People pleasers are more interested in pleasing others than in taking care of their own needs and concerns. They usually say ‘yes’ when they really mean ‘no’, because they’re afraid of letting others down or upsetting them.

Plenty of guys that I talk with fall into this category of people pleasers. They’re the ones that usually are so attentive to the needs of others, most especially intimate partners, that they neglect themselves. People pleasers who spend their time and energy trying to make others happy – to the detriment of their own happiness – are on a crash course for unhappiness.

People pleasers usually end up stuffing their anger, or intermittently exploding on others, or both. Anger and frustration builds up, and, over time, it needs an outlet. It usually comes out periodically, when it should have a ongoing release valve in the form of good communication with others.

Learning to say ‘no’ is essential for people pleasers. This is the hardest part. Saying ‘no’, for people pleasers, risks a rejection by others who people pleasers think don’t want to hear their ‘no’. It’s a risk. In the mind of the people pleaser, it can be terrifying to say ‘no’. But, like many other things, the reality is often quite different from our fantasy. Usually, people can accept the ‘no’ you give them, once you summon the courage up to finally spit it out.

Here are some more tips to stop people pleasing:

1. Draw a line in the sand: Develop healthy boundaries, and learn what you will do, and what you won’t. Assert those boundaries without compromise.
2. Spend less time with people who drain you: “Takers” are attracted to “people pleasers”, and vice versa. Part of recovery from people pleasing is renegotiating friendships that function on you giving and them taking. Relationships need to be about mutual giving and receiving, and if you feel like it’s only one way (going their way!), it may be time to drop the friendship or spend less time with them. Why hang out with takers or energy vampires anyways?
3. Learn what you want: So you can be firm with others and take a stand to get what you want.
4. Don’t be afraid to say ‘no’: You probably won’t lose friends if you try, and if you do, don’t worry – see Tip #2.
5. Communicate more effectively: You don’t need to get angry to communicate to others what you want or don’t want.
6. Know this cycle can be broken: It’ll take time, effort, and a commitment to doing things differently from now on, but it’s changeable.

We learn how to people please at an early age, and just because we’ve been dealing with this for most of our lives, it certainly doesn’t mean we have to continue to. There is help, and recovery is possible. I know. I used to be a people pleaser, and not doing it is a hell of a lot better.

It’s ubiquitous and it’s stressful. It seizes you and drains you. It leaves you longing for the good old college days, where responsibility was minimal and adult expectations hadn’t set in. We’re talking about time strain. Time, like money, is a finite resource. We only have so much of it, and what we do with it is totally up to us. Even when we think we’re enslaved to it, we’ve still made choices to absolve ourselves of it.

What to do? The crisis of not enough time is one that needs careful attention. As a psychotherapist, I help people take their time back, and uncover the things that keep them enslaved to time and their busy lives.

Too many things, too little time

As Americans, we’ve gotten so much busier. No longer is the 40-hour workweek the standard. It’s more like 45, 55, and 70 hour workweeks for some. It’s become more difficult for many to make ends meet without two people earning a living, trying to provide childcare, and find time for themselves.

In some ways, the recession has allowed us to take a hard look at how we invest ourselves, our time and our money. Many Americans are choosing to spend less time working, and more time investing in the things they value, like their kids, family, travel, etc.

Let’s talk about six things you can do plug the time drain in your life, and to start to reel your schedule back in:

1. Identify what you really value: are your activities and actions aligning with the things you value in life? If not, it may be time to make an action plan to get those things to align (activities/behaviors and values). If you’re unhappy at work, is it reasonable to work less, or to look for something else entirely? What are the blocks to get your values to line up with your activities/behaviors?
2. 

   Booked Solid?

   Get time-organized: this one is a no brainer. If you’re seeping time, and don’t know where it’s going, maybe you can make yourself more accountable. Here’s some tools to help: designer David Seah produces these fine organization tools, where you can start to hold yourself accountable on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Teux Deux is a sleek, no frills online to-do list. And Google had plenty of products, from online apps, a calendar, and other tools to get you organized. Also, TSheets tracks your time online, like expenditures, so you know how and when your time is being used. And you’ll be surprised how much time you’ve spent on YouTube once you start.

3. Read the previous post on saying “no” to commitments to others, and learn to have more free time and not feel guilty doing it.
4. Prioritize and carve out time for yourself, even if it’s only five or ten minutes a day to do some sitting meditation. Without time for yourself, you’re less likely to be effective to all the other demands of your day. You’re teaching yourself to be able to “input” as well as “output” to others, which is hard for many guys to do.
5. Ask for help! If you can’t handle everything, don’t be so proud that you don’t ask for help. No one cares, except you. Enlist others to help where you need it, and don’t be shy. People are more than happy to help, as long as you don’t take advantage of them.
6. And, make good time for sleep. Sleep is the great equalizer when you get it, and will undermine everything else if you don’t. Get your 6-8 hours of sleep a night (some people need more than others). When you prioritize sleep, as well as yourself (see tip 4), you’re creating a very effective foundation to be your most effective at juggling the myriad things/people/situations that will absorb your time, including work. Do this one above others. Get some good nightly sleep.

Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to experience more feelings of “centeredness” and less feelings of being scattered. You’ll be able to take back your life and time, rather than continue to feel like you’re catching up to it. Good luck, and let me know how it goes. E-mail me directly on the “Contact” page above.

You’re a busy guy. You’ve got tons of responsibilities: work overload, family duties, chores and to-do lists, time with your wife or girlfriend, time with your kids, working out, having a beer with a buddy… the time commitments can be endless. Where does it end? When you can sit back and breathe, do you ever feel overwhelmed and like you’re burning the candle at both ends?

Stress has many components, and for guys who have a hard time saying “no” to others, it can seem much worse. I know. As a recovering “nice guy”, it was really hard for me in the past to say ‘no’ to others, when they would ask something of me. As I’d take on more and more commitments, I would overwhelm myself, and either generally not be of use to the people asking (by dragging my feet on something), or by generally internalizing a lot of anger at them, and at myself for not getting what I wanted.

If we can learn to say ‘no’, we take the power back that we’ve given others. Having expendable time in your life will be something you create consciously, instead of reactively (and through fear) making commitments to others when you don’t really want to.

I think we can’t say ‘no’ to commitments because we don’t want to let down the other person, because if we do, then they’re mad or disappointed in us, and who wants that? When we give others power over us, to overly praise or reject us, then our fate kind of lies in their hands. If we can learn to get ourselves to the point where it’s o.k. to to say ‘no’, and check it out with the other person if we need to (“I’m afraid if I say ‘no’ to you, I’d disappoint you. Did I?”). If we start seizing back the ‘no’ we mean to communicate, and state it with empathy and not anger, we’ll ultimately get a lot father in our lives.

Through many conversations with women and dating coaches, stories of disgruntled men trying to keep dates going with a woman often come up. Guys try their hardest, think things are going well, and then – bam – it’s over.  “How did that happen? Things were going so well?” you might ask yourself. Or, “She seems to have just kind of lost interest in me.” The dating post-mortem is usually difficult to assess: “was it something I did?” “Did she seem to like me?” “Did I see the signs?” “Was there just no “chemistry?”

Dating is hard enough without shooting yourself in the foot first. There are different behaviors that us guys can unknowingly get into – between dates one and the end – that drive disgruntled women away. So, first off, knowing what these behaviors are is one thing; taking a look in the mirror, and working to change some of these possibly repellant behaviors is something else.

The early dating stages are a testy time. They’re like a petri-dish, and it’s a process of observation to see if there will be relationship germination. Wouldn’t it be great if you could control some of the factors involved in it’s growth (and, no, I don’t think you’re bacteria).

Let’s take a look at some of those red flag raising behaviors. In the spirit of promoting more successful dating for men, here are the most repugnant ways guys chase women away while dating (or the “what not to do” list).

• Saying or doing controlling things to her
• Talking about or (joking about) proposing in the early dating rounds
• Talking about your ex-wife or girlfriend constantly
• Invalidating your new date, by joking about/being sarcastic about what she’s wearing, how she looks, her hair, etc.
• Thinking you’re in a relationship with her, and she’s not thinking this way. Not accurately gauging the right time to check it out with her to see if her feelings match.
• Inviting yourself to her activities
• Wanting to get in with her people immediately (i.e. asking if you can meet family, friends)
• Turning into someone else around other people: the “social chameleon” (as my friend calls it)
• Treating service staff at restaurants poorly (this is an obvious no-no)
• Constantly needing to boast or puff yourself, your accomplishments, your car, your wealth up
• Smothering her: this can take take many forms – if she distances herself, you can be sure this smothering instinct might be activated and set on “stun”.
• Asking about her guy friends, in order to assess for “mate poachers” (you know, other dudes who want to steal your girl)
• General narcissism: “it’s all about me”
• Not asking about her, or “it’s all about me”
• Talking about yourself constantly, or “it’s all about me” (seeing a trend here?)
• Working way too hard (if she’s not interested) in the beginning stages (overly nice guys need to watch this one)
  • Examples include, but are not limited to:
    • Putting together furniture
    • Helping her move
    • Offering child care to her kids
• Trying to be a “husband” too quickly (but then bailing out on the promises you made)
• Not working through previous relationship issues, or rebounding, which will totally bleed onto your behavior with her.
• Wanting to have her meet your kids too early/wanting to meet hers.
• Wanting to talk about your feelings too early: premature disclosure
• Asking for a sleep over too early, or physical affection too early when she’s not ready
• Poor boundaries: a blanket red flag encompassing a lot of behaviors.
• Asking her to meet your friends, family, coworkers too early
• Overtexting, or e-mailing her constantly, usually before she’s had a chance to respond.
• Asking about her previous relationships too early (not good!)

There are surely 1,001 other red flags we could talk about, but I tried to come up with the big ones for you. These, at the worst, could communicate to her that you’re a stalker, and at the least, could communicate that your psychological or emotional issues have gotten the best of you and there’s emotional seepage. If that’s the case, seek some help for the things that may be undermining your chances of dating success, because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Women do enjoy nice dinners and fun companionship, and are attracted to these things, but they’re more repelled by red flag behaviors. Consider if you might be doing some of these things, and make the changes that will help fortify your successful dating practice.