The people you’ve kept in your little people-pleasing world—where you’re constantly serving them and trying to keep them feeling good all the time—they don’t develop at all, do they?

If anything, they become weaker and more dependent on you over time.

But of course, that’s the point.

This is why I say that people-pleasing is like Munchausen by proxy.

The dark, horrible truth you’re avoiding is that you keep people sick with your people-pleasing—and then you pat yourself on the back and tell yourself you’re a good person for doing it.

You treat them as if they need you, until it becomes true.

Anyone who’s ever worked in rehabilitation, coaching, therapy, medicine—any of these fields—knows that if you really want to help people, you’ve got to hurt them.

Happy and comfortable is not where life improvement happens.

You need to feel guilty, frustrated, angry, and sad in order to make progress.

If you’re constantly cheering people up and trying to keep them comfortable all the time, they get worse—not better.

For people to have a good life, they have to learn to take responsibility for their own decisions.

They have to learn how to process painful emotions, solve their own problems, and become self-sufficient.

People-pleasing causes the opposite of all that growth.

It delays or prevents growth in others.

So when you make people happy, or you help them solve their problems, or prevent conflict from happening, all you’re really doing is weakening them psychologically—so they become more dependent on you, and you get to look like the hero.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: