[New Year, New You] Day 14: How to Lose the Need to Be Liked
We’ve been talking about how to peel back the layers of misinformation, opinion, and burning hot lies you’ve been fed and led to believe over the years about the way life works and what you’re capable of, so we can help you find your rebel spirit--the feisty firecracker that’s been burning inside of you since day one!
When you follow the mob, or go with the flow, being careful not to ruffle feathers or rock boats, you can find yourself one day stuck in a socially acceptable spiritual straight jacket. It’s not even very easy to recognize your goals and dreams anymore, or identify your real passions and interests. And if you do, then when it comes time to express them in life to other people, or actually do something about it, you feel frozen and petrified. It’s like you’re standing there with a match in your hand, but too afraid to light the spark of that inner firecracker and let her take up space for fear of offending someone, or being rejected.
Remember earlier in this series, when I talked about sex, chocolate and sunsets? I shared the one thing they all have in common, and explained that this “thing” was sensation–the flutter of energy moving through, on or around you. Sensation is the big spiritual pay check in life, it’s why we do things. It is the thrill of adventure! If sensations were like gemstones, then admiration would be diamonds. It’s the most valuable sensation and the one people are most willing to “pay” for with their time, attention, and self-sacrifice of various kinds.
And yet, one of the tricky things about being liked, or receiving admiration, is that the more you want it and need it, the less of it you’ll get. And any time you changed yourself or sacrificed your goals and values so someone else would “like” you more, you got yourself into a bit of a mess. This article explains how to get out of the trap of needing to be liked, so you can finally start truly liking yourself and loving your life!
Too Much Turn On is a Turn Off
I remember the plastic yellow cup and light blue hair clips I won in kindergarten for being a “good” student. I felt ten feet tall at five years old. I was so special for winning those little prizes. I don’t remember what I had to do for them–sit up straight, answer questions politely, or just not pee my pants, but whatever it was, that yellow cup sealed the deal for me–being “good” feels GREAT!!
The yellow cup followed me around until I moved out of my mom’s house at 17 years old, but the pleasure I got from wanting to be a “good” student, never left. That feeling of being liked, valued, appreciated, important and admired, was much, much harder to get rid of than a plastic, yellow cup! And when I stopped being in kindergarten, it changed to wanting to be a “good” girlfriend, a “good” Mormon, a “good” Buddhist, a “good” Catholic, a “good” wife.
It doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, but it really depends on what someone’s else’s idea of “good” is and if it actually aligns with who you want to be fundamentally as a person. For me, it had a lot more to do with wanting to be liked and admired by other people, than it did wanting to be “good” at something like playing the piano.
I wanted to be what other people thought was a “good” person. But when the “other people” were my Mormon friends, or my pot-speaking friends, it meant I could be very “flexible” at changing who I was and how I behaved and it took me a freakin’ long time to figure out who the heck I was, and what being “good” meant for me.
It was only at around 38-years old that, I figured out I am good. It’s not something I need to work at or prove–it’s who I am. The job for me next was to decide where I wanted to go, how I wanted to live and pick friends along the way who would help me get there.
Interest: Cocaine for the Spirit
There’s a BIG difference between enjoying something and needing something. As soon as you start to feel you need to be liked or admired by someone else, it radically changes your behaviour and often results in your receiving far less admiration and respect than you would have earned if you had just gotten busy being you and doing your thing!
Have you ever been on a date with someone who is too interested in you? It’s not just that they’re interested, they actually have this sticky vibe of “I hope you like me” or “I hope you notice that I’m finding you interesting!” It’s a sensation that’s almost dripping with needyness–a sticky, gooey version of “love” or “admiration.” It’s such a turn off! It’s actually one of the most repulsive feelings ever! It makes you want to crawl under a rock and hide where they won’t see you. On the other hand, when someone is disinterested it’s almost degrading–you feel ignored and unimportant and it can make you feel like you want to blow up and explode in front of their face so they notice you!
This ebb and flow or push and pull of life affects our relationships with each other and our confidence as individuals. When you get the balance right, it’s AWESOME, but when you don’t get it right, it ends up in conflict, upset, or breakdowns of one kind and another, and can be really uncomfortable.
It’s not any better to be needy and clingy than it is to be negligent and avoid things, but when you get the balance or interest right, life can feel really pleasurable and you as a person can feel very peaceful inside yourself. There’s no more push/pull between you and who you want to be, and who you think you have to be to receive the admiration of others.
