You Don’t Like Me and I Don’t Care

I love a quote and one of my all-time favourites is one by Regina Brett and it goes like this…“What other people think of you is none of your business”.

I’m pretty sure every single one of us knows at least one people pleaser. They often demonstrate the typical signs of bending over backwards and breaking their backs in the process to please people in their lives and even people who really, in the grand scheme of things, don’t matter all that much to them anyway. They never say no, no matter how ridiculous the request may be, they work late not because they care all that much about their career but because they feel bad, they will let you call them stupid and then send you a greeting card to apologise. And sadly in their quest to be liked so desperately these people pleasers are often the people we end up disrespecting the most.

Maybe you are the people pleaser type, maybe you’re not, but odds are, you can relate at least a little to the desire to be well-liked. After all who doesn’t want to feel accepted, respected, and appreciated? It is part of what makes us human, but I ask at what cost to your happiness?

I myself am a bit of a marmite character. People usually love me or hate me and over the past 27 years of my life I have come to love this about myself and have learnt that it is actually a good sign if there are some people in this world who don’t accept or agree with me, my personality and my beliefs. Accepting the fact that not everyone is going to like me has allowed me to be a free and far more honest person. People’s judgments have no bearing on me because I recognise they are entitled to their opinions just as I am entitled to mine and in this life, which is so very precious and so fleeting, I haven’t the time to waste on people who don’t care for me or bring me joy.

I’m not suggesting that I think it is ok to be rude, inconsiderate, or disrespectful to people who might not like me, I’m just saying I don’t waste time on these people. I don’t beat myself up if someone doesn’t like me. It is part of life and it wouldn’t do for us all to be the same. When you accept this you unburden yourself of a lot of social stress; stress that impacts your happiness and your own wellbeing.

For the people I love I would do anything. Go to the ends of the earth and back again and ask for nothing in return. I’m a deeply loyal and loving person when it comes to the people who matter to me, I’m a good person with a good heart but I refuse to waste any energy thinking about or agonising over people who do not matter to me, if you don’t like me then I really don’t care and I make no apology for that.

When you let go of the need to please people you become true to yourself. Constantly changing to please is an exhausting and pointless exercise that will leave you feeling empty and unfulfilled. If someone doesn’t like the true authentic you then that is their loss and you simply don’t need that type of negativity in your life. Without the pressure to please you will become candid, honest and fearless and more importantly you will become the real you!