Are you a people pleaser? Do you try your hardest to do for others only to feel that you’re never good enough? Are you waiting for the people who you try so hard to please to change and accept you as you are and set you free from their mental grip? Does the thought of self-care make you feel selfish and uncomfortable? If you answered yes to any of these questions you could be missing out on your own life and life is too short and too precious to put on hold.

If you continue to desperately try to earn their approval while the very act eats away at your core, you’ll learn maybe too late that you’ve wasted a portion of your life that you can never reclaim. Trying to please others is fine if you are doing it as a nice gesture and the recipient isn’t expecting it. Trying to please those who expect it isn’t healthy for you because you will learn as time goes by that if you accomplish to please someone, it will be short-lived leaving you back at the beginning trying to please them again; ultimately trying to make them happy. The long and short of it, we cannot make anyone happy, their happiness is up to them and our happiness is up to us; our happiness should never ride on the coattails of other’s happiness.

Finally letting go and allowing yourself to live your life as others you’ve been trying so hard to please have allowed themselves to live theirs isn’t an easy thing to do. You will go through several emotions including feelings of selfishness, maybe even worthlessness, that it’s not okay, fear, sadness, anger, frustration, loneliness, and a number of other unexpected feelings but that is part of the healing process and hopefully they will soon be followed by peacefulness, calm, joy and fulfillment.

Decide that your life is worth living now not later and that you deserve to live life just as these people who you work so hard to please do. There are no guarantees that we will have later just as there are no guarantees that we can make anyone happy. Make small changes and do it at your own comfortable pace. Acknowledge your feelings and face them. Use a support system, a friend, a group, a relative, a spouse; get support from someone who sees you as you are and can be. Accept that you are not perfect because nobody is perfect and that is exactly as it should be. Expect from yourself what you expect for yourself when you try to please others.

Just because you choose to live your life instead of putting it on hold doesn’t make you a bad person, selfish or careless. While it’s extremely difficult to let go of what others might think of you it’s something you must do in order to survive in a healthy state of being. It’s time to let go of your dependency of making others happy and just be. Imagine living your life on your terms just as others around you do – what a level of peace that brings!

Live ~ Love ~ Laugh ~ Be