Pleasing people most definitely pays. That is how the world works; you give people what they want, and you get paid. Supply and demand.
Preachers of self-reliance seem to confuse "not letting other people affect you" and "not caring about other people".
Self-reliance and people-pleasing are two separate axes on a Cartesian plane. You can be both self-reliant and people-pleasing.
Being self-reliant, but not people-pleasing is trivial. If you isolate yourself, there is nobody to rely on!
In the same vein, it's easy to be moral and idealistic when alone. The real test is with real people, and whether you are still able to keep those ideals.
Wield both: self-reliance and people-pleasing. Then you will be a force to be reckoned with.
EDIT: Talking about truth and white lie as a dichotomy is childish. They are tools in a toolbox. If you feel guilty because you lied, then you are a slave to the principle of honesty. If you are thinking about which (truth or white lie) is better for the relationship, then you are a master in command of both principles.
> People pleasing, in my extensive personal experience, is a process of guessing what other people want, or what will make them think favorably of us, and then acting accordingly.
People pleasing isn't caring about other people. It's being selfish and manipulative in interactions with other people (often without realizing it). Quite the opposite.
> My metaphor is "playing catch". Toss the ball, hope your partner tosses it back. Repeat. The goal is to keep the game going. Some one doesn't throw the ball back, oh well, move on to next partner.
Also known as "tit for tat" in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, a very successful strategy.
...move on to next partner.
Works remarkably well for children
I'm curious how you actually follow through on that with children. It's hard to move on from them (without inflicting lifetime psychological trauma, anyway).
Well, ya. One's own children are a special case. Even so, they can test you (thinking of the house ape that moved back into my basement).
But universally, I try to meet everyone, especially children, where they're at. Children get a lot more chances to learn how to throw the ball back. And I always leave the door open.
TMI: one of the biggest surprise to me is connecting with nieces / nephews when they're much older, when we didn't particularly like each other earlier.
But aren't interactions with nieces/nephews usually filtered through their parents, until they're grown up? Maybe it was just this way for me, but I didn't have many real interactions with my aunts/uncles until I grew up and left home.
It is the straightforward assumption that house ape was used to refer to the original posters son returned from adulthood and with a negative connotation. That is why the assumption was made. I cannot imagine what other use you could have imagined given such clear context.
It's clearly about his son, though I don't assume he says it straight to his face. I thought you were also thinking of your offspring. Sorry I've misunderstood.
Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment.
Let's say John is this guy who is "transparent, honest, and authentic, and never waivering."
And say Jack, John's friend, is addicted to playing Overwatch.
John comes by and says, "Jack, you shouldn't play Overwatch. You are wasting your time and energy."
Jack responds, "I know, but just this one match."
John comes back a week later and says, "Jack, I am really fucking frustrated you are still playing that shitty game. I want you to quit right this fucking moment." The article advised to never hide your emotions, so I am following that mantra.
How is Jack going to feel after that? Is he going to stop playing video games? Have parents yelling stopped children from playing Minecraft?
No. Why? The world really isn't that simple. Just saying "Be honest all the time" is the worst advice you can give. The principle is nice and impressive (because you always keep it!) but in reality, John is either a loner or a hypocrite.
Consider Steve, one who wields both self-reliance and people-pleasing, visiting Jack who is still addicted to Overwatch. Steve knows Overwatch is killing Jack's life, and deeply concerned for him. But he does the not lazy thing and waits. Instead of admonishing Jack, Steve becomes interested in Jack. Steve asks Jack how this game works, which hero he is playing, etc.
Then Jack opens up to Steve, which, in due time, can allow Steve to change Jack's mind.
If you want to have the feeling that you changed people's minds, be honest all the time. But if you actually want to change people's minds, then don't be honest all the time. Utilize white lies.
In that sense, people who are always honest are incredibly selfish.
In the quotation far above, I would just add two more words. To myself. Be transparent, honest, and authentic to yourself.
Being honest to others always sounds cool, but is in reality excruciating lazy. So lazy that I wouldn't want a friend like that, ever. I want a friend who is more wise and less automatic about his choice between truths and lies.
> "Jack, I am really fucking frustrated you are still playing that shitty game."
That is not being authentic, and that's the problem. In our heads we know what we want, but we ask for something else.
Why do you want your friend to get off the computer. To be off the computer? No. You miss your friend and you want him to hang out with you. You are worried that he is missing out on life by living in the game and you're both going to pay for it later.
Moreover, by phrasing it like that ("I'm getting frustrated"), you are imposing your demands on your friend without even informing about their state of mind. Not acknowledging them is not the way to keep friends close.
Yes, and what's worse is that the reason you're upset is not even that you miss your friend, but fear that your friend has decided that a game is more important than you are, and so you are demanding that he prove that he isn't rejecting you by making a gesture.
There's a difference between being honest and always saying what you think. You should be honest in your interactions but that doesn't mean you should tell everyone everything. You can be honest while being tactful.
I think there's a line between being tactful and being manipulative and it may be different for everyone. For example you seem to think that Steve is telling a "white lie by omission" but I don't. Unless Steve was dishonest if questioned about his motivation or Steve was trying to pretend to be into the game rather being interested in Jack and his interests I wouldn't consider that being dishonest.
Most people live a fine life utilizing both honesty and white lie. Any normal parent won't look at their daughter in an ugly dress and yell, "That's ugly." Then you just lack social awareness.
Here is the problem though. Much like the juxtaposition of equality and liberty, our beliefs about honesty and our intuition about honesty belie each other. (This might not make much sense but bear with me here.)
If we believe that "Being honest always" is good (and that is what the article espouses), then we have already created a huge contradiction within ourselves. By holding that belief, you feel slightly righteous, but not quite so accurate.
Because you can't always be honest. By holding that belief, you are always selling yourself short.
But if you believe "I will use honesty and white lie to the best of my ability to do the most good for the other person", then you have an accurate (and also quite beautiful) map of the world.
I think you interpreted the article in a way that was not intended.
I don't think the author want people to be totally honest always, like, "Hi dear colleague. I think your dog is stupid. And, by the way, you are, too."
Instead, I imagine that fairly many people tend to, when their friends say "Do you want to hang out with us doing this?", they answer "yes" just to please their friends. Although in fact they might have wanted to suggest something else instead. And in these cases, the advice in the article can sometimes? often? be useful. I.e. to be more transparent and honest with your friends about what makes you happy.
If you interpret a piece of advice with the mindset that "perhaps this is good advice in some situations, when might that be?", then it can be helpful and useful to you (or to other people — to me, when I was younger, for example).
But if you interpret it like "always do this", then a piece of advice that is actually good in some situations, has been lost.
(I suppose the article can be rewritten / reworded, to make it easier to interpret it in a "good and useful" way.)
This example is pretty heavy—I mean if you're talking about breaking someone of an addiction that is something far beyond the scope of how best to modulate ones behavior in the world. But it points to the real complexity of relationships.
Someone that always offers a harsh unvarnished and negative opinion on things usually gets a reputation as a jerk. Someone who is always trying to please everyone gets a reputation as a spineless brown-noser. In the real world, how you say something is often even more important than exactly what you say. If you are charming you can convince more people of more things, and political capital is a real thing that matters all the way down to individual relationships—you have to pick your battles. Throw in culture, sexism, racism, moods, and innumerable other contexts and things become very subtle.
That's what bothers me about these pop science articles: nothing is that simple. Maybe an article like this triggers you to evaluate yourself and say "hey, I do try to please others too much", but then again maybe you need the opposite advice. The bottom line is you have to gauge for yourself how your behavior is affecting relationships and whether you are getting what you want out of life.
Absolutely agreed. If you are at zero, and fifty is recommended, then having someone argue at one-hundred might be worthwhile.
But just because you were persuaded by one-hundred (be honest all the time) doesn't mean it's the best method for everyone.
What we need is an accurate model of fifty, and personalized solutions for those at zero or one-hundred. Skip the first step, you have no structure to hold you.
You're conflating "being honest" with "being a dick", here. John may experience anger at Jack's behavior, and he may express it in a way that doesn't have to damage his relationship with Jack or hurt Jack's feelings.
A good book on this subject is "Difficult Conversations", a favorite of my wife's, which describes strategies for doing exactly this: being honest about your feelings without ruining someone else's day as a result.
Being honest does not mean you cannot exercise tact and discretion in the way you talk to people.
You can be honest without being an asshole. This is related to people who win arguments as assholes. Sure they won, but they pissed everyone off so what does it matter? Then they go hide behind "I'm just being honest." No, that's being an asshole.
There is saying, "you can shear a sheep over and over, but you can only skin it once." Learn to shear.
There was some wisdom written about this, almost 2000 years ago:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 : "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing."
To paraphrase: truth without love (e.g. being an asshole) is just ineffective noise. (Conversely, love without truth is not love at all.)
Not always. It depends on the culture. Some people will think you're an asshole just for disagreeing with them. Some people will think you're an asshole because you smile crooked. Some people will think you're an asshole because you aren't speaking their language and using their terminology.
Maybe I think you're an asshole just for suggesting this.
Oddly, in this example and the several follow ups, nobody has espoused the view that it's almost invariably a complete waste of time to try to get someone else that's not you to quit doing something they enjoy that doesn't affect you.
Yeah exactly. Why don't both John and Steve both just worry about his own problems instead of trying to refine and optimize this needless intervention?
Let me ask, What do you live for? Why are you continuing your life on this planet? What will make you not regret on your deathbed?
For me, life is a festival. I am here to enjoy all the attractions. The scrumptious food, the unforgettable experiences, and the thrilling rides.
But nowadays I am realizing that a big part/joy of the festival is bringing other people to the festival, and showing them around. To enjoy, together. To eat, together. To experience, together.
That is why I worry about other people's problems. That is why Steve cares about John and is "intervening". Steve wants to bring John to the festival. And John wants to come, but he just needs a little help. Steve is there for him.
Speaking only for myself, but finally teaching myself how to avoid that kind of messianic thinking has been a considerable benefit to me in my old age.
How do you know you just didn't get bored with your old ideals and just moved onto some new thing? "I'm older than you" has never been a convincing argument, and the fact that you're bringing it up seems to indicate that you think it should have some moral weight that it does not.
Maybe when I grow older (I am just 21), I will become more "realistic" and altruism will not make me happy. This is a sad possibility.
But I have met quite a few people much, much older than I am (40-70 years old) who are happy changing the world for the better.
You only live once, why not set the bar high? That is how they approach the world. Having that sort of "mission" (because it really is a mission, not just a goal or a dream) makes their lives fulfilling and quite inspiring.
They think about what they will do when they grow up, when they are 60, or 90.
To me, they have much more youth to them than some of my friends who have already lost their dreams.
I have no idea, because I am so young still, but seeing people like that makes me think: age really is just a number.
There are some other foundational things needed for living a full life (which I infer is the author's point).
> "Jack, you shouldn't play Overwatch..."
This is judgement, which implies ego. The indicator here is "shouldn't". Ego isn't an authentic representation of self, it is fiction. If we can become aware of ego and avoid following it's incessant needs, we are closer to ego-lessness which can contribute significantly to happiness.
So in the end, being authentic and transparent without ego, the original statement may be something like:
> "Jack, I don't like to play overwatch, I would rather (do x,y,z)"
Great book for anyone seeking - Eckhardt Tolle - "A new earth" - be warned, skip chapter 1!
The key word is "should" aka "shoulding yourself/someone else" aka "musterbation" [1].
When you detect this from yourself or others, you are best advised to steer the wording/conversation so it's factual and not a guilt-trip. If you cannot, you will find yourself in a very frustrating place.
