What I want to share today is that most of us will take turns and redirect ourselves in life. That’s the journey of life. One of my mentors calls this the human experience.
When we need to reroute our paths because either we have changed or maybe even made some bad decisions sometimes the signs and the solutions can show up to redirect us in unexpected places such as a free online quiz.
Once upon a time I took a free online quiz that completely rocked my world and quite honestly directed me to pivot pretty much everything I was doing.
This is that story.
This happened several years ago now.
I was at the time primarily a blogger. I had been creating content and people that I was not related to had started to read it.
Some of that above statement is a lie. A lie or a story I was telling myself.
I was primarily a stay-at-home mom. Something I had never fully intended to be. I had closed my photo studio. I had a running and triathlon hobby and that’s what I wrote about. This blog started mostly for me. It was a project I could work on while my kids were at school in between commitments.
It kept me busy.
But.
I am truly an entrepreneur at heart. Having a job and a career was actually a pretty big part of my identity. I started my first business when I was in grade school. So, when people began to read my blog I began to think. Hmmm how does this blogging thing work.
I really love business. It fascinates me. Not enough to want to go study it more in school. I love learning and don’t really like school. Not having a job or a business was an issue for me. It may not be for you but it was for me.
I created my very own jobby.
Do you know this word – jobby? It’s when your hobby is sort of a job.
I get a lot of value from having work I enjoy. Let all by myself I will create jobs to do and feel good when I do them.
I signed up for an online course with a mentor who taught how to blog well and profitably. I had read a book by this person so I was fairly sure she wasn’t a scam and the registration cost included a live event near where I lived so I gave it a go.
And truly it was very helpful. My blog traffic went way up and I did learn how blogs make money and used those techniques to make my blog more profitable.
The person who taught the course was writing a new book. Included in that book was a personality test. She asked all of us in her course to take the test.
So I did.
The results were that my personality type – she called it a fear archetype was people pleaser.
I laughed. I literally laughed at my desk. Ha! Next.
I have always been told I was pretty much the opposite of a people pleaser. As a kid I was called “bossy.” As I got older this changed into a go-getter, a leader, an innovator, a risk taker, sometimes self-centers and sometimes even a b!tch.
No kidding people told me all the time that triathlon was a selfish hobby.
I laughed about the test and moved on.
Except everybody else in this group was taking the test too and posting that their results were amazing, accurate and spot on and so true they couldn’t believe it.
Was it hype or did I do something wrong?
I took the test again.
Result: People Pleaser.
Okay let’s do it again.
Result: People Pleaser.
So, the long story short.
The test wasn’t wrong. I looked at the questions carefully as I took it the last time. I could see what I was saying that lead to that answer … I began to consider that perhaps I had changed.
What is a people pleaser?
Probably there is more than one definition but I’ll refer to my friend and coach Brenda Florida who specializes in liberating people pleasers. She describes a people pleaser as a person who thinks about others first, prioritizes others needs first, tries to anticipate others needs and fix people and things that seem broken, fights for the needs of others and says yes to everything.
Is being a people pleaser bad?
Yes. I think it can be.
Not because the things you are doing are bad.
Being “of service” and “in service” of others is usually considered a good thing. A very good thing in fact.
People pleasing as a character trait is not the same as being helpful or being in service to others.
As a people pleaser because you put others needs before your own you wear yourself out and burn out. Everybody else gets what they want and you get tired and angry.
This either goes one of two ways. You can figure it out and get some balance or you can martyr yourself and get burnt out, tired, resentful, unhealthy and bitter.
This quiz result stunned me
I was stunned by this result.
Me a people pleaser. Go figure.
How could I … who had been called bossy and selfish for a lot of my life have morphed into a people pleaser?
I actually didn’t do much about it though because at the time I thought my life was humming along pretty much okay.
I mostly ignored it.
I saw it.
Ignored it.
I told myself that I had little kids and this was a season of my life.
This was accurate I did have small kids. They did need me and I was committed to be there for them. But time passes and kids grow up.
I did begin to pay a little bit attention and notice where I was putting others ahead of myself. I paid more attention to those things and make small changes.
Those small changes eventually became big changes and I’ll share more about those in other posts.
For today this is enough.
Answers and support may show up in unexpected places
For me this change away from being a people pleaser started with a free online quiz that gave me a result that I thought was wrong.
You never know who might show you what you need to see.
I have a lot of examples of this synchronicity in my life. Like when I got the best parenting advice I ever got from a janitor in an elevator exactly when I needed it most.
When I am ready to learn something new if I keep my eyes open sometimes a clue or a teacher will show up. I just need to be open to seeing it.
I share this so that if you are in a spot where you feel like something in your life needs some changing I want to you to feel that answers may be out there for you. In places where you might not expect it.
If you are curious this is the quiz I took all those years ago. And I took it again as I was writing this post and I did not get people pleaser. I have no relationship with this teacher any more. So don’t feel pressured to buy her book or program based on this article. I don’t even know if she teaches what I learned from her years ago.
So, here’s the question:
Is there something in your life that you could use some help, answers or support to figure out or make a change?
If you want some help figuring it out let me know.