I was a people pleaser until I read this ...

A few years ago I'm sat there at the table in the coffee shop looking at the woman across from me.

She had dark hair and green eyes. She was a knockout.

But I couldn't shake the thought that she was way out of my league.

She was laughing at my jokes and making long eye contact. I had hope. Maybe she was into me.

We left the coffee shop and I walked her to the station.

We hugged for a while and she kissed me on the cheek.

The hope increased.

But it didn't last long.

I messaged her the following day and got a reply that no man would be happy with.

She said: "Hey, I had a really great time but I don't really see anything romantic between us. You're a really nice guy though!"

I didn't want to be a nice guy.

I wanted to be the guy she wanted. But I wasn't.

The truth was she was right.

On the date, I was too nice and too friendly.

I was too nervous and ended up friend-zoning myself.

I was so afraid of her not liking me, I ended up hiding who I really was.

I had worked on my nice guy syndrome up to this point, but it shows how much of a long-term game this is.

Healing is not linear and sometimes you'll be put in a situation that throws you right back into your people-pleasing ways.

So I went back to the drawing board which for me usually means a lot of writing and reading.

And I came across a book that completely changed my life.

After reading it, it instantly became one of the 100 books that I will reread multiple times across the course of my life.

It's a book called The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitaki Koga.

And in the book, there are a bunch of key insights to help you become somebody who doesn't give too many fucks what other people think about him.

This gives you the kind of inner freedom that makes life amazing.

The first insight is probably the most important and it's something you can shift right away.

One of the biggest issues that makes us a people-pleaser is that we assume too much responsibility for the emotions of other people.

This makes you anxious and inauthentic because you're essentially bending over backwards to try to control something that is never in your control to begin with.

But the feelings of other people are in your control right? No, the emotions of another person arise from that person's perceptions, beliefs and experiences.

None of these things have anything to do with you.

If you said the same thing in the same way to 100 people you would get a hundred different reactions.

And if you're a people pleaser ... you'd feel personally responsible for all of them.

This is like going on a really long journey with 100 people and trying to carry all of their luggage as well as your own.

To overcome this, the author's recommend something called the separation of tasks.

This is where you get pretty ruthless about clarifying what luggage belongs to you and what luggage belongs to other people.

Your luggage is what you say and do. Everyone else's luggage is how they react to it.

Drop all of the luggage right now and give it back to other people. Don't pick up other people's luggage.

Not only will this tire you out, it also makes other people weaker.

Focus on your own luggage. It's heavy enough.

As a side note, I love this phrase an ex-girlfriend from Romania told me when it comes to keeping your own baggage ...

"Not my circus, not my monkeys."

This brings me to the next insight that challenged me to the very core of my being and nearly gave me an existential crisis.

But it's an insight that every one of us needs to realise if we are ever going to be happy.

When I say this to you, pay attention to what your reaction is. The more strongly you react to these words, the more of a people-pleaser you are.

Ready? Here it is.

You don't exist to satisfy the expectations of other people.

The problem with being a people pleaser is that by trying to meet the expectations of everyone else, you end up living a life that isn't yours.

I know this might sound like a radical idea, but the only person's expectations you should be meeting are your own.

You don't exist to please your parents, the people at work, your boss, your girlfriend. Not anybody.

This is your life. It's your path. And you get to decide what kind of life that is and what makes you happy.

Prioritise your own happiness and let everything else fall away.

The problem with this is that people pleasers will often assume that this automatically means you're being selfish and will instantly annoy everyone around you.

But this is people pleasing programming speaking.

The truth is, by prioritising your own happiness, you come online. If you can actually find happiness within yourself, that spreads to other people in a much more powerful way than if you ran around trying to please everybody.

The world doesn't need more people pleasers.

The world needs more people who have realised how to be happy in themselves.

But let's be honest ... If you've been a people pleaser for a long time like I was, this isn't easy.

There's something people pleasers fundamentally lack ... And that's courage.

Changing and editing yourself as a way of trying to control the reactions of other people is your comfort zone.

• Being nice is your comfort zone.

• Never sharing anything that's polarising or potentially upsetting is your comfort zone.

• Agreeing with everybody constantly is your comfort zone.

This comfort zone is comfortable but it's killing you.

If we want to stop being a nice guy people pleaser we need to learn how to be more courageous.

We need to, has the title suggests, actually develop the courage to be disliked by people.

And we do that by valuing courage itself.

When I started approaching women, the one thing that kept me going in the face of overwhelming rejection is the fear of seeing myself as a coward.

I didn't care how an approach would go, as long as I actually did it.

Courage became my compass.

If something scared me, it's sign that I should do it

But why value courage at all? Because life exists on the other side of your fears .. and without courage, you will never experience life fully.

This isn't just about people-pleasing anymore. It’s about life.

• A great relationship with an amazing woman lies on the other side of your fear of approaching women and being vulnerable.

• A higher income lies on the other side of your fear of failure, success and responsibility.

• A lifestyle of freedom lies on the other side of your fear of uncertainty.

All of these things require courage.

One thing that requires courage is the inner work to heal the root cause of your challenging behaviours (procrastination, self-sabotage, addictions etc).

But to do the inner work requires guidance.

Journaling is one part of it.

The other is using the power of your imagination to connect with the root causes of your issues, so you can release them.

This has been life-changing for me. But it’s hard to do without guidance.

To help you get started as a beginner, I have created the perfect 6-part guided audio series to help you heal, process and release the inner blocks holding you back.

You can learn more about it here.

(warning: don’t do this if you aren’t in a stable place … it genuinely shakes your life up).

Stay courageous,

OC