I'd take someone being completely honest with me 100% of time over someone who thinks one thing of me and tells me something else. The thing is, people act based on their beliefs the vast majority of the time. So to borrow your example, say the friend doesn't complain about his buddy playing Overwatch all the time. Do you think that he'll just wait around to see if he'll stop playing or do you think he'll start to ignore his friend and go find other friends whom he shares the same interests with? Without honesty, the friend playing overwatch too much will have no external cues that his behavior is damaging his friendships.
There are roughly three stages in extra-personal development.
1. The Selfish : You tell people what they want to hear.
2. The Truthsayer : You tell people what they need to hear.
3. The Altruistic : You tell people what they need to hear when they are ready.
I am assuming John cares about Jack. If he still ignores Jack, then John is part of the Selfish. He is misled by just short-term benefits.
The Selfish and the Altruistic appear to do the same thing initially: not say anything nor interrupting during Overwatch. But they end differently. The Selfish ends his thought with just that moment. The Altruistic waits with intent to strike.
This is not a dichotomy between people who lie and are egotistical VERSUS people who are always honest. There is a third group of people who are both caring and more prudent with their tools. They are the Altruistic, those who wait to tell people exactly what they need to hear. And the Altruistic ultimately change people and society, because they understand people and society better.
They know how persuasion works. Truthsayers don't. In fairness, truthsayers die a lonely death, without having made meaningful change. Their audience was only themselves.
There are roughly three stages in extra-personal development.
I'm interested to learn some more. Is it your personal classification or do you base it on some research, literature etc.? Could you recommend something to read on a subject of extra-personal development?
If I had to trace my thoughts, I would point to Lord Chesterfield, Neil Strauss, and Dale Carnegie, in that order.
Also lots of efforts to change people's (read: friends) behavioral patterns. I think, especially for psychology, most valuable insights come from experience, not books. Read the books, and apply the principles.
There may be extremes, but if you generalize that example it's exhausting. Making a bad decision in one area does not mean that Jack's stupider than Steve and won't know exactly what he's trying to do. Furthermore, is Steve actually listening? I ask because a lot of what people are doing here, if it's innovative, is regularly met with skepticism.
Understanding naysayers' concerns, and learning a ready answer if they ultimately don't seem valid can be a good use of time. Giving a whole lot of air time to someone who has a foregone conclusion that they think merits some transparent rhetorical game is not.
Making a bad decision in one area does not mean that Jack's stupider than Steve and won't know exactly what he's trying to do
I never implied anything about stupidity. My claim is this sort of behavior is not conducive to change.
Furthermore, is Steve actually listening?
Of course he is. You are missing the point. Or you just haven't met that many people like Steve.
Understanding naysayers' concerns, and learning a ready answer if they ultimately don't seem valid can be a good use of time.
Absolutely. You should hold that standard for yourself. But just because you hold that standard for yourself doesn't mean the world all of a sudden is open to criticism.
Have a vision for what the ideal world is, but do not be deluded when modeling the state of the real world. If you think this is just transparent rhetoric game, you seriously misunderstand the general population of human beings. And most likely, yourself. If you have a brain that remotely resembles mine, then you have emotions, biases - structural flaws in our brain. Understand those first. Reading LessWrong will help.
"John comes back a week later and says, "Jack, I am really fucking frustrated you are still playing that shitty game. I want you to quit right this fucking moment.""
That is exactly what some people do in real life professionally in phycology, without the strong words(that denote lack of control). It works really well.
In order to illustrate this think on "Kitcken nightmares" tv program, or something like "Hermano mayor" on Spanish TV.
I use to do the same thing with friends and people that demand my help. Loner? Quite the contrary, help someone get out of a hole and he-she will be your friend forever.
I have taken people out of drugs, or gangs,prostitution this people will give their life for me. There are few things as rewarding in life(it is also a pain in the ass while you do follow the process but it is worth it).
Of course you need education in order to do that. You don't need to say you are "fucking frustrated", in fact if you are frustrated you can't help anyone.
There are masters at this, like in anything,and if you do that you will learn with every person you help. After some people you see patterns and being effective becomes easier.
> That is exactly what some people do in real life professionally in phycology,
I didn't know that algae responded so well to honesty.
Assuming that you meant psychology, there's a huge difference between hearing something from a professional psychologist and from a friend. It's a whole different relationship, with different words. If a friend treated me like a patient, they'd stop being a friend.
He is being completely honest. Which is what the article espoused. The article also said do not hide your emotions. John is mad about the fact that his friend is wasting his life. I displayed that.
If you are defining honest as some midpoint between a white lie and an asshole, then what is being honest? Not being completely honest, but just somewhat honest?
Then your "honest" is a healthy mix of white lie and complete honesty.
> If you are defining honest as some midpoint between a white lie and an asshole, then what is being honest?
Honesty is an endpoint, with the other side being dishonesty (including lies). On a separate axis, you would have maybe "gentleness of communication". On a third axis, orthogonal to the first two, you might have "intent", ranging from benevolent to malevolent.
So, complete honesty would be a plane. Some parts of the plane are difficult to reach (completely honest, completely gentle, completely benevolent), and may be impossible depending on the situation (timing, your relationship with the person, etc), and your own skills of communication.
"Asshole" would be a cloud within that volume, mostly floating around where "malevolence" and "harshness" have high values. None of these things are binary values, though. The soft edges fade into each other; we're working with shades of grey.
No, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. John is not being honest. He's being an asshole. Being "completely honest" and "not hiding your emotions" does not equal being an asshole. There are many, many ways to express both those things without acting like John.
Seriously, I am completely sick and tired of this idea people have of excusing their assholery by claiming they're being "honest", and that showing even the most modicum of common decency, common sense, and empathy is somehow "hiding their emotions" and being dishonest. It's not.
I completely empathize with your statement. I am also sick and tired of people excusing their assholery with notion of "being completely honest".
It's quite ridiculous.
Part of me wants to say that then maybe we should teach honesty differently. Instead of putting the virtue on a pedestal, we should use it as a tool when it is most fit.
