Turns out, I'm still a work in progress...

I made an honest mistake not long ago. Nothing major. The kind of thing that happens when you're doing a lot, moving fast, and are human. I caught it. I corrected it. And then I apologized for it about four more times than necessary.

I'm not talking about a genuine reckoning. I'm talking about the kind of apology that keeps going long after the other person has moved on. The kind that's less about making things right and more about making sure no one is disappointed in you. The kind that's really about managing their feelings so you don't have to sit with your own discomfort.

I noticed it afterward. And then I couldn't stop noticing it.

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The Pattern I Didn't Know Was There

Once you see something, you can't unsee it. That's both the gift and the trouble.

I started paying attention to how often I made myself smaller in a given week. How often I softened a thought before I said it out loud. How often I added "I'm sorry" to the front of a sentence that didn't need one. How often I read the room before I decided what I actually thought.

It was a lot. More than I expected. More than I was comfortable admitting.

And here's the strange part: I don't know where I learned this. I can't point to a moment or a person or a rule that was handed to me. It was just there. Woven into the way I moved through the world, quietly doing its job for a very long time. Making me easier to be around, maybe. Making me less threatening, less demanding, less complicated.

Making me less.

I don't know where I learned to shrink. I just know I've been doing it for a long time.

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What People-Pleasing Actually Costs

I used to think people-pleasing was a kindness. A way of being considerate. Putting others first. Nothing wrong with that, right?

But there's a difference between genuine generosity and the kind of accommodation that comes from fear. Generosity gives freely. Fear gives because it can't tolerate the alternative. Someone being upset. Someone pulling away. Someone deciding you're too much or not enough.

Fear gives to manage the outcome. And the cost of that is you.

I've been listening to Jefferson Fisher's podcast lately, and one clip in particular stopped me cold. He talks about how people-pleasers don't actually make others feel good. They make others feel comfortable. There's a difference. Comfort doesn't ask anything of anyone. It just removes friction. And somewhere in the removal of friction, you disappear a little.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1610562106658395

Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet way. In the way that, over time, you stop knowing exactly where your actual preferences are because you've been adjusting to everyone else's for so long. In the way that an honest mistake starts to feel like a personal failure because you've built your sense of safety around being above reproach.

In the way that you sit in a beautiful place. Coffee in hand, dogs at your feet, the kind of morning you chose on purpose. And still feel a low hum of unease because somewhere, someone might be disappointed in you.

That's not kindness. That's carrying something you were never meant to hold.

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I'm Not on the Other Side of This

I want to be honest about where I am, because I think that matters.

I'm not writing this from a place of having figured it out. I'm not going to tell you that I took a long drive down a dirt road and came out the other side with a new relationship to approval. That would make for a cleaner story. It would also be a lie.

What I can tell you is this: I see it now. And seeing it is not nothing.

There's a particular kind of discomfort that comes with noticing a pattern you've had for most of your life. Because you can't unknow it. Every time I catch myself over-apologizing now, or softening something I actually believe, or checking someone else's face before I finish a sentence, I see it. Sometimes I stop. Sometimes I don't. But I see it.

That visibility is the beginning of something. I don't know yet exactly what. But I've learned enough to trust that noticing is not a small thing.

Seeing it is not nothing. Noticing is always the beginning.

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What the Road Has to Do With It

I didn't go looking for this. I went looking for open space and quiet mornings and time that felt like mine. What I found, somewhere along the way, was a version of myself that had more room to breathe.

When you're in a place nobody expects anything from you. Where the only thing in front of you is a long road and your own company and two dogs who could not care less whether you said the right thing at the right moment. Something loosens. Not permanently. But enough to notice the difference.

Enough to think: I want more of this. Not just the miles. The looseness and calm and freedom.

I'm not suggesting the road fixes this. It doesn't. You take yourself with you wherever you go, and I took this pattern right along with everything else. But being away from the usual structures, the usual audiences, the usual expectations, gave me just enough distance to see the shape of it.

And now I can't stop seeing it.

So I'm working on it. Slowly. Imperfectly. With a lot of backsliding and a fair amount of internal commentary that would embarrass me if I said it out loud.

But I'm working on it.

Sometimes a change in perspective can change your life.

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If any of this sounds familiar. If you've caught yourself apologizing for something that didn't need one, or softening a thought before you could quite form it, or checking to make sure someone was okay with you before you let yourself be okay. I'm not going to tell you what to do with that.

I'm just going to say: I see it too.

And I think seeing it is where we start.

Keep Moving.

Rachel