This month in my yearlong small group coaching program Turned-On Living we are looking at patterns of being “nice” and perhaps “too nice.” We are looking at whether ”nice” is honest.

May is the Anti-People Pleasing month in Turned-On Living. Every month has a theme in service of creating a turned-on life.

For sure learning how to say no is necessary to say yes to life and what you really want. And speaking up is required to live a healthy life.

And yet it is not easy to change these patterns. I have struggled with elements of people-pleasing my whole life. I’m getting better every year at being real and am so enjoying being with a group of women on this yearlong journey.

How about you? Are you sometimes “too nice”? And does becoming less nice mean “toughening up” or just loving yourself more?

If you want to look at your own people-pleasing patterns, and what it takes to change them, I highly recommend these resources:

• The book Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty… and Start Speaking Up, Staying No, Asking Boldly, and Unapologetically Being Yourself by Aziz Gazipura. You can find Not Nice and all the other great books we are using during our yearlong journey on the Turned-On Living 2023 Bookshop.org list. (Shout out to Bookshop.org, a socially conscious way to buy books online and support indie bookstores!)
• This piece on Chief.com, which has hit home for a few of my coaching clients: Respect Me, Maybe? How ‘Soft’ Language Could Be Hurting Your Career. I work as a Guide for Chief, so I get a lot of their great content in my email inbox, and like to pass along the best wisdom.
• From Kara Loewentheil of Unfuck Your Brain, this podcast episode on people-pleasing.

All of these resources will provoke you. Books and podcasts are great, and…

If you want one-on-one support to work through your people-pleasing patterns in service of your turned-on life, you can reach out to see if I have space for a new client in my coaching practice.

If you would like to do this work with a group of awesome women dedicated to their own personal growth, you can put yourself on the waiting list for the next cohort of Turned-On Living. I will start talking with folks in September to form another special group to kick off in 2024.

Thoughts? Leave them in the comments!