If a white lie will engender a win-win relationship, use that.
Ultimately what we want is betterment of the other person and myself, and honesty is not always the answer.
John is not being completely honest. As I mentioned elsewhere, John is not honest with himself, being unaware of where the roots of this irritation is.
> Then Jack opens up to Steve, which, in due time, can allow Steve to change Jack's mind.
That's some pretty impressive hand-waving. The more likely outcome is that Jack keeps playing his game and Steve just wasted a bunch of time trying and failing to manipulate his "friend".
Sorry to get all experiential on you, but that statement is only empathisable with experience. I can go further in detail, but it really won't help you "get" it.
I suppose one way you can have that experience is practice actively trying to change people's behaviors. It's absolutely fascinating.
In your contrived example, it's missing some things.
For John to be authentic, then he would need to first suss out why he feels so bothered by seeing John being addicted to playing Overwatch.
Meaning, there is something that John is unaware of his own psyche that lead to feeling irritated by Jack's addiction. Being unaware of that means he might be _seen_ as transparent or authentic or honest -- you certainly did -- but he's not actually in integrity.
Also, what you described with Steve is called rapport in NLP, or ethos in rhetorics. It's not people-pleasing, so much as matching impedance and getting inside someone else's space. People-pleasers tend to be too self-absorbed to be able to fully enter someone else's mindspace and establish rapport. Unless that person is on the psychopathy spectrum.
First off, rapport isn't just from neuro-linguistic programming. (Funny you mention it, I was just reading an NLP book couple days ago.) And also to the HN crowd, you should specify NLP; most will think Natural Language Processing and be confused.
I agree with you on all of your points. With a feeling, you should figure out what caused it, and then figure out what caused that, and then recurse backwards until you actually get to the issue. Jerry Talley who taught intimacy at Stanford some time ago has a great lecture on this.
Where we disagree (but not actually, because it's so trivial), is labelling. If you define people-pleasers as those who cannot create rapport because they are self-absorbed, I couldn't agree with you more.
But part of me rejects that definition because then those people-pleasers aren't actually pleasing people.
Unless we are strictly going off the negative connotation of the word (which makes sense), the labelling behind this concept can only become confusing.
Great points, nevertheless. Couldn't have said it better myself.
I wasn't talking to the HN crowd. I was talking to you. I'm well aware that rapport is not just from NLP. But thanks for clarifying for everyone else.
Your point on people-pleasing: that if they are too self-absorbed to form rapport, then they are not really people pleasing. In my experience talking and interacting with people, that is exactly it: folks will see themselves as pleasing others, but in reality, they are not actually doing so, because they are not doing so in integrity. That is the read I on "people pleasers", and that is the read I get from that article. For me, if someone is pleasing others and they are doing so in integrity, I don't see the issue with that. In general, that that rarely happens.
As for the recursion, that is the basic path but it isn't as simple as that. For one thing, fhe intellect alone is inadequate for the task. This was why I was talking about awareness, not intellect. When there are deeper rooted issues, the emotional attachment might even hijack the intellect to come up with rational explanations on why the deeper issues should not be explored.
My exploration of this comes from the meditation / shamanic / psychonaut approaches, and not clinical psychology. Where you can go if you dig impeccably and with an open mind will go to some really strange places. I'd love to see or talk with someone to see if the implications from those strange places changes or inflects effective altruism and infinite ethics.
> People pleasing isn't caring about other people. It's being selfish and manipulative in interactions with other people (often without realizing it). Quite the opposite.
Indeed, it's passive-agressive behaviour rooted from low self-esteem. "I'll cater to you, so you'll return the favour", but when this isn't reciprocated (since the receiver isn't even aware of this "business transaction"), the giver is feeling anger (sadness).
That's interesting. Why do you feel contempt for passive-aggressiveness rooted in low-self esteem? Do you feel you are superior to people who do that? Do you feel that those people are weak of character or resolve?
It's detailed further in No More Mr. Nice Guy, but I will explain it.
I specifically hate those who give to get. And when they give and don't get, they become passive-aggressive.
If I have low self-esteem, here is how I might behave. For the purposes of this example, I am Jack and the other person is Elizabeth.
1. I want care and attention from Elizabeth.
2. I give care and attention to her, hoping I will get them back.
3. When she doesn't give me care and attention I "deserve", I become passive-aggressive towards her.
Some people believe giving is the prerequisite to acceptance. They think they are not good enough. So in step 2, Jack sets an invisible contract with Elizabeth, without her knowing. He will give, give, give, and one day he will freak out.
That to me is a lack of self awareness and integrity. Not everyone is fully conscious of the things that drive them. That you feel hatred for such behavior suggests that you too have things about yourself that you are not aware of.
Being nice is not the same as compassion. I'm glad you found a book that helped you understand it.
However, based on this and your other comments on this thread, I think there is more to discover about this. There is a whole range of things related to love (and I don't mean romance) I think is missing from your discourse.
"Pleasing people most definitely pays. That is how the world works; you give people what they want, and you get paid. Supply and demand." <-- That might sound mature and sophisticated, but it's actually a fairly naive perspective. Superficially, yeah, sucking up and giving people what they want (vs. what they need) will pay. At least in the short-term. However, over many iterations of this, the payoff becomes less and less.
"Talking about truth and white lie as a dichotomy is childish. They are tools in a toolbox. If you feel guilty because you lied, then you are a slave to the principle of honesty." <-- that's a fairly immature perspective. You're conflating honesty with integrity or authenticity.
Integrity is wholeness of being, and it includes all of a person. It includes both the parts that will lie, cheat and steal as well as the part that wants to be honest and upfront. Integrity requires awareness and mindfulness.
What you're describing in your comment is on the psychopathy spectrum, which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. However, this is not the end-all, be-all of human consciousness, and there is a lot more room to grow from there.
Sorry about the confusion. I can understand it, given my ill-defined and haphazard writing.
