.

The risk with that is that what we see is people end up living lives not for themselves, but to make everyone else happy, which means they never get to determine what is it that I truly want?

What is it that I truly believe?

what kind of life do I want to be leading?

And then they end up empty because they're so emotionally burnt out from making sure everyone else is happy and sacrificing their opinions and their desires that they end up a shell of a person.

Not only that, they end up living a very small life.

Because we know that risk-taking requires putting yourself out there and not knowing how things will go.

There is always a risk that someone will disapprove, that you won't do well, that you'll fail.