#884 - Nick Pollard - How To Stop Being Such A People Pleaser

In The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale says there is no problem or obstacle you can’t overcome with faith and a positive mindset. This self-help classic outlines the practical techniques of applied Christianity to help you take control of the events in your life rather than be directed by them.

Norman Vincent Peale was a Reformed minister who served as the pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City from 1932-1984. He was also an influential author and public speaker, largely because of The Power of Positive Thinking's success.

In this guide, we’ll organize Peale’s lessons into three categories: Faith (underlying beliefs), Positive Thinking (mindset), and Practices (good habits and practical techniques). We'll also compare and contrast Peale’s Christianity-based ideas with those found in other schools of thought, both religious and secular. Additionally, we’ll examine ways to put Peale’s suggestions into practice, regardless of your personal faith (or lack of it).

There’s a reason that countless books have been written on the topic of self-esteem. How you feel about yourself has a massive impact on the quality of your life, and raising your self-esteem can radically reshape both your internal and external worlds. That said, it’s easy to understand that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, but actually raising your self-esteem can seem impossible. How can you think highly of yourself if you truly believe, at your core, that you’re inadequate?

To answer this question, we’ve brought together the advice of many experts from the worlds of psychology and self-help, including Brené Brown, Nathaniel Branden, and Mark Manson. You’ll learn about the specific destructive patterns low self-esteem can create in your life, as well as five habits you can practice every day to raise your self-esteem.

In Codependent No More, Melody Beattie explores codependency and how it affects people’s lives. A self-help classic and the book that inspired codependency 12 Step Programs around the country, Codependent No More provides explanations, advice, and compassion for people struggling with codependency.

In this guide, we’ll explore Beattie’s main principles, including detachment, self-care, and personal responsibility. We’ll compare Beattie’s ideas with other relationship perspectives, such as the positive view of attachment presented in Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. Finally, we’ll supplement Beattie’s advice with that of modern psychologists and self-help experts, providing concrete steps for you to start living for yourself again.

Many women feel barred from advancing their careers but can’t identify the barriers holding them back. In How Women Rise, Sally Helgesen and Marshall Goldsmith argue that these barriers seem invisible because they’re the result of women’s overly self-critical mindset—the product of their desire to meet the rigid gender expectations placed on them by society and to avoid the backlash that occurs when they don’t. This mindset causes most women to develop at least one of 12 common habits that limit their professional success. To break free of these self-inflicted limitations, women must recognize and deconstruct their detrimental thoughts and behaviors.

In this guide, we’ve reorganized Helgesen and Goldsmith’s 12 limiting habits into four main thought patterns. The guide will explain these patterns, the detrimental behaviors they cause, and how to overcome them. In our commentary, we’ll share advice and perspectives from other sources on women’s success, such as Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg and The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman.

Have you ever found yourself saying yes when you really meant no? Or perhaps you've noticed the weight of unspoken resentment while agreeing to something that you don’t want to do…again? If these scenarios strike a chord, you're not alone. In Not Nice, psychologist Aziz Gazipura critiques our cultural fixation on niceness, suggesting that both individuals and society would benefit from being less nice. Gazipura aims to free people from the trap of constant people-pleasing and empower them to build meaningful connections, all while maintaining a healthy focus on their own well-being and needs.

In this guide, we’ll explain how Gazipura defines “nice” and why he believes being nice is such a problem. We’ll go into more detail about what nice looks like in action and outline how you can stop being nice in your personal and professional life. We’ll also add to Gazipura’s argument by exploring how culture and gender shape our understanding of niceness and explain how it’s possible to stop being nice while still being kind.

In Set Boundaries, Find Peace, therapist Nedra Glover Tawwab details how you can transform your relationships by learning to set healthy boundaries, which are standards for how you’d like to be treated. Tawwab explains where your boundaries come from and offers strategies for identifying and communicating your boundaries in a variety of situations.

In our guide, we’ll first focus on defining what healthy boundaries look like. Then, we’ll offer a step-by-step process you can follow to identify, communicate, and reinforce your boundaries. We’ll focus on a few types of relationships in which many people struggle to set boundaries. Finally, we’ll discuss the ways others may violate your boundaries, offering suggestions for how you can respond when violations occur. We’ll also compare Tawwab’s work to other psychological approaches to relationships, as well as offer more tools you can use to set healthy boundaries.

In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson argues that we are frustrated in life and feel like failures because we value and prioritize the wrong things, thanks in part to society’s emphasis on positive thinking, over-involved parents, and our susceptibility to superficial social media messages. This leads us to pursue emotional highs that don’t lead to lasting happiness.

The solutions are counterintuitive and include: be wrong, fail, tolerate feeling bad, accept pain, practice rejection. Because we can’t care equally about everything, we need to prioritize and focus on what brings us happiness and meaning. In other words, we need to carefully choose what we give our f*cks about.

The book draws from several established philosophies (Stoicism, Existentialism, and Buddhism), and we’ll expand and clarify the book’s messages by tracing their origins to these schools of thought. We’ll also explore some of the psychology behind what motivates people’s decisions, and why we’re driven to give so many f*cks about so many unimportant things.

You probably know someone who regularly blows things out of proportion, or who insists on having the same argument over and over, or constantly tries to one-up other people. According to Dr. Eric Berne, a pioneering psychiatrist who broke away from the Freudian tradition, those are just two of the games that people play in work, love, sex, and friendship.

Games People Play is Berne’s 1964 classic about the many ways that we habitually relate to one another through “games.” These aren’t fun, harmless social games, though—they’re subtle, largely unconscious patterns that harm us and our relationships. Berne explains how most of us don’t even notice our games, and how we’re missing out on the fulfillment of game-free living.

In our guide, we’ll explore the foundations of Berne’s theory and build up to an extensive discussion of games, before finishing with his strategies for growing into a fuller way of living. We’ve also added psychological perspectives from Freud to modern-day and updated Berne’s ideas.

There’s a reason that countless books have been written on the topic of self-esteem. How you feel about yourself has a massive impact on the quality of your life, and raising your self-esteem can radically reshape both your internal and external worlds. That said, it’s easy to understand that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, but actually raising your self-esteem can seem impossible. How can you think highly of yourself if you truly believe, at your core, that you’re inadequate?

To answer this question, we’ve brought together the advice of many experts from the worlds of psychology and self-help, including Brené Brown, Nathaniel Branden, and Mark Manson. You’ll learn about the specific destructive patterns low self-esteem can create in your life, as well as five habits you can practice every day to raise your self-esteem.