I do define "What people want" differently than most. Most often giving people what they really need at the right time pays off in the long run. That is the approach I endorse.
I think what you describe as integrity is what I endorse as well: master of all principles. Both lying and honesty are part of the toolkit.
I would add one more to integrity, and that is empathy. You need to know how to see things from the other person's perspective in order to give others what they need.
Huh, interesting. All of what you said here is what I agree to, other than labeling.
One of the weird practices I have done is something called Demon Feeding. It descended from the Tibetan traditions, so it still carries it's shamanic/magical/tantric roots, but in this form, it was rebased in Western roots.
Each section is an amazing practice on it's own, and the first three sections sharpen discriminating awareness and empathy. Over time, practitioners not only learn to distinguish wants from needs, they also learn to dig for the need under the want. The practice does not stop there. After ascertaining the need, the practitioner than finds out what would be felt after fulfilling that need. That resulting feeling is what someone is searching for.
The practice is usually done with the self first, and over mant iterations, you start getting towards the ground. Dig deep enough and across enough iteration, the answer to "how will you feel if you get what you need" will tend to converge on one answer.
Sigh. I know how to become happy. Getting paid is part of it.
For me, happiness comes from Effective Altruism, which comes from increasing the quality of life for as many people as possible, which is only possible with adequate amount of finances.
So get paid >> money >> help other people >> makes me happy.
Of course, if you aren't self-reliant, the above doesn't mean anything.
p.s. pleasing people also makes you happy, because you develop better relationships.
> p.s. pleasing people also makes you happy, because you develop better relationships.
I disagree with your causation. By people pleasing you develop relationships that are inauthentic, which creates a fiction of good within your relationships. People pleasing and expecting those "better relationships" to be real is just perpetuating your own fiction.
"So get paid >> money >> help other people >> makes me happy."
I was reading up on some things about that, and the ideas of infinite ethics. Combined with your comments here, seems like the philosophy of Effective Altruism still has a long way to go.
If you are practicing what you believe in, though, I salute you.
"p.s. pleasing people also makes you happy, because you develop better relationships."
I'm not so sure about that. Having worked with people who have deep-seated emotional issues, people-pleasing like that creates a fragile edifice. The greater the effort in fulfilling the want without addressing the need, the more fragile the whole situation becomes.
But many people would have a problem with the above statement. We want to give them what they need.
So envelop what they need with what they want. Just like a Trojan horse, once your product is bought/used, they will eventually recognize the benefits of fulfilling their serious need.
"Give them what they want, not what they need. But many people would have a problem with the above statement. We want to give them what they need."
Generally, most people don't have a clear understanding of what they want vs. what they need, and have even more confusions about what other people need.
"So envelop what they need with what they want."
Sure, that works fairly well. It's not the only approach. There are a whole set of teachings that go straight to the point. It is funny, because every time I bring it up to people, people have a lot of problems with that. Heheheh.
The thing is, I know that there comes a time when what is needed is not anything at all like what is wanted, and it is impossible to envelop it with what is wanted. This is usually touching the deep truths, and the want results from attachment, from wanting to deny reality.
Though now that I wrote that down, I'm rethinking about that too. Hmmm.
I just watched the Tony Robbins documentary, and I am rethinking about this. He cuts through the noise with profanities, and says the truth. And it works.
Wants are flexible. Convincing someone they want something is often the first step in selling it.
Infomercials are kind of the penultimate version of this. The product is almost meaningless compared to the ability to sell it. It's not a towel it's a Shamwow!
There's a lot of truth here, and I generally agree with the sentiment, and can think of close friends of mine who are unusually good at this and are unusually successful and well liked.
As a prescriptive piece of advice though, it has a semi-fatal flaw. It is based on the concept of what you "really" feel and what you "really" think. Which of course isn't how the human mind works at all. Some days we think our job is the best thing in the world and we're grateful for it, some days we think it's the one thing holding us back from glory. Sometimes we feel connected to a person, sometimes resentful of the same person.
What do we do if our rational brain says that our boss is totally being a reasonable person but our lizard brain wants to choke him because he just told to do something all over again. Must we not speak the white lie that it's "no problem"?
What if one finds their emotions are all over the place, and just not evenly regulated, and you have unexplained and somewhat destructive impulses to say tactless and hurtful things to people? Should we go ahead and do that because it's a more "transparent, honest, authentic" version of ourselves? Or should we aim to be more stable, and do our best to "fake it" until it becomes second nature?
Here's a secret nobody tells you: The internal conflict and struggles in life you encounter are almost never of the bad/good variety. Such problems create failures of will rather than failures of reasoning, since choosing between being purely cruel and being kind requires little insight.
The conflicts that vex us are are between two positive things we value, like balancing giving and sharing and being a team player with independence and growth and looking out for ones self, or balancing being responsible and consistent with being adaptable and curious.
Or in this case, balancing being authentic and honest with being focused, professional, and pleasant to be around.
You'll never reduce the tradeoff between those values down to simple rules of thumb, they will always be complex, outcomes will always be uncertain, and scenarios will never present themselves again in precisely the same way.
You'll have to mostly make it up as you go along, forever. Get a helmet.
There is utility in people pleasing that does not end with self-satisfaction. There are costs, sometimes immediate, to conveying your thoughts and feelings directly. Examples from the workplace:
Your colleague is a bit chatty and annoying, so the last thing you want to do is start a conversation about how bad your weekend was. It takes more mental energy to deal with them than not, so smile and say 'My weekend was great!'.
More seriously, it is necessary for your boss to want to keep you around and letting your emotions hang out on topics not related to work may get them wondering about your focus and productivity. This is particularly important if you're supporting a family, and in practical terms, you really have to be judicious about being true to yourself vs. keeping your job. Not that it's that precipitous, but over time, you'll establish an image.
From the boss's perspective, people respond well to confidence, and letting your team know you're true feelings needs to be thoughtfully considered in each case. Showing lack of confidence in the right places can elicit helpful ideas and volunteers. In the wrong place, it can really kill your team.
