I’m a people pleaser. I always have been. And I think, though certainly to different degrees, we all are. We want to make someone proud, happy or perhaps impressed. We want to be admired, looked up to and respected. We crave an image of ourselves and we work hard to paint it. Who we are trying to please, I think, varies greatly. The ‘people pleasers’ are those trying to make everyone happy. Of course this is impossible. And of course making people happy is not a bad thing. In fact, causing happiness is one of the greatest and most rewarding acts of love.
We can often achieve our own happiness as a direct result of doing good for others. That’s an incredible quality that we possess; the desire to serve, give to and take care of other people. Making people happy is an honorable act, but not necessarily an honorable way to live. Eventually we have to pick and choose who to please. We either make firm choices about our words and our actions or we dangerously straddle the line between what we are afraid to say and what someone wants to hear. We live by others’ convictions instead of our own. We act by what is expected of us and not by what we expect of ourselves. At what point are we simply a portrait that someone else has painted?
Who’s painting the portrait of our life?
It’s such a simple and cliche thing to say ‘be yourself’. It also seems unnecessary. I honestly believe we all get up every single day and do just that. We are ourselves. We can’t help it. But for some reason we seem to try and hide who we are. We spend a good deal of time editing ourselves; our decisions, our words, our actions. We alter and change the picture of ourselves that we show to the world and we let the opinions of others determine what the final image looks like. I think it’s important we learn how to make people happy without compromising our own values. I don’t want to be sculpted by the world. I want to paint my own portrait.