You said what you said, that's it!

Often time as a genuinely caring individual, we tend to think with our hearts and not with our heads. We over extend ourselves so much to the point where we deplete ourselves of our own amazing energy, while tending to people who more times than not, do not deserve our energy. We are so genuine that we are always willing to readily sacrifice ourselves at any cost, even when we recognize that we should be doing the complete opposite. As much as we give, we never equally receive and while it's never about doing acts of kindness with the intention to always receive, it is very imperative that we maintain an equal balance of our masculine and feminine energies, as a lack in either of these areas can disrupt our overall flow of stable energy. While there are numerous end results that stem from maintaining a "people pleasing" mentality, the most significant effect is the blockage that occurs in the throat chakra from the suppression of our own voice which we deliberately ignore. We think that in silencing our voice in order to cope with the energetic drain that we experience from continuously helping others, that we are doing a good deed in serving them while not hurting them emotionally. But, really we are only creating a pathway to our own downfalls and hurting ourselves. The reality of it all is that the people that we continuously go out of our way for often time begin to slowly become ungrateful for the things that we do for them out of sincerity. The truth is that they become too comfortable in knowing that you will always come through for them by any means and so they try to latch onto your energy to maintain this type of access to you. We refer to these types of individuals as "energy vampires." In exchange for your time, love, and listening ear they leave you emotionally exhausted and while we've placed our own needs on hold to help them out, we contribute to our own downfall as we fall behind in one or more areas of our lives. As much as it bothers us on the inside, we fail to verbally express it because we do not want to feel that we have let down or hurt those that we care about. However, it is very important that we understand that the only person that we hurt when we constantly put our lives on the back burner for others, are ourselves. Although there is nothing wrong with lending a helping hand to other people, the problem occurs from the lack of love, time, and energy that we do not first pour into ourselves, "For you can not pour from an empty cup." The problem also occurs from the lack of self-expression that we grow accustom to and as a result, begin to bottle up a huge sum of low-vibrational energies in the form of our emotions. Whether we realize it or not, these low-vibrational energies leave a huge impact on us as overtime we can become insecure from feeling that we have no voice, experience a whirlwind of negative emotions, and begin to attract what we allow ourselves to be surrounded by (energy vampires/low vibrational individuals.) To all of my genuine souls out there in the world that suffer from having a "People pleasing" mentality, I want you to know that you are loved, recognized, and that your current situation does not have to remain the way that it is. Eventually there is an end! There are two main methods of how it can end from personal experience. We either continue to be pushovers until we are extremely fed up which would keep us stuck in the repeated cycles or we decide to act upon our worth immediately and put an end to it. The choice is yours, but know that you have the power to change and shape your reality. But it starts with knowing that you have the option to put up with certain situations. Based upon my personal experience, the easiest way to start to put an end to people pleasing is to start distancing yourself from those individuals that require too much from you and drain you emotionally. It does not have to be a complete cut off, you can slowly begin to distance yourself from that person just as long as you are eventually placing a barrier between you and that particular individual. By distancing yourself, not only are you making yourself unavailable to that individual, but you are also taking your power back by choosing yourself first. This is a huge non verbal statement to those that you are separating from as they can feel the sudden shift in energy and recognize that you are no longer making yourself readily available to them. (They say that 70-93 percent of all communication stems from body language!) The next step is to create some boundaries based upon your priorities that you will begin to implement from that moment forward. There are multiple ways in which you can go about expressing your boundaries, but if you struggle with self-expression like I did then I would suggest that you practice communicating your boundaries. What this can look like, is simply saying "No" or if you still choose to help this individual, letting them know that you will see what you can do AFTER you finish everything it is that you need to do! Maintain your stance regardless of the manipulation that they try to place on you. You said what you said and that's it! The more you practice communicating your boundaries, the easier it will naturally become just like the act of repeating daily affirmations. You will also instinctively be able to say "no" without providing explanations which you do not owe a soul anyway and when you can naturally say "no" without explanation, you will typically be able to start vocalizing how you truly feel about everything else. Especially in regard to how people treat you!! You have to release the fear of hurting other peoples feelings. Were your feelings considered when they decided to take advantage of you? It is inevitable to hurt someones feelings when you go from overextending yourself at any cost to no longer making yourself readily available for them. It just happens! They will always feel some type of way initially, but they eventually get acclimated to it. Of course there will be those individuals that are not accepting of your new boundaries, these are the people that you need to release as you guys can no longer serve a purpose for each-other at that point. The last point that I want to emphasize is that along with this change, also comes releasing the old. In order to fully move in a new direction, you have to let go and release everything prior to it. I say this to say that you will need to also begin to release all of the built up low-vibrational energies that you have stored for so long as a "people pleaser." One of the ways that I decided to release these energies was not only through meditation, but owning my truth and bringing awareness to people about past things they do and/or still do that bother(ed) me. These acts alone have brought so much peace into my world. If you are not one for confrontation, then there are other methods that you can use such as journaling, exercising, healing the appropriate chakras, etc. The choice is yours!