So for me, it's a trade off. I know when I'm being less than truthful, and it is deliberate and purposeful in each case.
I took the article to be about the more extreme side of people-pleasing. It's one thing to do this as a one-off. Or with people you have to interact with in limited/confined contexts (your boss). But it's another to extend it to your entire life.
Have you ever met the person that, as soon as you say you went skiing once, starts saying how much they love skiing? Then later you see them do the same thing, but this time it's about traveling, with someone else. And later, you invite them to your ski trip (could be months or years), and they say, "I don't like skiing."? They were gushing about it when you met, but it was a complete lie. They may have even repeated it a few more times, but one day they forgot.
That's the extreme people-pleaser. They're never honest with other people, and consequently none of their relationships are real. They're all predicated on falsehoods (what they like, what they don't like, what they're interested in, etc.). So every time they go out they have to remember what lies they told this group, and oh shit now two groups are meeting and they have two conflicting lies.
What you're talking about is not this. False bravado or confidence is sometimes what you have to do to make it through. But make it a perpetual thing, in all situations, it either becomes true, or it wears you out.
> Live with total integrity. Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment.
Not at all. If you don't understand how to employ false smiles as needed, you won't get very far in life. This was one of the biggest mistakes I made when I was young. Once I learned how to stop being totally honest and how to be friendly to even those I didn't like, a lot of opportunities opened up that I would have never been exposed to otherwise.
Simple example: I maintain friendships with people I don't genuinely like primarily because they have wide social circles. Through those people, I've met individuals who I do genuinely like.
It works if "yourself" has certain characteristics and doesn't work if the "yourself" doesn't or has other attributes, based on the context.
> Simple example: I maintain friendships with people I don't genuinely like primarily because they have wide social circles. Through those people, I've met individuals who I do genuinely like.
That's genuinely good advice. You don't have to like or please everyone in your social network. There's simply not enough time or effort, but it doesn't mean you can't have fruitful transactions with those people.
A lot of people have some confusion around "be yourself" advice. There are a lot of things that can be unpacked about it, and people at differing levels of maturity or understanding will see different things.
"When people talk about true self in Western culture, the discussion normally tends toward "the Snowflake Model" of identity. That's my phrase for the notion that your true self is discovered by polishing up your understanding of the way in which you are utterly unique, special, and valuable - a "wonderful little snowflake unlike any other.""
... and ...
"Am I like a box, or am I like light? Consider the difference: a box has a boundary, it has fixed characteristics, it has contents. A box wants to survive, it wants its contents kept safe, it wants to be properly labeled, it wants to be approved of when it passes through customs, it does not want to be crushed at the bottom of a huge pyramid of boxes.
A box, ideally, wants to be at the top of the pyramid. Or maybe off by itself, so that it doesn't have to feel anxious about being judged relative to other boxes. A box is an ego.
Light isn't like that: light wants to go everywhere, and it weighs very little."
Let me guess, GP is a 20 something person and you are at least around 40 (pardon me if you are not, your maturity level surely is).
I think, its a spectrum between extreme honesty and extreme dishonesty, and when very young extreme honesty has an appeal. But of course it's not healthy, just like any extreme.
Like you, I am totally for pragmatism, but still can't maintain contacts with people whom I don't like, even if they can help me with other useful contacts etc. Because, I feel, its possible to attain the same level of success, by taking a higher road.
There is beauty in preserving intellectual vanity. I know you didn't imply that, but total pragmatism, seems soulless to me. For example, in an earlier corporate life, I knew some people who were the "manager" sort and very aggressive, which yielded them dividends. When they entered the Startup world, sometime after I did, they tried to maintain the similar (aggressive) equation in the communication. I humored them with one meeting, which didn't go so well, from my perspective. I felt, that in my easy speaking manner, I'd given a lot of gyan to them, but still came out of the meeting taking away some vacuous corporate BS kind of gyan. Since I was left with a bad taste, after the meeting, I declined all further meeting requests simply because I could. Felt happy.
So life is a very complex experience and there never are any fixed rules. Some times you fake it till you make it. Other times you are brutally honest. Yes, but integrity, is a must have quality at all times. That's the only non-negotiable IMHO.
Neurotypical people often err in the direction of overvaluing social status (presumably because in the ancestral environment, it made a large contribution to evolutionary fitness in a way that it does not today).
If you find yourself smiling and nodding at the above, however, bear this in mind also: we geeks often err in the direction of undervaluing social status. If you haven't acquired basic skills in areas like networking and office politics, X effort invested there might do more for you than 10X effort invested in further honing your technical skills.
This question is only asked by those who cannot measure how far they have come.
We all have our subjective distances. But if you are a human being, some combinations of the following will be that distance:
1. Sustenance (food, water, housing, money)
2. Community (belonging, love)
3, Self-expression
4. Self-transcendence (altruism)
This is a gross simplification of Maslow, but give me some slack. If you question every person saying "you won't get very far in life" with "how do you measure getting very far", you are not only annoying the other person, but also yourself. Spend that time trying to measure how far you have come.
> Spend that time trying to measure how far you have come.
Why? Who is the intended recipient of this information, once I have formulated it into words? Myself? I don't enjoy repeating things to myself I already know.
Formulating into words how far you've come can only happen while you know how far you've come. And while you're in the state of knowing how far you've come, you don't need to repeat to yourself how far this is. You know.
I appreciate your reference to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Assuming you have met safety/security (#1), general philosophy of living presently would ask "why measure at all?"
I don't think you understand the difference between "acquaintanceship" and "friendship".
If you don't genuinely like someone you're acquainted with, you're not being a friend when you pretend you do. You're being a manipulative, self-interested social investor, keeping a volatile asset around because of its potential payoff. Friendship, like romance (but less intensely), means an aconditional (not unconditional) acceptance of another's flaws - not just tolerance for a potential benefit.