Take It or Leave It, But Don’t Neglect It or Need It
Let’s look at a less complex example than relationships, where there are at least two sides with their own individual push and pull tugging on the exchange of energy between them. Let’s just take a one-sided situation and look at how this idea could be true in terms of one person’s relationship to food.
Any of you who have been here since my early food obsessed days know that we’re had a lot of discussions on the topic of “food issues” – cravings, bingeing, eating disorders, overeating, under-eating, being food-obsessed. While there are many wild and unhappy places you can sit on this spectrum of your relationship with food there’s only really one that we all yearn for–one that feels really peaceful and calm.
Let’s say you’re out for dinner with friends, and you’re offered a slice of cheesecake. The moment when you can take it or leave it and you’d really be okay either way, is a major victory moment. If you were to take the cheesecake and eat it, but feel guilty, obsessed about what it was doing to your body and worry it was going to make you sick or fat, you wouldn’t really be ok inside your own headspace. Sure, you might be able to eat it politely, and nobody else would know the difference, but anyone who has been food-obsessed, or body focused knows that inside, another battle would be raging–the battle in your own head about whether what you did was good or bad and what you were going to do about it.
Now, if you could leave the cheesecake and not eat it, but feel obsessed for not having eaten it–think you were being a martyr for not having consumed that many calories, and then spent your whole night thinking about what it might have tasted like, you’re not really better off. Sure you didn’t sugar-bomb yourself, but this awesome interview with Anita Moorjani is one of my favorite interviews on the subject of how worry about things often makes it worse, not better.
When you can just sit there in front of your food, at peace, curious to observe the sensations of hunger or thirst in your body, the sensations in your environment, weather, temperature, mood in the room, etc., the people and how they would or wouldn’t be affected by your decisions, and if you could decide in that moment what you want, based on the overall situation, then allow yourself to have it, without dramatic excuses, popular trends, heavy restrictions, or scientifically supported research articles justifying your decisions, then you would have achieved a high level of control over that area of life and your decisions related to it.
That’s the “sweet spot” in your relationship with food, but it’s not that different when it comes to people! Being on either end of the scale (from obsessive need to negligent avoidance) isn’t healthy or satisfying, but somewhere in the middle feels pretty powerful, and is a very empowered and pleasurable way to live.
The Need to Be Liked Is Rather Unlikeable
When your decisions in life are heavily restricted or influenced by your fear of rejection, or your need to be liked by others, give your head a little shake and consider this:
It won’t matter how much anybody “likes” you,
if you haven’t learned to like yourself.
With all those layers of who you’ve been hanging around stuck on your personality stage like dusty puppets in your own personal psychodrama, it’s no wonder so many of us struggle to feel satisfied with who we are.
But if, as we said in Day 10, life flows where attention goes, and your pictures decide how life turns out, then isn’t that proof you’re a pretty powerful person? You won’t rocket your way from self-doubt to self-confidence in 21 days, but you can take some big steps along the way. And if there’s one little secret I’ll leave you with before I let you get on your way today, it’s this:
“The quickest way to become an interesting
person is to show interest in others.”
― Jarod Kintz,
Have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and you can tell they are just waiting for you to stop talking so they can say something about themselves? How about talking to someone that is so wrapped up in themselves they don’t even notice that you’ve been trying for the past 10 minutes to find a moment to end the conversation so you can go about your day? To really truly be a good communicator, and to be happy and engaged in life, you have to be interested in what the other person is saying. This requires active listening and, of course, being present in the conversation.
One of the things that helps you take your attention off how YOU look and what other people think about you is by lookin at other people and being genuinely interested in them, in what they’re doing, feeling, working toward in life, etc. If you take the time to be genuinely interested in other people, see if you notice how it changes your attention and how you feel! See if it feels more pleasurable to be interestED than to be interestING! (You could even just stop and take the time with someone in your home to really slow down and learn more about their day.)
Put aside your distractions and things and just connect and be interested. Then notice how you feel. The more present you become, the more interested you are; the more beautiful and enjoyable life becomes. You won’t worry what other people think about you or if they like you or not. You’re going to feel so engaged and productive, so positive and optimistic that the ones who don’t like you won’t matter anymore and you probably didn’t need ’em!
Do check out the podcast to accompany this blog here. It’s got a few cheeky comments and picker-uppers that I think you’ll appreciate! 😉
Love,
Tera