In the arena of life, major life decisions, business directions, even entire government policies get centred on what we believe others think about us, and how we want others to see ourselves. The result of people-pleasing—basing our actions and decisions upon the feelings, emotions, opinions, judgments and approval of others—is a reactive philosophy towards life. A good example of people-pleasing is using a basic idea of honesty, "telling the truth," in order to serve our own narrow-minded interests. We wind up treating honesty as if it were nothing more than an unending supply of Facebook content. At the extreme, too much honesty isn’t necessarily a good thing. In a tell-all mindset, we ultimately hand over our lives, gauge our responses, make our decisions and actions according to what we believe others want to hear or find out. In doing so, we ultimately hand over to others what agency we ultimately have over our decisions. Like perfectionism, people pleasing takes the “truth” we have in mind and presents it in a 2D, surface way, so that we are constantly guarding our failures, errors, mistakes, limitations and screw ups. Rather than “telling the truth,” focus more on BEING TRUTH—following through with your commitments, standing behind your promises, and keeping your word.
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