I actually agree very much with your main point, that false smiles and "white lie" smalltalk really do have their place. I grew up enamored with the practice of radical honesty, but it only works when in a group of individuals with very high self-esteem. The point of faking nice isn't to dissemble, but to make a goodwill attempt to ensure that the people around you can feel comfortable to practice genuineness without judgment.
Not that that isn't a selfish and manipulative goal itself. I prefer being genuine in my interactions across the board, the only way to do that is to gradually accustom the people in my life to being comfortable being genuine back.
tl;dr you're not maintaining "friendships", but I don't think your choices are more or less selfish than any other.
You could live by those words, but I don't recommend it.
I'm generally very honest about what I think and feel. I never lie. It certainly hasn't earned me many friends.
In contrast, I have a colleague who is constantly cheerful and friendly. Even when she's secretly having a terrible day and even when she doesn't particularly like you. The result is that everyone in the office likes her and she has a very rich/happy private life too. Even if her day starts off poorly, the positivity she receives back from people turns it around.
The worst part about trite articles like this is that they provide literally no evidence for their feel-good conclusions. In fact, they seem to contradict actual research which shows that modulating our feelings and smiling (even when we don't want to) can improve happiness. [0]
If you want to be happy, pretend you're happy. Eventually it won't be an illusion.
And yet the karma mechanism on HN and other social networking websites biases users into toeing the line of what is the 'general view'. The view of course changes considerably over time which shows it is mostly about mood or values.
There has got to be a better regulation mechanism than '+1' and the received wisdom.
Thank you for speaking my mind. I have been saying this wherever I see these karma-mechanisms being employed (likes, hearts, click buttons). I have not seen any website disclose to explain what exactly these button-clicks do to help anyone? These are basically waste of time and useless. I would not have helped you a bit if I had just clicked the up arrow on your comment (nor would I have helped the HN owners with the same action). But I hope this comment of mine would give you some food for thoughts (or neuron activities). The problem is, platform like HN (and many others) do not have any technology in place to derive the real "value" out of single person's comment(s). Forget the aggregate subjective value, they don't even have anything objective to show either. So if I have millions of karma points, I am supposed to be better in value? And useless if I have zero or karma in negatives? According to whose criteria? That's a failure of social media in general. None of these Likes, Retweets, hearts, or whatever, helps anyone in any substantive manner. These scoring points values do not help anyone in any substantive manner.
> I have not seen any website disclose to explain what exactly these button-clicks do to help anyone?
Wild guess, you entered the world of online interactions after mailing lists. These buttons address the need of people to be "contributing". Before "+1"/"like", we had "me too". People want to feel like they're supporting views they like, and that button gives them that way, leaving space for more meaningful contributions in the actual text.
It's the same thing as a nod in a 1:1 conversation. "I'm paying attention, I'm here, I agree, continue".
That's where they help, allowing a flow of communication that suits people. Looking at the cumulative number of those... "Narcissism" comes to mind.
I've been communicating online since the days when Yahoo bought the eGroup/Onelist.
The "me too" is fine, but ultimately, what does all these clicks entail in a long run? Have they helped reduce the clutter and/or enhance the value of the conversation? What about the value of the commentator and his/her aggregate contribution? Do the number value provide any insight? Say that I may be an expert on Topic A, and I have gathered a whole lot of numbers (karma, or whatever else) due to my expertise on Topic A. What does that say to the reader, on my lack of expertise on Topic B, C, D?
The "me too" does not actually add anything to the value and diversity of opinion (other than it adds to the group-think).
At HN at least, it looks like the +1's do some work in prioritising both posts and comments. That is, newer entries are shown first, but high-voted ones stay near the top longer.
At least that's the vague impression I have gleaned.
Perhaps a better title would be "Why It Doesn't Pay to Hide Your Emotions".
Anyway, I'm hearing the whole stance of "everything is good, I'm so happy" is a cultural thing, very common in the US but not so in the rest of the world (Europe especially). I wonder to what extent this is true and how does it affect people's well being.
I'll say this - a life lived in service to other people feels more worthwhile to me. Perhaps one of the services is being honest, even brusque at points. Just not very often.
Actually solving problems for other people is mostly about framing the question underlying the problem. If they're not interested, then you're done with that problem.
"Service to other people" is not some grand/altruistic thing; it's simply a prioritization mechanism that helps remove some of your ego from the process.
I would pose that "service to others" if reflected upon, is exactly ego. You can feel good being of service to others, and you can feel diminished by not being of service to others. When you lose the good feeling, you want to do more, to reobtain that good feeling.
"I am one who strives to live in service to others" (I am parahrasing) but if this is true, it is more clearly ego a.k.a. identification with form.
The trick, of course, is being authentically interested in others. By all means don't be full of shit; don't suck up; live your truth. But man, being an authentic misanthrope (like being an authentic alcoholic or an authentic anything else negative) does not lead to the best possible results.
What people don't tell you is that directness also has a cost. The Dutch directness of "GTFO my country" what minorities are confronted with daily is not quite contributing to any minority's happiness (it's a big reason why I moved to the US).
I'm a Brit, and I fully expect to hear how people are doing when I ask them that question directly. If I didn't want to know, I'd not ask.
If the question is always to be answered with "fine", then is the person you ask ever going to notice if you don't ask it? You don't care about what they feel either way and they know it.
In the context of this article I believe the author would say you shouldn't ask because if you don't want to hear the answer you are not being honest/authentic.
On the flip side being honest doesn't mean having to detail everything good or bad in ones life, but if things really are not fine it means saying so. "I have been better actually, but it's a new week and I'm ready to turn the page."
You might actually learn a thing or two about someone that way!
Mr. A: How was your weekend?
Mr. B: Fine. Bit of trouble with the house, though.
Mr. A: Nothing serious, I hope?
Mr. B: No, not at all. A little fire got out of control for a bit.
Mr. A: Was there much damage?
Mr. B: No, once it got down to the foundations it went right out.
Mr. A: Was anybody hurt?
Mr. B: Not much. Grandma died very gently from the smoke inhalation.
