I am a recovering people pleaser
So many business owners (including myself) tend to be people pleasers. This trait usually causes crippling overthinking, overgiving and insecurity.
The main issue I have run into as a people pleaser is “overgiving”. I learned the term “overgiving” from a coach I hired in 2023 (my coach was Liesl Drought!). Overgiving is similar to the feeling of eating one bite too many when you are already too full. Overgiving as a business owner usually is born out of codependency and worrying about how you are perceived by other people as a business owner or leader.
Overgiving led me straight to burnout and I lived in the state of burnout for years…just scraping by. Being in a state of burnout caused me to be reactionary and I also was constantly trying to overcompensate to make people perceive me as a good person, a good boss or whatever. I was pretty miserable and every quiet moment I had was filled with dreadful thoughts about how I could make people happier. Eventually I knew something had to change. My coach helped me to see that my overgiving was leading me down a path of personal destruction and if I wanted a better existence, I needed to fight back.
You may wonder what “overgiving” looks like…here is what it looked like for me…
I was organizing events to get the team together over and over trying to make people happier. I thought if I could keep giving they would enjoy life and work more.
Creating multiple work opportunities to create excitement about work and make people like things more everyday.
Giving gifts and encouragement when they weren’t really deserved to try to make people feel better.
Thinking of ways to make people happy that didn’t seem happy (when people were grumpy and rude at work, I would think I needed to overcompensate to help them feel better).
The list goes on from there.
Here is what eventually happened:
My overgiving created an atmosphere and environment of backwards expectations. The people around me that I was “overgiving” to started to expect more and more from me and I was unable to keep up which made my mental state break down further. I ultimately became resentful and resentment is not something that can remain hidden. I would hear people say things like “I am not encouraged enough” or “there aren’t enough team hangouts”...and I was so confused because I was constantly shouldering those opportunities and trying to get people to get on board. I would try to be their friend and that also ended up causing a lot of harm for me (and them).
Eventually I stopped. I had no choice. Something had to change. I realized it was not my responsibility to make people “happy”. Happiness and joy is something an individual must take on for themselves and happiness and joy do not come from external things. A healthy work environment has a team that encourages one another and creates opportunities for relationships. If the team only relies on the leadership to provide these opportunities, it is just a ticking time bomb headed for resentment.
I realized that my only true roles required of me in the business were (and are):
Pay my team well and on time.
Provide a safe, clean and inviting work environment.
That is all I absolutely have to do. When I started to understand this and I stopped overgiving…something happened. Some people were very unhappy and they could not recover…but the salon as a whole started to become healthier. It did take time. It did hurt a bit and it took me many attempts to let go of my overgiving.
They say once you have awareness, you cannot unsee it. I have seen that overgiving and trying to make everyone happy backfires and ends up hurting everyone involved. Creating a healthy work environment is about giving and receiving and loving but not overgiving and driving yourself to burnout.
I do want to qualify that the opposite of “overgiving” is not doing nothing. As a business owner, I am part of a leadership team in the business and we constantly work on finding ways to empower and uplift the team. We also are careful to not overgive and create the wrong environment for growth and relationships.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it!
What areas are you overgiving?
So much love to you!
Melanie
xxo