Have you ever battled with people pleasing? Honestly, I didn’t fully realize that I was a people pleaser until someone posed the blog prompt to me about whether or not I was. Although I don’t think people pleasing is a main motivator for me, I quickly could reference a few situations in my life where I absolutely let what people would think of me, trap me.
What? Did you not really realize that fretting about what people would think of you and making decisions accordingly makes you a people pleaser? Yea, I had the same forehead smacker realization! OF COURSE that means I’m trying to please people. OF COURSE that means I’m running my life and making decisions (or at least I have at times) based on pleasing the crowd and those I respect as opposed to just following my heart.
As Y’all know, I guest blog over at Impact Women and so I figured I’d share here what I wrote over there, recently, about this very battle…
I was an actor for about fifteen years. I stepped onto the stage as an eight-year-old and never wanted to step off. I majored in performance in college and even studied at Oxford, England, in an exclusive summer program.
I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. UNTIL I DIDN’T ANYMORE.
When I reached my early twenties and discovered that for one, pursuit of theater in the professional world was going to cost me a lot – morally, spiritually, financially, and personally. Secondly, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to be a mom. I began to realize that I would likely be required to choose which dream I wanted most.
There was no choice. I wanted the family.
But how could I leave what I had pursued for so long? How could I just give up? I could handle my own questions, but what I couldn’t handle, what kept me trapped for years was this one question…
WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?
Check out the rest of the story right here…
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