Embracing the Inner Pleaser

I used to hear my mom say that time goes faster the older you get, and now I get it. I can’t believe that another year is soon passing. I know it is cliche, but I love New Year’s because it feels like a do-over, a chance to change your ways overnight, and to be all the wonderful things you have wanted to be and failed over the past 365 days, times how many years you’ve been around. I am like everyone, past New Year’s have come with a resolve to lose weight, cut back on alcohol and sugar, workout, be more patient. In previous years, I’ve wanted to undo or change all of those things about me that I used to think mattered most.

I want this new year to be less about me and my challenges and more about helping people find solutions to theirs. I am a pleaser, and I am going to say it loud and say it proud. Over the past couple of decades, being a pleaser has become a derogatory name. It has the connotation that wanting to please other people, be kind, worry about how others feel, help other people out, is negative and somehow makes you “less than” or weak. 

But, It isn’t that I want to please people because I don’t know how to stand up for myself. I want to please people because it is human to feel good when you help others. Empathy is actually the thing that separates us from animals, so I am not sure why having more, makes someone less?

Many have asked me how I do it. How I keep going, put a smile on my face, roll with stuff, survive. Some even think that I am in denial, or I am somehow just ignoring all that is wrong and all the responsibilities, problems, hurdles I have in life. 

They are wrong. 

I am keenly aware of the hiccups, and they are many, all the time, I just choose to look at them differently. Like when someone says “getting old sucks” I instantly think “it’s better than the alternative,” I see life through rose colored glasses and I wouldn’t trade it. 

Rose colored glasses don’t hurt you, they help you see beauty even when it is hard to see.

Seeing beauty amid the ugly is not something that I was taught. It wasn’t something I learned through roll modeling, I didn’t take a class on it, I didn’t even know that that is how I conducted my life until I starting examining my past and realized that I made it specifically because God, or whatever spiritual beliefs you believe in, gave me what I needed. 

I used to hate the phrase “God only gives you what you can handle” because it sounded like God likes to hand out misfortune and piles it on until you can’t take anymore. I have come to realize that the phrase is meant in reverse. God gives you what you need so that you can handle what you are given. There is a big difference in the two. I was given the gift of rose colored glasses so that I could survive, even enjoy in spite of, the many losses, times of suffrage, and hardships faced. 

Therefore, yes, I might be a pleaser, but I am okay with me. 

I used to run from the label of “being a pleaser” thinking that I wasn’t a woman of convictions, that I was a pushover, that I didn’t respect or value myself. None of those apply to me. 

Pleasers understand that without the concern and care of others, what they think, and helping to make sure people are cared for, the world would be a terribly horrible, cold, callous, and ugly place. It would be a world we would all wear clear glasses and nothing else. 

I know I have not been always fortunate in life, but fortunately, I am a pleaser, optimistic, and I choose to put on my rose colored spectacles daily, and even more so prominently during the dark times in life. 

I will keep the extra couple of pounds and accept all the parts of me that I used to think mattered, they don’t. This New Year, I am going to make about embracing and celebrating the pleaser in me by resolving to help those in my community first, and then hopefully, everywhere.