I remember a couple years ago when I organized a conference for 700 educators, I was fretting over the opinion of one teacher. This teacher had some followers in the union, but ultimately was not very important. He was not my friend, not did I really value his opinion as an educator. So, why was I worried about pleasing him? Well, because I, like many others had fallen into a people pleasing trap. I put the value of pleasing others above everything else. Besides being unrealistic, silly and exhausting, people pleasing is a great idea.
When we fall into people pleasing, many of our great ideas never get launched because we are too scared of offending others or challenging them. Here’s a good questions to ask, “What weight does this person’s opinion REALLY have in my life? If the answer is “not much”, time to dust off your shoes, ignore the sheep and move forward.
Launch Time 