And I lost barely more than my eyebrows and 15% of my skin.
Mr. A: That's lucky.
Mr. B: Quite right. How was yours?
Mr. A: Fine. Bit of trouble with the car....
> Why would you ask if you don't want to hear the answer?
For lots of people the "How are you?" "Fine." exchange is a ritualized interaction which has become detached from the literal meanings of the words. Like the fact that even non-religious people use a contraction of "God Be With Ye" when parting.
Why ask then. Are there literally no other things you can think of saying that would satisfy the social norms? How about "Hope you had a good weekend."
The problem is that most of us live in a society where we have to lie - or at least, ignore some obvious and unspeakable truths - in order to keep our jobs and income.
Our friend group has a 'people pleaser' and it's fine, most of the time. However, it has become a nightmare (and nearly destroyed our group) because when there is a person that needs to be kicked out of our group for lying/being manipulating/terrible behavior, this person defends them to the end and treats us like the bad guy.
Passive aggression also accompanies 'people pleaser', because the person generally doesn't ever want to tell you what they really want or feel. It's extremely frustrating to deal with a person that behaves like this.
It doesn't pay to please all people all of the time.
It pays to please some people some of the time.
As with a number of other tools and strategies, you have to leverage it at the right moment, the right rhythm. If you don't have an intuitionistic idea of the ratio between truth and small lies that are necessary to functioning. People don't talk to exchange truth about the world, they talk mostly to repeat signals at a constant rhythm which sends a larger signal of "confidence" or "competency" or "trustworthiness" or even "this person is safe and stable to be around".
Yeah, there's a cognitive cost to anticipating other minds unless you're blessed with some capacity that is never stressed. There's also a cognitive cost to maintaining executive function without being swallowed by groupthink.
>people pleasing is selfish and manipulative
Your entire edifice of actions is the selfish and manipulative desires of your morality to instantiate itself in real space.
Interesting. Slightly left-field here, but people with autistic spectrum disorders are often considered to be prone to depression, often because of social anxiety, but this would suggest the opposite is also true, as ASD sufferers generally tend to care less what other people think of them.
From personal experience, as someone whose family and friends reckon is firmly "on the spectrum", I tend to be naturally open and honest in a work environment, showing my emotions, being honest about problems and not (consciously at any rate) trying to please anyone, and I think I'm pretty happy most of the time. And on those few times that I have made social mistakes, for instance saying something out of place in a new job, I become very tense and totally incapable of focusing, which makes me glad that I don't care most of the time.
"white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment"
True story - My dental hygienist is annoying. She complains about her life while she was cleaning my teeth. She only works Wed and so when I rescheduled this time I said I was booked on Wed so I need someone else.
So I told a white lie to protect her feelings. Like it or not we are social creatures. Some people don't have the iron ego of the original author and can be hurt by "honest" remarks. Yes I get that it offends certain peoples sensibilities but it costs nothing to be nice to people.
> Research shows that people who are given instructions for how to lie less in their day-to-day lives are actually able to lie less, and when they do, their physical health improves.
Perhaps you could, you know, link to such a study for those of us interested? OR maybe point out the author so we can look it up ourselves? Searching for "instructions on how to lie less" produces results like "Instructions for filling out IRS Form 1040." Great.
Happiness Index is such a broad topic and everyone's needs so different that it's difficult to say with absoluteness that this is the way. Some people have a panache for social work, some have criminal tendencies, some like to please, some don't care. You can see success in happiness in each of these segments. I still concur with the general idea the authour is trying to convey.
I can think of a few problems with this philosophy right off the bat. It doesn't give us much incentive to act politely. Also the first point reminds me of Sense and Sensibility when Marianne doesn't want to share her sadness with Mrs. Jennings not because she's a people pleaser but because Mrs. Jennings is not tender or sympathetic--all she wants is a supply of gossip.
The author is a woman. I posit that this is a gendered issue. Women who are people pleasers tend to get treated like doormats. Men who are pleasant seem far more able to also stand up for themselves and it seems to be a completely different dynamic socially.
I disagree, I think it is a human tendency because it is often the path of least resistance (short term, but long term can accumulate and be not worth the alternative).
So while culturally it might have higher numbers in women, the numbers in men are high enough to sell books like "No More Mr. Nice Guy.". Good book by the way.
You stated that the negative effect is higher for a woman than a man, thus claiming it to be a gender issue.
kross comment stated that the negative effect is the exact same for a woman or a man, thus disagreeing with your statement. It also states that the amount of women being "pleasers" are higher for cultural reasons.
You could claim that the culture that causes more women to be "pleasers" is an gender issue, in which you two might be in an agreement on that point if you two are also in an agreement on the definition of gender issues.
It isn't a contradiction. They likely generalized 'gendered issue' to nearly one sided, one gender only. Rather than allowing for 'mostly'. I think I agree. The nice guy stereotype really does cover the doormat faked pleasantness of some people. Myself included on bad days.
It's amazing that this is what is now publicly funded "science" or "research". It would make a good moralistic story for 12 year olds in the 19th century, but now people like her get PhDs in this (likely publicly funded), from the same institution that awards PhDs in algebraic geometry or string theory!
Preachers of self-reliance seem to confuse "not letting other people affect you" and "not caring about other people".
Self-reliance and people-pleasing are two separate axes on a Cartesian plane. You can be both self-reliant and people-pleasing.
Being self-reliant, but not people-pleasing is trivial. If you isolate yourself, there is nobody to rely on!
In the same vein, it's easy to be moral and idealistic when alone. The real test is with real people, and whether you are still able to keep those ideals.
Wield both: self-reliance and people-pleasing. Then you will be a force to be reckoned with.
EDIT: Talking about truth and white lie as a dichotomy is childish. They are tools in a toolbox. If you feel guilty because you lied, then you are a slave to the principle of honesty. If you are thinking about which (truth or white lie) is better for the relationship, then you are a master in command of both principles.