People Pleasing
By Lian Brook-Tyler
For many years, I believed I wasn’t a people pleaser, a rare breed – especially as a woman, and there’s some truth in that…
As warm and charming as people often say I am, I’m crystal clear on what I am and am not available for, and I will express that lovingly, directly and unashamedly.
It rarely even crosses my mind to do something that doesn’t feel right for me. In Gretchen Rubin’s 4 Tendencies, I’m a Questioner, which simply put, means I meet my inner expectations, rather than the expectations of others.
My inner expectations are arrived at via questioning, once focused around logic, these days by listening to my soul and my guides first, logic comes later and only when relevant, sometimes not at all.
What I wasn’t seeing when I thought I was free of people pleasing was how much those inner expectations were being created from parts of me hidden deep in shadow.
And you bet those parts wanted to please people.
I was subconsciously compelled by the need to control myself and others, to get approval and security… in short, to please people so I was allowed to stay in the tribe and therefore survive.
There was an unseen filter in my being through which so much of my choices, especially those around my expression, were being strained through.
It had to be unseen so it could do its work.
Its work was ensuring that I wasn’t seen as the odd one, the one who loves too fully, the one who rhapsodises about the gifts in others, the one who knows, hears and sees things that make no rational sense, the intense one, the one whose mind is so open (in Human Design, I have an open Head and Ajna, with no defined gates) that judgement and separation don’t come easily, the one who floats around in a daze, dreaming about terrifyingly beautiful things that have no discernible purpose.
But if you’ve witnessed my journey over the past ten years, I suspect you’ll have seen me as the one that my shadow was so fearful of you seeing.
As I’ve been shining the light of Love on that shadow, the mesh on that filter has been widening, more of me is being allowed through.
An enormous opening occurred during a shamanic healing at the beginning of this year, an integration of all the work and the initiations of the past few years.
At this point, I don’t think there’s much of the filter left – the very fact I’m able to write about it like this suggests that. But the thing about shadow is we can’t see it… so who knows?
For now, I’m celebrating being the most full and true expression of my soul I’ve ever been.
I might not please you… that’s OK… I love you and me anyway.
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