I want you to like me. I have zero shame in admitting that.
I want you to like me as a person, I want you to like my books, my keynote talks, my website, this picture of me with my outrageously adorable dog, Ace…you get the point. I sincerely want you to like me and everything about me.
There is an important distinction though: I don’t need you (or anyone) to like me.
The key word in that sentence is: Need.
The need to be liked is one of the most self-destructive beliefs in existence. Yes, I want people to like me, but if I needed people to like me, then I would desperately do anything that I could to fulfill that need.
I would avoid having challenging conversations with people, I wouldn’t honor my boundaries, I would constantly say “yes” when what I need to say is “no”, I would allow people to treat me any way that they saw fit, and worst of all, I would say/do/be anything that I believed would gain me the approval of other people.
Case in point:
❌ In college, I forced laughter out of my lungs when my dorm mates made sickening racist jokes.
❌ I wrote a long email to a woman who unsubscribed from my mailing list, basically begging her to stay and that I would change my emails from that point forward.
❌ I agreed to a free speaking engagement on a Saturday to talk about a topic that I didn’t even care about, and I ended up missing my daughter’s first-ever swim class.
Sadly, there are more examples from my past where I sacrificed my dignity, values, and self-respect in hopes of being universally liked (I’ll mercifully spare you from reading them). Simply put, I’ll just say this: that is not the way to live a meaningful life.
Speaking of meaningful lives–do you know what Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and even Jesus all had in common?
They had people who didn’t like them. A lot of people, in some cases.
If those people couldn’t achieve the impossible goal of being universally liked, what hope is left for you and me to do it?
To be clear, this post isn’t about being the person who says, “I don’t give a damn if people like me or not—sorry, not sorry!”, and then use that as cover to be an insufferable jerk to everyone you meet.
This is about being kind while having boundaries, choosing self-respect over chasing approval, and most of all, wanting to be liked without needing it.
I hope you liked reading this article (but, Ace and I will be okay if you didn’t ❤️).