Glimmerick

In various areas of my life, I feel pressured to please everyone. In my house, I often feel that I must act in a way as to not offend anyone. As you can imagine living with over 20 guys, this can pose a problem.  Or if you work somewhere where there are a large number of employees, it can become increasingly difficult to act in a way in which no one goes home pouting or plotting revenge. TIME talks about this and how it relates to our current president, George Bush.

The problem is this: Our society can wrongly pressure people into believing that gaining the approval everyone is more than desirable, but in fact is a necessity.

You may be under this “spell” if you frequently:

1. Feel uncomfortable because people that you don’t like, don’t like you
2. Act out of character to please people; saying/doing things you normally wouldn’t
3. Take the fall for someone even though it was their bad (Sometimes this can be very courageous, but when one does this too much, it sets that person up to be walked all over by others)
4. Change appearance or dress to please certain people

This can create quite the problem when we act in a way that may violate our inner morals or principles. After doing one of the previous mentioned items, we may now feel guilty, empty, etc.  The easiest way to deal with this problem is to accept that you will not be like by everyone. Just use politics as an example. If you are pro-choice, you will be supported by many, and also hated by many. This is the same for being pro-life.  The problem that arises from trying to please everyone can be many. If you try to compromise your values to please someone, the people that used to like you may not like you as much as they did before. If a life long pro-life person compromises their values by voting for a pro-choice bill, they may be berated by fellow “pro-choicers” as being inconsistent in their principles. This can cause many trust related issues.

If you strive to please people, please those that you already value: Family members, good friends, etc. It is usually important to maintain strong relationships with these people.  Family members and close friends people should not require you act in a way that would force you to compromise your values. In most cases, it is never worth it to deviate from your values in order to try to impress someone. Over at We Have Always Dont It That Way, they point out that, “You can’t be everything to everyone.”

A relevant thought to ponder during the day, “When we try to please everyone, we end up pleasing no one.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.