🪩 "I am no longer allowing praise to be my currency."
On People-Pleasing by Jamie Varon
Hi friends! Today I’m delighted to bring you a guest post from one of my very first blogosphere friends, Jamie Varon. We met through Twitter in 2008, and I have loved following her writing and design career ever since.
Jamie writes one of my favorite newsletters, sent every Friday, and this edition on people-pleasing was so powerful I asked if I could share it here on Doh (otherwise they’re not posted publicly). She is also the author of Radically Content and gorgeous journal, and her debut novel, Main Character Energy.
If you enjoy this post, you’ll also love ’s book, The Joy of Saying No.1 And if you’re reading in email, it may be truncated due to length; click here to see the full post »
So, I’ve been starving out my tendency toward people-pleasing lately. Well, “lately” seems like I only just discovered I have this inclination, but in fact I’ve been trying to become less of a people pleaser for a long time now. Except, I have only recently discovered the true breadth of its harm in my life and, especially, in my career.
People pleasing seems so innocuous, doesn’t it? Well, what’s wrong with people being pleased with you? That sounds nice!
It becomes a lot more damaging when you become a contortionist, trying to bend enough that people are always pleased with you.
I have this thing where I really like to impress people. It’s a little parlor trick that switches on automatically.
I used to do it with my therapists. I wanted the gold star. I do it with anyone I consider to be in an authority position. I attempt to be easygoing, fully aware that nobody likes a demanding, bossy woman so I better wrap up my requests sandwiched between compliments and effusive declarations of trust on their behalf.
I get a little kick out of the sparkle in their eyes, reflecting off of my charm and self-awareness. I make them laugh. I make light of my needs. I am the mirrorball, deflecting.
I was talking to my sister-in-law last night, and something she thought was going through for her company might not be moving forward. We were bemoaning over it, validating the very real disappointment that was present, but also affirming that it was all happening in her highest good. I told her that it’s a mark of authenticity to attract what's best for you like she always does and to repel what isn't.
When you don’t people-please, you have the benefit of repellant energy.
When you don’t people-please, you also have the benefit of receptive energy.
What’s meant for you comes right in. What's meant to go, leaves.
But if you people please, it gets murky. You might try to force what's meant to leave, to stay. You might be abandoning your true self in order to appease someone else, to get the sparkle in their eye to land on you by any means necessary. You end up in a swirl of confusion, trying to fight for things that might need to be released, and being unreceptive to what wants to effortlessly magnetize to you.
When you are repelling, you aren’t people pleasing, because the entire function of people pleasing is to make sure nothing actually repels from you. Nobody misunderstands you. Nobody says a bad word against you. Nobody dislikes you. Nobody thinks poorly of you.
The whole point is to control how you are perceived by others.
And damn, let me tell you—that is one slippery f*cking slope.
If you are prone to people pleasing, it means you are committed to being whatever someone wants you to be. It’s a precarious position, because every slight against you—every repellant—feels personal. If you are that concerned with being liked, being disliked feels like the end of the world. It can knock you out of your connection with yourself quicker than anything.
Somehow, through doing all the ego work I’ve been doing, my people-pleasing tendencies have diminished significantly. It's like I got to the root of it, that constant, desperate need to be liked and perceived as amiable and grateful and a pleasure to work with.
I always notice when I’ve upleveled because a series of situations arise in order to test whether I have or not. They usually come in threes.
This week, the tests arrived, and I didn't even realize I had been starving out people-pleasing from my life. I was busy working on my ego and creating within me an unflappable self-belief, but somehow that tendency toward people-pleasing got kicked out as well.
The ego, intent on controlling everything, loves the people pleaser. They are best friends, as it turns out. They rely on each other.
But, shining the light on my ego means I am no longer allowing praise to be my currency. This has been my weak spot for so long—that aching need for recognition. I have taken “ego boosts” as payment too many times. And when your ego wants validation and is insatiable in its pursuit of it, people-pleasing comes right alongside it.
So, this week brought forth my tests.
Test 1
On Goodreads, I have filters set up so if I go to look at my book, it only shows me 5 star reviews. Still, I hardly ever look, but for some reason, I was compelled earlier this week. The filter didn’t work so the first thing I saw was a 1 star review calling Main Character Energy “probably the worst book I read in 2023.”
Now, you might be feeling sad for me, because a few months ago I would have felt sad for me, too. Instead, I laughed. It truly and completely did not affect me. I still think it's funny, because then right under it was a 5-star review effusively complimenting it. So, what can you do? I can’t believe the praise and I can't believe the critiques. All I can ever rely on is my own self-belief.
Did I love writing that novel? Yes. Am I proud of it? Yes. The end. That’s all that matters. Trying to appease the fickleness of the public and how myself and my books are received is so futile you might be considered insane if you try to do it. So, you must throw your hands up and laugh. How one book can be the worst book someone has read and another person’s most favorite book ever defies logic, but it is what it is. You have to be able to withstand the illogical when it comes to creative pursuits.
