What is behind our desire to be liked by everyone? You will find a person striving so hard for everyone to love or like them. They will do everything. Go above and beyond all in the name of wanting to be liked. They will even go as far as masking their good acts in the ‘kindness’ act but all they intend to do is have everyone like them.
If people are to like you, you don’t have to try too hard. They will like you blind, dumb, stupid, brilliant, serious…they will like you because they like you and you’re you. You won’t have to change a thing about yourself to be liked. I am not promoting bad manners.
Work on your bad character for you with the intention to become a better person not just for you but also the people that love you. That said, people will like whoever they want to like not because of what they’ve done for them but because it is what they have chosen to do.
Take an example of a very quarrelsome woman who finds love in a very calm man, who loves her to death. Her character is nowhere near perfect neither is his but he loves her to death because he chose to love her and that’s why he’s with her despite the numerous women out there. This is why I say, you don’t have to do anything to be liked, you just have to be you.
Back to what lies behind our inherent desire to be liked. I have heard time and again that people-pleasers end up never pleasing anyone. They try to please everyone and end up pleasing no one, hurting those who actually love them for them terribly.
People-pleasing has no win-win situation. There isn’t a side of the story where the people-pleaser comes out as the winner. In all, those you kill yourself for, that don’t love you for you, wonder utmost why you don’t expend your energies on people who actually appreciate you.
You surprise them but since most human beings are selfish, they will keep taking from you until they leave you high and dry one day when you’re spent and useless. Then you’ll drag your battered body back to those who actually care for you.
Behind a people-pleaser’s desire to be liked by everyone lies a huge ego that carries the assumption of ‘I cannot be disliked by everyone because I am too good to be disliked.’ You feel you have achieved goodness high above the faulty nature of the human race. You feel you’ve come above the ability to err and in there lies your error.
Now see, I’m a bible reader and I know of that scripture in Romans that urges us to ‘make sure we are at peace with everyone’. Being at peace with everyone does not in any way suggest that you at the expense of your well-being spread yourself thin for everyone and forget those that matter most to you.
If we are to reference a family structure, before a family person minds everyone else, they are meant to mind their immediate family. Go above and beyond for them. People-pleasers tend to fail this part highly. Everyone around them sings their praises except for their immediate family.
Why? They are so focused on being liked by everyone, they forget to like those who like them. So what if the world sings your praises?
If you were not mindful of those who were your responsibility to mind, those that needed you the most, those meant to be a priority to you, then you have failed in your attempt of being good. You have failed in your goal of being liked by everyone. You have failed yourself.
Calm your ego down. Train it to understand that you cannot be liked by everyone. You are not everyone’s cup of tea. Accept it. Deal with it. Pride tends to come before a fall. You are bound for great doom if you don’t tame your insatiable ego.
