Soul pleaser was born out of what appeared to be a tragedy at the time.
And that's often the case, something service oriented and something life changing and wonderful often comes out of something that feels very challenging at the time.
I remember when I went away to boarding school that a friend of mine from back home (I grew up in the country in South Australia), her mum died very soon after I moved away from home.
So I was home sick enough, and then my best friend's mum died.
And I remember feeling guilty. I was so upset because it made me afraid that my mum might die. I was so sad for my friend, but equally at the age of 15, I thought
“Mum’s can die when you're young. And that’s the worst thing that could ever happen was is if my mum died."
So anyway, Mum lived for a very long time after that and died in 2016.
And that was the real turning point for me when mum died, because a year earlier when her breast cancer had spread into her lungs and we were overseas and I got the message from my sister, I made a mental note to myself.
I thought, “Right. Mum might not have long left and so I'm going to take her out to lunch every Friday.”
And at the time I was running three businesses. So being a people pleaser meant that if people wanted more of me, I said yes to them. I was answering messages to my clients from the moment I woke up in the morning until the moment I went to sleep at night. And I realise now when I look back, I was burnt out. But at the time I thought I was fine.
That was just how I functioned, I had no idea really.
And I didn't. I didn't take my Mum out to lunch every Friday. You know, I saw her, but I didn't keep that promise to myself. And when she died, I thought “what is wrong with you?” “Why can't you make that a priority?”
And I realised that this need for keeping other people happy and getting approval from people and helping other people improve their lives to the detriment of my own life was people-pleasing.
And I realised that my mum was a serial people pleaser too, and a lot of the illness and her burnout came from that serial people-pleasing. Mum didn’t just please her own family - everybody came to us, everybody came and lived with us if they were in trouble. No matter what the problem was, you could count on my Mum. And she was a nurse right up until she died at 75. She was still nursing. She would go to the patient's funerals; she made friends with their families. She'd be really upset when a patient died.
Mum was an empath and a people-pleaser.
And so was I, and I just realised that what I wanted to do was break the chain for her, for my Nana, for every generation behind me and every female to come in the future to stop this people pleasing, because I was already seeing it in my own daughters.
So that's how Soul Pleaser came about. One day the thought came to me that I used to be a people pleaser and I need to become a soul pleaser. And so, I did it myself and then I decided to help other women do it as well.
In this interview with Joy, I share:
* how we can determine if people pleasing is holding us back from living our happiest life
* the first steps to doing something about it.
If you can relate to this interview, you may be a perfect fit for The Soul Pleaser Program – From People Pleaser to Soul Pleaser.
Click HERE to learn more about the program.
Love Tracy x