Hi guys! Welcome to episode 249 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast. Thank you for listening!
How many of you listening like to be liked? It’s a silly question, isn’t it? Most of us would say yes to that.
I want to be liked and I see myself as someone that is easily likable. Now, that may sound egotistical but I don’t mean it in that way, I just genuinely love people. I really do. I can find something I love about everyone and easily so. Now, When I get the feeling that someone doesn’t like me, I used to want to make them like me, because I would feel better about myself if everyone liked me. I felt like it meant something about me if they didn’t like me.
I mean, It feels good to be liked, doesn’t it? When you meet someone and you have a bunch in common and you just genuinely enjoy that person, they are probably genuinely enjoying you too. That feels good. But we aren’t always going to be around people that we easily jive with, there will be people that we don’t like or enjoy as much, but we still have to be around them, maybe they are in our peer group, maybe they’re a coworker, could even be someone in our own family, and guess what?
They may not jive with you either, how does that feel? Not as good as being liked. The good thing is, we have options when that happens. We can overcompensate so that we pretend to like them or try to get them to like us and then things are just awkward, you could actively ignore and avoid them, which can also be awkward, or we can just continue to be ourself, let them just be who they are and coexist so to speak. Which one of those options keeps you truer to who you are? Which one of those options are authentic? That’s the one we want. The one where you are who you are and they are who they are.
There is still part of me that needs work in just being ok with not being everyone’s cup of tea. If someone didn’t like me, in the past, I thought, I must have done something wrong or Im not good enough. But that doesn’t serve me and it doesn’t serve you either. That’s like saying because chocolate is universally considered delicious, that everyone should find it delicious. I have friends that don’t like chocolate. Are they wrong? Does that mean chocolate maybe isn’t as good as the rest of us thought? NO, it doesn’t mean anything about the chocolate, and it doesn’t mean that person is wrong, they may be crazy but they’re not wrong. The chocolate doesn’t take offense, chocolate doesn’t stop being good because someone doesn’t like it. When someone doesn’t like the chocolate we don’t make it mean anything about the chocolate, but when someone doesn’t like us, we aren’t good enough or something is wrong with us.
As an interior designer, I have very strong preferences about design. I like neutrals and clean lines, I simply do not feel good living in a space that has a lot of color. I can appreciate it for a little while but it’s not my cup of tea. I have a friend who LOVES color and she finds neutrals very boring. Neither of us are right or wrong we just have preferences.
I had a new client meeting once and the style that this client wanted was very different from my style, I had come as a referral to her and we would have loved to work together when I asked her had she looked at my style because it was very different from hers, she said yes, but she was confident that I could also do her style. I told her I could of course, but that would feel like work and she would have a much better experience working with someone that loved her style as much as she did. We laughed and agreed that would be true. Nothing wrong with her style or my style, neither of us made it mean anything about our style, we just acknowledged it was different and went on our way.
We allow for preferences in every area of our life without making it mean something about us, but when it comes to people, that goes out the window.
When you’re authentic and true to who you are it doesn’t matter what other people think. And if you aren’t someone’s cup of tea, that’s ok too. The harder you try to be liked by them, the harder it will be for them to like you and for sure, the less you’ll like yourself.
You don’t have to love everyone, you don’t even have to like everyone and everyone doesn’t have to like you, and everyone in the world isn’t gonna love you either.
The only person in the world that you MUST love is yourself. If you don’t love yourself,all of your other relationships are going to be really hard.
When you truly love yourself, you treat yourself with respect and don’t tolerate others that do not and your self-worth isn’t tied to what anyone thinks of you. In fact, you will find that it’s pretty easy to be around most people because you’re not making anything they do mean anything about you because it doesn’t.
My challenge to you this week is to start thinking of yourself like chocolate. People would be crazy not to like you, and if they don’t, you’re deliciousness doesn’t change one bit.
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I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
