Pleasure Can Turn Into Our Failure

Try to close your eyes and imagine the Neverland. Here is Wendy, the girl who in the story takes care of the characters that populate that fantasy world, the one who is able to do what Peter Pan does not have the courage, who takes risks and takes responsibility, trying to please everyone, but always remaining in the background. Open your eyes again… it reminds you of something, doesn’t it?

This metaphor helps us reflect on the fact that we often try to please others by forgetting about ourselves and what we really want. It is almost customary to answer “yes” to seemingly unavoidable proposals, such as having a coffee with an acquaintance when you don’t feel like it, or to much more relevant requests such as marriage, to undertake a specific course of study or have a child.

We opt for the path that seems easier in the short term, the one by which we will avoid a conflict, neglecting our desires. We prefer to pay this price, rather than run into an argument or an extra worry, in our days when stress already reigns. Yet, we actually contribute to underestimating the price we will be paying in the long run due to these concessions.

We are afraid to say “no” and we choose to please, both so as not to feel rejected or extraneous to the group and not to disappoint our neighbor… But what happens inside us? Who we are? In truth, what really matters is not the origin of these accommodating attitudes, but what happens in us to activate an attitude of total inertia.

An irrational belief: I need love and approval

The founder of rational emotional therapy, the psychologist Alber Ellis, talks about eleven common irrational beliefs that infect and cancel any other thought or emotion present in our mind, transforming the horizon into a dark place and leaving room for a feeling of slight discomfort.

Among the above beliefs is the following: “I must always have the approval and love of all people whom I consider important or significant “. This conviction can be found, to varying degrees, in almost all of us, and it is what leads us to want to please other people.

This is an irrational belief, as it is impossible to be accepted by everyone.  Living with the need to receive everyone’s approval, we will spend our time worrying about being accepted or not, intent on capturing the level of satisfaction others feel towards us.

It is unreal to think that everyone likes you.  Furthermore, wanting to be approved by anyone requires such a great effort that it would lead us to neglect our personal needs.

A rational way to deal with this belief is to root out the excessive need for approval or love. In this sense, it is more appropriate to seek approval for one’s actions and behavior rather than for oneself.

How are the people they want to please

A complacent person is a person who tends to give satisfaction or pleasure to another; those who manifest the inclination, more or less constant, to fulfill the wishes of others despite this entail a high price for them.

The term complacent, however, often takes on a negative connotation since it implies that those who constantly yield to the requests of others become unable to assert their position and defend their interests, to the point of consenting to the preferences of others at the expense of their own. Some typical characteristics of complacent people are the following:

• Perfectionism. Wanting to do everything perfectly makes people more prone to feel guilty when things don’t go their way, especially when someone else’s satisfaction is at stake. A complacent person tends to be a perfectionist, without realizing that a sense of frustration derives from this attitude.

• It feels fundamental. A person who continually pleases others does so to feel fundamental,  so that the people around him depend on him – in this way he feels accepted, respected, loved.
• Love as a sacrifice. She believes that love is sacrifice and resigns herself to living loving and family relationships that make her feel a sense of discomfort, accepting it as a normal consequence in any relationship or relationship of love towards another person.

• Avoid conflicts. Trying to please constantly means avoiding conflicts. In fact, a complacent person avoids any discussion, gives reason to others and apologizes for anything in order to be accepted.

• Sacrifice his happiness for that of others. She comes to sacrifice herself to the point that she no longer knows how to distinguish what makes her truly happy, because she always thinks about what would make others happy. She does not express her feelings and closes in on herself so much that she stops having her own ideas and communicating them.