When was the last time you felt the need for external validation to feel good about yourself?
Nice question. Do me a favor and drop a link when you're done with the post so I can read it. People pleasing is a trait or character people have which is born from self doubt and a lack of confidence. People pleasers tend to do whatever they have to in order to get the approval of others even when it is entirely unnecessary. There are lots of people pleasers in the world but the thing is, every now and then, everyone tends to find themselves looking for someone else's approval so they can feel better about themselves. I'll use myself as a prime example.
Due to certain events I'd rather not talk about, I found myself floating through life, trying to define who I was. I had lost a crucial component of myself and because of it, I saw myself as less than I really was. I began to care more about what people thought of me and as a result I began to try my best to make them approve of me. Rather I tried to make myself approvable by them. I was a people pleaser through and through. I guess I can say I'm a lucky person because I didn't stay in that phase for very long. A month or two at most. I have a strange sense of self awareness so whenever I start doing something strange, after a while, I realize myself and try to change. I realized that all the things I was doing in the least bit necessary and that I wasn't doing them for myself, I was doing them for others. I realized that if I wanted to change, I'd have to rediscover myself and find out who I really was and what I really wanted to be in life. Not what others expected me to be. It took a while but at a point, I knew myself and I stopped trying to please everybody. And in doing so I learned a very crucial lesson. People pleasers don't do what they do because they want other's approval. They do it because they don't approve of themselves. They are not okay with who they are so they try to change themselves and do what they have to to be different. And once other people start to approve of what they've become, they try to stay like that because they think its the right thing to do.
As I said earlier, it isn't just people with inner turmoil that are people pleasers. We all are. Each and every person experiences that moment of weakness where we feel like we aren't enough so we go outside to try and validate what we should already know. We all have a little self doubt sometimes and this feeling is the gateway to people pleasing. The only difference between us and the others is that the feeling only lasts a short while for us while the permanent people pleasers go through it everyday.
I encourage every person that knows a people pleaser to try helping them discover and appreciate themselves. If you've ever been one then you'll know that even with the approval you crave so much, you still aren't completely happy. I don't wish that upon anyone and so I beg everyone, help someone who has this problem find their self-confidence again.