Test 2
One of my Threads about Bridgerton went ridiculously viral and ended up on both Twitter and Reddit. I got a notification for the Bridgerton forum on Reddit (I’m not a member, but Reddit knows me) and when I clicked on it, I saw my own Thread there. It had a lot of engagement. Thousands of comments and upvotes.
Normally a situation like this would send me into total overdrive, monitoring what everyone is saying. I saw that some people agreed with my take and some people vehemently didn't and I just closed the app and shrugged my shoulders and went on with my day.
I’m sorry, what? I was so shocked by my non-reaction. I am not unfamiliar to going viral and having lots of opinions spewed my way and it has always sent me out of balance and caused me to lose sleep, having imaginary arguments with strangers on the internet in my head. But this absolutely did not even affect me. At all. I was like, cool, I guess this started a good conversation. And that was that.
Test 3
I went for a meeting yesterday in West Hollywood and it was the kind of meeting my ego would have eaten up in the past. Cool offices, movie posters on the wall, a very LA type of situation that I always thought I wasn't good enough for. But, I didn’t feel any nervousness. Didn’t feel out of place. It all felt entirely normal to me now.
I had a good meeting with someone who gave me a lot of nice compliments, a lot of praise, a lot of “you’re about to skyrocket” and “I see where you're going so clearly” and “you're on the right track.” And while I was definitely flattered, I left feeling… deflated? I just… didn’t care about this praise. Didn’t need it.
In fact, I was a little saddened by it. I felt grief that this no longer sustains me. I don’t want “maybes” and “you’re going somewhere”—I want things to be happening. I want reality to match up with all this praise I used to crave so much.
It was maybe the first time ever in my life where I wasn’t sky-high in my head about what a fancy person in a position of power was saying to me. It was cool, destabilizing, and I think ultimately—freeing.
Maybe this is all too niche for you to relate to. I don’t know.
For me, it all feels revelatory. It feels like I have had a stretch of months where my ego hasn't been running the show anymore, where I am pleasing myself now instead of trying to please everyone else.
I have spent so much of my life unknowingly addicted to ego boosts, craving the feeling of being picked and chosen. The thing is, you have to pick and choose yourself.
That is the work.
The work is not achieving enough so you don’t have to do the work of building your self-worth.
You cannot believe in yourself because someone else believes in you.
You cannot construct your identity based on other people's opinions and perceptions of you.
You cannot please your way into an authentic life.
You cannot magnetize what is perfectly meant for you if you’re not willing to repel what isn't (meaning: if you're not willing to be rejected, disliked, misunderstood).
My work this year has been existing in the quiet and building that self-belief into something impenetrable and unconditional. If nothing is happening, I believe in myself. If everything is happening, I believe in myself.
My self-worth is no longer a negotiation.
It has never been outside of me. I have never been able to do enough, because that is the whole point. Doing enough is not the answer. It never was. When you're going in the wrong direction, it doesn't matter how far you walk. You're still going in the wrong direction.
I know something incredible is on the other side of this… almost numb feeling. When you have to starve something out of your life, you grieve the absence of it. I used to be so sustained by praise I forgot to need anything else. I could build a bridge on someone's praise until I got the next hit, and build a bridge off of that.
I sense absence. And I miss something I know isn’t good for me.
For now, I sit with the absence. I allow emptiness, knowing that eventually something stronger, more magical, more tailor-made for me, more true is going to come right in and fill me up.
My work is only to be patient, to not grasp for what is familiar as I'm traversing the in-between. I want what's on the other side of the ego and the people pleasing and the grasping need for praise.
I want that foundation more than I want the comfort of known pain.
Just knowing I want that is enough for now.
Love,
Jamie
Hi Jenny, I love this post and can relate as a recovering People Pleaser myself, and as a therapist who works with many a People Pleaser. Your intention to not allow praise to be your currency anymore is so important, I think! I was literally just talking to a client last week about this. I have seen clients who are so attached to external validation, that it can literally be the factor that keeps them going in a job that they really don't like in and of itself. Also, if you're ever interested, I was interviewed about People Pleasing for an online magazine. Let me know if you want the link (no pressure!).
Nodded along to all of this. I had a realisation a few weeks back that due to the absence of attention, affection, approval, love and validation for just existing, one of the key ways my people pleasing showed up in my work was inadvertently being reliant on the praise and validation I’ve received. It was so subtle yet insidious and led to overgiving and a fear of being more vocal about money and then endangering the praise and validation. There was also the recognition that people pleasing makes you take things personally, so when, despite all your overgiving, people don’t buy something without your explicitly having to ask or even after you make it clear, it feels wounding and rejecting. So then you go back to doing the stuff that gets praise but doesn’t necessarily generate income. Messy shit!