End the People-Pleasing Cycle: 3 Tips That Actually Work

In this episode of Negotiate Anything, Kwame Christian interviews Amy Green Smith, a life coach and hypnotherapist specializing in women's leadership and difficult conversations. Amy defines people-pleasing as altering oneself to meet others' expectations at a personal cost, distinguishing between adaptive and maladaptive forms based on whether self-worth is outsourced. She introduces the concept of "fawning" as a primitive defense mechanism and uses a metaphor of a house to illustrate how external opinions shouldn't dictate self-worth. Amy also discusses the importance of emotional intelligence in managing reactions to disapproval and offers actionable advice for recognizing and addressing the root causes of people-pleasing, including behavioral, environmental, and subconscious factors. She highlights the concept of borrowed confidence and the belief that we are uniquely broken, and also promotes her Worthy program, a nine-month mastermind for women.