How to Stop People Pleasing Without Becoming Cold

I had flown many times before I really heard it. The plane was on its way to London, the flight attendants were showing the usual safety routine, and then came the sentence I had somehow missed on every flight until then: parents travelling with children, put your own oxygen mask on first. I remember smiling to myself. Of course. A mother who has fainted cannot help her child. And yet in everyday life most of us do exactly the opposite, and we call it love.

For a long time I lived the life other people thought I should live. On paper I had everything: a family that supported me, the job I had wanted, friends, a home, a doctorate in progress. And yet I woke up many mornings without the will to get out of bed, sad and anxious, sensing that life had to be something more. It took me years to see that I had been doing what was normal, expected and acceptable, rather than what was mine. Later, in the months before I decided to divorce, I saw the cost even more clearly. I wasn't much fun to be around, and my child noticed. How could I be a good mother in that state? I couldn't. A good friend, a good daughter, a good colleague? I couldn't either, because there was simply nothing left of me to give. That is the quiet truth about people pleasing: it looks like generosity, but it slowly empties the very person everyone depends on.

In my book Courage on the Journey of Happiness, this is the very first of twelve challenges, because every other change begins here, with the permission to take yourself seriously.

What is people pleasing?

People pleasing is the habit of regularly putting other people's wishes, moods and approval ahead of your own needs, not out of free choice, but because disappointing someone feels unbearable. The key word is regularly. Every caring person sometimes gives more than they receive. A people pleaser does it automatically, even when it hurts, and then feels resentful, exhausted or invisible.

Signs you're a people pleaser

You might recognise yourself in a few of these:

• you say yes before you have even checked whether you want to
• you apologise for things that aren't your fault
• you replay conversations for days, wondering whether someone is upset with you
• you feel guilty when you rest, and anxious when someone is unhappy with you
• you know everyone else's needs better than your own

Why am I such a people pleaser?

Nobody is born a people pleaser. We learn it, usually early and usually for good reasons. As children, many of us discovered that being good, quiet and helpful was the safest way to be loved. Some of us grew up with parents who, without meaning to, made us responsible for their happiness: if you do that, I'll be sad. The culture we live in shapes us too. In more collectivist societies, like the one I grew up in, putting the group before yourself is praised, and a woman who puts herself first is quickly called selfish.

So if you are a people pleaser, there is nothing wrong with you. You learned a strategy that once kept you safe; you are simply still using it in a life where it no longer serves you. And if your people pleasing is tied to painful experiences that still overwhelm you, please don't walk that road alone: a qualified therapist can help in ways no article can.

Healthy selfishness is not the opposite of kindness

Most people pleasers are terrified of one word: selfish. I was too. I had heard it from people close to me many times, often at the very moments I was putting their needs before my own. It took me years to understand the difference between being selfish and being responsible. Taking care of yourself so that you have something to give is responsible. It is the oxygen mask.

Real, unhealthy selfishness looks different. It is the person who makes you responsible for their mood, who blackmails you emotionally, who says how can you be happy when I'm not. When you start setting gentle boundaries, notice who reacts most strongly. Very often it is not the people who love you, but the people who benefited from your lack of boundaries.

When we accept the thing we didn't want, we give up the thing we wanted.

What happiness research says about giving yourself away

As an economist who has spent many years studying happiness, I find it reassuring that research says almost the same thing as the oxygen mask. In 2018 a team of psychologists combined 100 studies with more than 26,000 people¹. Caring for others was linked to better relationships, but to greater personal well-being only when it came with some concern for yourself. Care with no room left for your own needs, which the authors call unmitigated, was not. Twenty years earlier, psychologists Vicki Helgeson and Heidi Fritz had linked this focus on others to the exclusion of the self to psychological distress².

Other research points the same way. Self-determination theory names autonomy, the sense that your life is your own, as a basic psychological need, alongside competence and relatedness; when these needs are thwarted, motivation and well-being suffer³. And in my own field, the World Happiness Report counts freedom to make life choices among the six factors that help explain why life satisfaction differs between countries⁴.

Sometimes people pleasing is very small and very concrete. In one experiment, students who scored higher on people pleasing took more sweets when a fellow participant, in fact an actor, took some first and offered them the bowl⁵. If a bowl of sweets can do that, imagine what a request from your mother, your partner or your boss can do.

How to stop people pleasing: eight gentle steps

You don't stop people pleasing with one brave conversation. You stop it the way you learned it: through many small moments, repeated until they feel natural. These are the steps I use myself.

1. Notice the yes that hurts. Before your mind finds the words, you often feel it first: a tight throat, a sinking stomach, a quick breath. That is your inner no. For one week, don't change anything, just notice it.
2. Buy yourself time. People pleasers answer too fast. Practise one sentence: “Let me check and get back to you.” A pause is not rude. It is the space where your own choice can appear.
3. Ask what this yes will cost you. Every yes is also a no to something else: your rest, your family, your work, your joy. Name the price before you pay it.
4. Write a not-to-do list. This is one of the first exercises in my book. We all keep endless to-do lists, but almost nobody writes down what they will stop doing. Write a few things you no longer want to say yes to, keep the list where you can see it, and add to it as you go.
5. Start with small no's. Don't begin with your mother or your boss. Begin with the extra task, the call you don't want to take, the second slice of cake. Each small refusal shows you that nothing terrible happens.
6. Say no without a long explanation. “Thank you for thinking of me, but I can't this time.” The longer the explanation, the more it sounds like you are asking for permission.
7. Let guilt be uncomfortable, not decisive. Guilt will come. It doesn't mean you did something wrong; often it only means you did something new. Feel it, breathe, and let it pass without going back on your decision.
8. Put your oxygen mask on every day. Give yourself at least a little time each day that belongs only to you. Not as a reward for being productive, but as the ground everything else stands on.

How to stop being a people pleaser but still be nice

This is the question I hear most often, and it hides a fear: if I stop pleasing, will people still like me? Here is what I have seen again and again, in my own life and in the lives of the women I work with. When you stop pleasing, you don't become less kind. You become more honest, and honesty makes kindness believable. The relationships that are real survive and usually deepen. The ones that only worked because you disappeared may change, and that is painful, but it is also information.

At work, it can mean saying “I can do this by Friday, or the other project by Wednesday, which matters more?” instead of quietly doing both until midnight. In relationships, it can mean saying “I'd love to see you, but tonight I need a quiet evening” and trusting that a loving partner can hear that.

Changing a habit you have lived with for decades takes practice, time and, ideally, people around you who are walking the same path. It is no accident that one of the three parts of my programme Permission for Life is called Selfish. But it starts here, with one honest moment of noticing. You are allowed to put your own oxygen mask on first. The people who love you will breathe easier too.