Are you someone who would give all your water away to take care of someone else? Why would you do it? What if you need some water and don’t have any left for yourself?
Most of us have grown up in a culture that teaches us to put everyone else’s needs in front of our own.
In fact, we get lots of praise and compliments for making such great sacrifices for others.
This approval feeds the need to put others first for many of us because we want to be liked. Approval from others is high on our list of things that make us feel better about ourselves. We not only want others to have a good opinion of us, we need others to have a good opinion of us in order to like who we are.
Have you ever noticed that when you need to be liked by others you will even put the needs of people you don’t even like before your own and then become resentful because you did it?
How many times have you loaned money to someone you really didn’t want to loan money to – money you were pretty sure you might not get back and that you actually needed to pay your own bills – because you just couldn’t say no? And how mad were you that they had the nerve to ask you for it?
How often do you pretend to like someone to their face, even helping them when helping them is hurting you, and then gossip about them behind their backs afterwards?
Here’s the deal. They have a right to ask for all of your water and you have a right to say no. But as you and I both know, it’s almost impossible to say no when you have such a great need for approval from others. You probably even worry about what others will think of you if this person tells them that you refused to help them when they needed it. You surely don’t want to risk that, do you?
The need for approval from others is one big trap.
Some of us put others first because we’ve been convinced by society that we would be thought of as selfish if we were to put ourselves before others. For those of us who worry about what others think of us, we will put others wants and need before ours even when it hurts us to do it so that others will see us as a good person.
People who willingly give all their water away are often referred to as people pleasers. Have you ever heard that term?
Like me, you may have been taught that you’re a better person when you take care of everyone else before yourself. And like me, you may have noticed that there wasn’t much left over for you after taking care of them. And that more often than not leads to some kind of resentment.