Trying to be something or someone you are not is exhausting. I should know – I did my best to hide who I really am for much longer than I’d like to admit. 

I didn’t do this on purpose, as much as I did it out of self-preservation. Because like many women, I learned very early on that who I was – my very presence and essence – was triggering and problematic for a lot of people around me.

When you’re young you will do your best to navigate scenarios like this. I immediately took it upon myself to ensure the people around me were comfortable, even when it was painfully confining for me.

I learned how to contort, shrink, and hide so much of who I am to ensure the people around me never felt threatened. I put their needs, feelings, and contentment before my own. I did this so often that it became an unconscious reflex, and the primary way I related to everyone in my life. 

Over time, I lost touch with the truth of who I really am because I’d been living as a fraction of myself for so long. 

This is how people-pleasers are created. It’s how women learn to normalize living in denial – by perpetually rejecting their own needs, tolerating a lot of crazy behavior from others, and working really hard for acceptance, love, and connection.

You don’t have to be a genius to see that this is problematic. You might even see yourself in my story. 

So how do you find a way out of this? How do you stop pleasing everyone around you at the expense of yourself?

How do you stop living life for everyone else, and instead start living life for you?

If reading these words brings up a pang of guilt for you, or a familiar fear of being seen as selfish, you’re not alone. Women are taught and conditioned from a very young age to take care of everyone around them. It’s very likely that what I’m sharing with you here flies in the face of how you were raised.

But maybe you’re a woman who reads these words and wants to stand up and holler “GET ME OUT OF THIS!” because you’re exhausted. Maybe you feel resentful more often than you’d like. Maybe you’re so ready to find a different way of living and relating and working because you’re feeling fried, and burnout is just around the corner.

What is the solution?

Honestly, there is no quick fix, magic pill, or one simple easy thing you can do to step out of this tired and depressing dynamic. And if your fear of ruffling feathers and making changes is greater than your desire to liberate yourself from all of this, then you might not be ready. And that is okay!

Because this isn’t simple. And the solution is unique for each and every woman. This is because the solution lives within you.

The way out of the people-pleasing, self-erasing dynamic that has you trying desperately to be someone who you’re not, is two-fold:

1. Get radically honest with yourself. 
2. Give yourself radical permission. 

When it comes to Radical Honesty, there are some powerful questions you can ask yourself to begin peeling away the denial and numbness that has covered up the real you. And if you’re courageous enough to answer them as sincerely as possible, you will begin to feel and see the real you emerge. (I can’t tell you how good this feels!!)

If you could be, do, or have absolutely anything your heart desires, what would you choose for you? What is important to you? What do you need? What do you want? Where are you being called in your life? Are you listening to and honoring yourself? If you could change anything in your life right now, what would you change? What kind of woman do you want to be?

Radical Permission is the second piece. The idea is to focus on allowing yourself to be fully, completely, unabashedly yourself. This includes your gifts, but also your quirks, your messy bits, the parts of yourself you might have grown accustomed to hiding or keeping secret, and especially the aspects of yourself you have believed were unlovable in any way.

Instead of conforming to what others want and think you should be, what would it be like to let yourself love what you love, want what you want, be who you really are, and feel good? What would it be like to live your life for you? To let yourself acknowledge you were meant for more? To love yourself the way you’ve always wanted to be loved? To be that kind of woman?

Radical Honesty and Radical Permission require courage. To be ongoingly honest with yourself and daring enough to be all of who you really are requires a certain set of tools and inner shifts that can be challenging at best to acquire on your own.

But both are essential for any woman who is ready to honor herself truly, deeply, and fully. 

Because there will be times when you revert to people pleasing or trying to be everything to everyone but yourself. There will be times when old conditioning and patterns reemerge and you forget who you are, who you are not, and that you now show up differently for yourself.

There will be times when you will question yourself, or want to hide, or when you will choose comfort over necessary change. Because you are human. And because transformation and change are not a clear cut, linear, once and done kind of things.

But if you are over living your life like it belongs to someone else…

And if you are ready to embrace a life that celebrates and deeply supports all of you…

Radical Honesty and Radical Permission will help you to become the self-honoring woman you are meant to be.

Being true to yourself is the inner revolution that changes everything. Holding yourself in the highest regard – in every area of your life – puts you back in alignment with the life you are meant to live.

It allows you to become the woman you were always meant to be.

If you’re clear that you are meant for more – extraordinary even – and you’re no longer wish to be like everyone else but instead want to be the most brilliant, delighted, masterful version of YOU, then remember this:

You are not wired for common, mainstream, typical or standard. You will never be truly satisfied with average. Trying to be like everyone else will only result in a deep disrespect of you. 

You, dear woman, get to live an amazing life – a life that reflects, supports, and celebrates YOU. You get to have that! But you must choose it for yourself – again, and again, and again.

This is what I am choosing for myself. And it’s what I am wishing for you.

PS: Grab my free resource on “Radical Permission” here!