With Dr Pedram Shojai
NY Times Best Selling author and film maker. Taoist Abbot and Qigong master. Husband and dad. I’m here to help you find your way and be healthy and happy. I don’t want to be your guru…just someone who’ll help point the way. If you’re looking for a real person who’s done the work, I’m your guy. I can light the path and walk along it with you but can’t walk for you.
Welcome to a special solo episode of our podcast. Today, we’re diving deep into a crucial topic that affects many of our lives: people-pleasing and setting healthy boundaries. This focused, in-depth exploration is part of our new format, where we’ll be dedicating entire episodes to key issues that matter to you.
Expect more of these concentrated, insightful discussions in the future as we tackle important subjects one by one. Now, let’s jump into today’s topic with Dr. Pedram Shojai, the Urban Monk, as he shares valuable insights on breaking free from people-pleasing tendencies.
Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform and check out the Urban Monk Academy here.
Podcast transcript:
Welcome back Dr. Pedram Shojai the urban monk. Here’s a little excerpt from question, answer session. I did with my urban monk academy folks, all about people pleasers. So I’m reading the questions from my audience and then responding. And, um, this is kind of the side camera. That’s recording it on the side, but I wanted to give you a little sampler. Of some of the material, because so many people I know out there have boundary issues. So I wanted to make sure this material got out into the wild, so hopefully it could help you.
This is why you have a constant need to tell people yes, because you’re a people pleaser, which is most likely a product of your past trauma.
But the good thing about this is that you can fix it. Here’s what I recommend,
the reason why most people feel like they have to say yes to others is because of poor boundaries. We want people to like us. We want them to feel like we’re going to play along with them and that lack of boundaries destroys our lives.
And when it comes to past bad experiences, because we were hurt, because we were shamed, because we were ridiculed, we don’t want that to happen, and so we end up becoming the people pleaser never to have that experience again.
So what are the signs that someone’s saying yes too much because something had happened in the past? Just look for the patterns.
Look for repeated patterns of boundaries being broken and that right there will show you the wound in the past that you’re trying to cover up repeatedly.
So how can being too eager to please hurt someone? Because we’re enabling them. We’re enabling whatever it is that they need to get out of this scenario, that what they need to get out of this, uh, situation because they’re also fishing for the compliments and love outside of themselves.
So you’re playing into their control dramas. So what’s the first step to stop being a people pleaser? Is awareness. Pure and simple. What am I doing right now? Check in with yourself and say, Oh, am I doing that thing that I always do? And whatever’s going on in that moment, just stop, take a deep breath and smile and realize you don’t need to go down that path.
So what are simple exercises for someone to say no more often? Stop and breathe before any yes. You got to catch yourself right when you’re about to say yes to something and just stop and think about it. It takes a little bit of time to build up the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that enables us to say no, the negation of impulses.
Uh, how do I recommend people do this? If you develop a mind body practice, if you develop a meditation practice within six weeks. We see increased density of that part of the brain, the cortical neurons of the prefrontal cortex that allows for you to say no. In the interim, we, we fake it till we make it.
We build in practices in life to stop and take a breath and to find that place where we can stop the impulse while we’re building up the muscle metaphorically to be able to say no in real time.
So how can we tell if someone’s getting better at trying not to please others? Is in that moment we stop and we understand that we can say no and not feel the guilt and the shame of having let someone down.
When we realize how in that moment we stop the cycle. And no one died, no one freaked out, or nothing terrible happened, and that person that we were trying to please didn’t get their fix from us, and that’s okay. That’s when we realize we’re breaking the cycle.
So a good way of telling friends and family that you are no longer interested in being a people pleaser, I like to say, Hey, um, I’ve been doing some work on myself. I have discovered that I have some really serious issues with boundaries. And part of that is me being a people pleaser. So in learning how to stand for myself, I’m learning to say no, please don’t take offense to this, but I am saying yes to myself.
in creating space for myself by saying no to certain things in creating room. And the people who truly love you, the people that deserve to remain in your life, they’re going to understand. And the vampires, punt, let them be gone.
So how to set a boundary with someone in a kind way? Thank you, but no. You know what? That sounds wonderful, but I have a prior commitment. You know what? That sounds like a wonderful, wonderful opportunity. I just don’t have space for it right now. Please let me know when you do that next time. Say it in a kind way.
You feel like you’re being rude, but really if you can say it in a nice way and walk away, you’ll realize how much you’ve been leaking your life force into these terrible boundaries for so long. So what should you do if you feel bad after saying no?
Go take 10 breaths to your lower abdomen, fill yourself up with love, fill yourself up with gratitude, and understand that the reason you feel bad is because you have all of these neurons firing into the people pleaser direction, and it’s just going to take a few months to undo what you have been doing for years, if not decades.
It’s okay to say no, make yourself okay with it, and you’ll get your life back.
I hope you enjoyed that. Plenty more where that came from in the urban monk academy, go to the urban monk.com. Click up top on the academy, check it out. Uh, live interaction every week. I’m taking questions. I’m hanging out with my folks. We are talking about it and I am helping you navigate. The problems we all have in life with other people because our boundaries suck.
So let’s fix them.