Hello, my loves. Today, we’re going to talk about how people-pleasing is killing your fucking confidence.

So people-pleasers, sit down and listen up. If you think your people-pleasing tendencies have nothing to do with your confidence, you’re about to get your world rocked.

Once Upon a Time…

In my experience, people often look at me and see someone who’s very confident.

I can be quite engaging on video. I’m pretty open, opinionated, unapologetic, all those things. It’s very easy to see someone like me and think, “Well, you’re just like that. You’ve always been that way.”

That’s not the case. As a matter of fact, I actually was a people-pleaser once upon a time.

I know it’s hard to believe because people don’t see me that way, but I truly was a people-pleaser. In my relationships (both romantic and otherwise) my needs were never important. I wouldn’t even ask for my needs to be met—in fact, I barely even knew I had needs.

If you were to ask me back then to tell you what I needed, or even what I wanted, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it. But when it came to other people and their needs, I was ready to fulfill them however they needed.

Not only that, but I couldn’t set boundaries. Not on my time, not on my body, not on anything. I felt so guilty about saying no, I just did not have boundaries at all. I would overstay at events. I would go to lunch with people that I didn’t really want to go to lunch with. I would kiss after the first date even if my entire body was screaming that I didn’t want it. You name it, I did it.

Overexpression Leads to Disconnection

Because I was once a people-pleaser, I am intimately aware of how it fucks with your confidence…even if you don’t think it does.

Could you be a people-pleaser and still be confident? Maybe. But I have not personally seen that.

When you have deeply ingrained people-pleasing tendencies, habits, behaviors, and wounds, you stop asking for things that you want. Because your ego is so attached to being seen as anything but selfish, arrogant, heartless,s cold, unloving, unkind, etc. that you swing as far as you can the other way.

This is what we call an overexpression in shadow work. You don’t want to be seen as selfish, so you overexpress the part of you that is continuously giving. And because you’ve swung so far that way, you stop taking up space. You stop voicing your opinion. You stop asking for what you need.

In fact, I would actually be as bold as to say that you don’t even know what the fuck you need.

I see this a lot with clients. When they’re talking to me about their sexuality and their sex life with their partner, I’ll say, “Well, what would you like more of?” And they respond with, “I don’t even know.”

That’s how fucking disconnected they have become from their needs. And when you don’t know what you want and you don’t know what you need, you fucking settle for what you are given. 

You could apply that to relationships. You could apply that to sex. You could apply that to your business. You could apply that to your career. You could apply that to your fitness. You could apply it to any area of your life. When you don’t know what you want and you don’t know what you need, you will settle for what you are given. And you might not even realize that you deserve so much more.

The Chameleon Crisis

Another way people-pleasing fucks with your confidence is through something we call “chameleoning.”

When you walk into a room and your underlying concern is, “How do I get people to like me?” you will try to chameleon yourself into whatever person these other people will like.

I used to do this when I was dating back in the day. I didn’t realize it, but I was listening for cues of what they wanted in a partner, what they wanted in a girlfriend, what they wanted in a date, and then I would chameleon myself to be that thing.

My mom always said I would be an excellent actress. I was very good at putting on this persona and leading with this mask of, “I’ll be whatever you want me to be as long as I’m getting recognition, praise, love, affection, belonging, safety, validation, attention, etcetera.”

The problem is, that’s not sustainable. You can do it for a while, but then three months, six months, nine months in…you simply can’t maintain that persona anymore. You can’t maintain that false mask. So it drops away, and the real you comes out…and then what happens?

The other person is like, “Um, who the fuck is this?” because…hey, you just became a complete other person.

Then all your stuff around rejection and abandonment comes up. “See, this is why I can’t be my true self. This is why I’m so insecure about who I am, because nobody likes the real me.”

Babe, it’s not that nobody likes the real you. It’s that nobody knows the real you, because you don’t fucking know the real you.

You’re too busy chameleoning yourself to be what you perceive other people want you to be. You have no idea who tf you are.

It’s not that they don’t like the real you. It’s that you presented a false narrative about who you were, and when that fell away, they went, “This is not what I signed up for.”

But when we are brave enough and confident enough to fully fucking be ourselves from day one, that doesn’t happen.

How to Reclaim Our Confidence

So how do we shift from chronic chameleon to confident?

By taking fucking action.

It’s all well and good for you to read this and go, Oh my God, this is amazing. It’s so true.” But if you don’t actually take action on any of the shit that I’m telling you, it’s not going to do shit for you.

My signature confidence program, Main Character Energy, is designed in a very specific way for this reason. I wrestled with myself for fucking years on how to actually be confident, and in the end, it took actually being brave enough to take action.

If you had looked at me from the outside in back then, you would’ve said, “She’s very confident.” I was a stripper for eleven years. I got on social media. I started my own company. But there was still deep insecurity that was happening there.

And so I studied myself. I observed myself. I put myself in situations to challenge my courage. And through that, I found the secret to actually creating embodied confidence—

not just knowledge, but wisdom—and  I put it together in this program because I was like, “Okay, this is too good. People need to know this.”

What I found is that people are really fucking good at consuming and not very good at implementing. 

People will consume all the books, all the podcasts, all the blogs, etc., but they won’t do jack shit with any of that information. Instead, they keep looping the exact same fucking patterns for years and years and years, and they’re like, “Oh my god, nothing’s working.”

Well, you’re not actually doing the work. You’re not actually trying. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not.

I had to have that conversation with myself, actually. I was whining and crying about how I kept looping the same patterns and I just feel so out of control, and it wasn’t until I took radical responsibility for my shit that my life started to rapidly change.

Money started pouring in. I got into the relationship that I’m in now. My friendships transformed. Everything shifted.

So my question to you is…how much longer are you going to make your insecurities everybody else’s problem?

Things have happened in the past that have fucked with your confidence and created insecurities. Those didn’t come from you. I have no doubt about that. I’m the same; I have had experiences that to someone else may seem like nothing, but to me, they really fucking shook me.

But I still had to really get honest with myself. I had to sit down and say, “Michelle, how much longer are you going to make your insecurities someone else’s fault?”

I may not have created the wound, but I’m responsible for fucking healing it.  And so are you.

So, if you are ready to actually create lasting change in your life so you can actually create embodied confidence—so you can have the business of your dreams, have the relationship of your dreams,  get on top of your man and fuck his brains out with the lights on, whatever it is for you—then come join me in Main Character Energy.  I’ll see you there.

WORK WITH MICHELLE: 

Join The EXPERIENCE, a year-long mentorship for the woman who wants to play in the frequency of big love, epic sex and mind-blowing relationships with men…and herself: https://michellepanning.com/the-experience 

Join MAIN CHARACTER ENERGY, a 6-week course on becoming the main character of your life and stepping into delusional confidence: https://michellepanning.com/main-character-energy

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michellepanning

Website: http://www.michellepanning.com