Throughout college and into the first couple years of my career, one thing I’ve always struggled with is being authentic. When it came to doing well in internships, classes, jobs, or friendships, I was always someone who tried to make everyone happy. I was a people pleaser, and to an extent, I still am.
While it’s good to be liked, by overly obsessing on being liked by everybody will leave you liked by no one. But how does this conundrum happen?
The truth of the matter is, by pleasing everyone, I was not being authentic – making it especially hard to create deeper connections with people. Leaving me to have very surface level relationships. While a majority of the time this isn’t a huge issue, it has negatively impacted how well I do in persuading people in my career, how close my friends are, or even the image I display online.
Being inauthentic isn’t its own root cause, rather, it was a way of avoiding confrontation and shy away from discomfort. By trying to please everyone and carrying myself inauthentically, I let so many situations slide that made me uncomfortable, treated me poorly, or straight up negatively impacted my well-being. These are situations that I never stood up for myself, I was non-confrontational to the extent that these situations took a toll on my self-respect, career progression, friendships, and relationships.
I’ve lost significant time, money, and opportunity because of being non-confrontational. By being non-confrontation to please others, I was increasingly inauthentic which caused more problems than it solved. I didn’t develop strong personal relationships, I didn’t develop enough personal interests to have a “hobby” or keep myself occupied, and I didn’t develop the connections I needed to thrive.
From a professional perspective, trying please others in my career had numerous negative impacts on me personally. I wanted to highlight a couple aspects that impacted me early in my career.
At 24 I was a recruiter, consulting with early-stage VC-backed tech start-ups in San Francisco. And I was pretty good at it too. So much so that I was a top biller and was booking more business development meetings than anyone else in the office. I was the first one to sign a net-new client when the market went sideways.
But therein lies the issue, I was the youngest person in my office punching above my weight-class. And when people have the sales mentality, they took this as a direct threat and attack on their own ability and performance. People started making comments, blind copying my director on emails, and flat out treating me like crap. It took a huge toll on my confidence and made me feel small. Instead of continuing to operate at the level I was, I pulled back. I put myself in a box that others had created for me. Instead of confronting the problem head-on, I was living inauthentically to please others and not step on toes.
This was short-lived, because the office ended up closing and I was laid off. Confidence shook, I took a job that was a pay cut, misrepresented my benefits, and put me in a hole even deeper than the one I was already in.
From this, I was left distraught. Associating everything about myself and my value with my job. I was left with little self-respect, inauthentic relationships, and confusion – I tried to please everyone, and was still left in this terrible situation.
But how could I possibly get back into my groove and out of a funk?
It took some time to get back on my feet, reconnected with some friends from my college and hometowns, and got back on the saddle. I had to remember “who TF I was” as I like to say.
I needed to confront the issue head on. I knew my worth, and I wasn’t letting anyone tell me what they thought it was. I knew the job I wanted, even if other people had their opinions on the “correct career path.”
Stepping back into serving tables, I remembered how good I was at building and managing relationships. Tapping back into how confident it made me feel in college, I knew I could get what I want.
I applied for a job paying well into six-figures. Got the interview, made it through a couple rounds, and got the verbal offer. Not only that, but I negotiated for the top of the pay range, with confidence. I knew what I wanted from this job, knew it was the industry I wanted to be in, knew that it gave me the hard-skilled experience that I needed. And I took that written offer in stride.
All because I went after what I wanted and negotiated for what I deserved – and accepted nothing less. An additional opportunity that came from this, I was accepted into a top university for my Master of Science program. I turned my life around by going after what I want and will continue building my life in that direction.
Andrew O'Connell 