People, please.

Have you ever seen the movie Inception? 

If you haven’t seen it, for the purposes of this blog post, all you really need to know is that there is a lot of screen time dedicated to people experiencing a dream within a dream. Kind of like a dream kaleidoscope. A dream onion with many layers. A dream parfait, if you will.

Anyways, some of the most exciting times in that movie are when someone “wakes up” from a dream, and the viewer is forced to ask - are they really woken up? Or are they in the next layer of dreaming?

I think about Inception a lot when I think about inner work and growth. Here’s why.

For every action there’s an equal, opposite reaction.

My experience is that most people relate to their subconscious as though it’s that copier in the office that jams a lot. It’s necessary. You have to interact with it every day. It makes your life significantly more annoying. You really wish it would get fixed already.

And so, people work on the parts of themselves driven by the subconscious with the same approach as fixing a broken copier - they want to know the “problem” so they can “fix” it and be done. 

The primary issue with this is that the subconscious is not something you picked up at Office Depot. It’s a part of your psyche - a member of your own internal Board of Directors since day one.

It was there with you when you were punished for your sibling’s misbehavior. It was a VIP audience member when you won your 2nd grade spelling bee. It was holding your hand when you left home for the first time.

Your subconscious was there - for you and with you - for your whole life.

So when one day you turn on it and declare it unhelpful and unwelcome, it doesn’t just submit. It doesn’t just go away. Rather, it boosts you into another layer of the “dream” and makes you think you have fixed it. It makes you think you have worked up.

Until months later, you find yourself back exactly where you started and feel more frustrated and trapped than ever.

Ok Lisa, what’s the point? This is all getting a little too meta. 

For example, let’s take the people pleaser. Most people I know are, in some way shape or form, people pleasers.

This may surprise you, since you may know many people in your life who do not *spark joy* within you.

But, being a people pleaser does not mean that one makes everyone happy. Rather, it means that the person acts and makes decision from a place of external authority rather than internal authority.

Every people pleaser I know, including myself, has walked down the same path. 

First, the world happens to a people pleaser. People don’t appreciate them. People make them stressed and upset with their ungratefulness and lack of compassion.

Then, they learn about this term “people pleaser.” They learn that, in fact, their own motivators and actions are creating the frustrating world around them. They learn that their projections are causing them a lot of pain. 

And then, they face a fork in the road - Option A or Option B.

Option A is actually a carbon copy of the first step of a people pleaser’s path. In Option A, a people pleaser has no appreciation for their people pleasing tendencies. They are very ungrateful for the presence of this internal mechanism and even become ashamed that they are this dreaded sub-type of humanity - “The People Pleaser". They don’t practice self-compassion because they believe they don’t deserve it until they can fix this part of themselves.

Option A is a very common path to take. However, Option A does not get you out of the bad dream.

Option A simply puts you in both the villain and the victim roles of your own story. And then you feel even more trapped than before.

So what is Option B? 

Option B involves, as Missy Elliott would say, putting the thing down, flipping it, and reversing it.

Noticing people pleaser tendencies within yourself does not mean that you are doomed to wear a Scarlet P across your chest.

People pleaser tendencies are extremely normal for any person who, as a child, noticed that putting a smile on their parent’s face made the emotional landscape of their home safer and/or more enjoyable. That’s…. most of us. 

So, if you have come to terms with being a people pleaser, and you have done the work to see the power of your projections, and you don’t want to get trapped in a bad dream within a bad dream - just do the opposite of Option A. It’s really that simple.

While you may want to berate your inner people pleaser, shower it with appreciation. Express gratitude for it. Apply excessive self-compassion because this part of you has served you in so many ways. You’re a giver. You want to make people happy. These are not inherently bad things.

When you apply Option B to your people pleasing tendencies, or any part of your subconscious, there is no getting stuck on loop. You become the architect of your own dream landscape. You are quite literally being the change internally that you wish to see in the world. 

I don’t really have a great ending for this post, but I will say this.

Applying self-compassion when we are frustrated with ourselves feels counterintuitive and unproductive - but it’s really not. Like, really. 

There is not one mental health professional, coach, therapist, self-help book that’s like, “You know what would really help you out here? Applying more self-loathing.”

And yet, self-compassion is very uncomfortable to practice at first. So we avoid it. And we convince ourselves it won’t work. We convince ourselves it’s a waste of time. And so we slip back into fighting with ourselves. 

This the most cliché life coach thing I’m about to write, but if you want to get a step closer to healing or growing whatever it is you want to heal or grow - apply 1% more loving and compassion to yourself.

No matter what you are working on or working towards, I promise, it will help.