As much as I don’t want to, I identify as a recovering people pleaser. A recovering “yes-man”. Since I was a little kid I wanted to please others around me, I wanted to be liked, I wanted others to be happy and I wanted my parents to be proud. Saying yes when I really wanted to say no sometimes looked like maintaining peace because I was deeply afraid that people would leave if I rocked the boat. And other times it looked like filling my calendar with so much stuff — saying yes to every invitation just so that I wouldn’t have to spend a moment alone with myself.
I’ve been face to face with this lesson of prioritizing myself and my needs dozens of times — all in different disguises and scenarios. I understand that I continue to face this lesson because I have not yet fully learned it yet. But I feel it deep in my bones that I am getting closer than ever before.
For the past 7 months I have taken a hiatus, a mental health leave, from my online coaching business. I have been spending more time with myself (it’s getting less and less scary) and practicing boundaries and saying no more than ever in my life. It’s been deeply uncomfortable AND exactly what I needed to realize where I want to go next.
In this episode I unpack the winding-twisting road of this hiatus, the emotional waves of embarrassment, the strategies I used to protect my time (and how you can too) and ultimately the deep trust that I’ve cultivated in myself — knowing that when I create the space all the answers I need are already inside of me, waiting to be heard.
Share this post