Living Life for YOU: How to Live the Life YOU Want (Not The One Your Family Wants) + FREE Bust Your People-Pleasing Beliefs Worksheet

Last week, I laid out a blueprint for how to finally stop people pleasing so you can put yourself first.

These tips are great for helping you make day-to-day decisions based on what YOU want (not what your partner, neighbor, or boss wants). In other words, they empower you to have an equal voice in your relationship, confidently decline a request to dog sit, and stand your ground so you can protect your personal time from work.

But you know what? The day-to-day decisions you make aren’t the only time when other people’s needs, desires, and expectations can drown out your own.

You see, if you’re like a lot of the clients I’ve worked with over the years, you might find that even the bigger life decisions that you make are influenced by the opinions and expectations of the people around you.

For example, maybe you went to med school or pursued a career as an accountant because your parents wanted you to.

Maybe you married the type of person your family wanted you to marry instead of the type of person you thought was right for you.

Or perhaps you dress in a certain way because it’s what your partner expects of you. 

Your actions might be influenced by the opinions or expectations of a particular person in your life, such as your partner, family, or friends. Or they might reflect expectations that you’ve repeatedly heard over the course of your life and internalized as beliefs that tell you what you “should” do.

In either case, you might feel unhappy, empty, or resentful because you’re living someone else’s life instead of your own.

The good news is that no matter how many years you’ve spent living the life you think you should live or that other people want you to live, it’s never too late to start living the life YOU want. That is, it’s never too late to start living your truth, finding validation from within, and spending your time in the way that you want to.

But you might need some help with figuring out how to start bridging the gap between the life you want to live and the one you’re living right now.

That’s why in this blog post, I’m pulling back the curtain on the tips I share with my clients when they’re ready to start tuning out the other voices in their life and start living for themselves.

Here’s how to finally start living the life you want (instead of the one everyone else wants you to):

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Remember That It’s YOUR Life

This might seem really obvious. But when you’re so used to letting other people’s opinions and expectations influence your decisions, it can be easy to forget.

Other people might advise you to pursue a certain career, live in a particular part of town, or even have a certain number of kids. But as much as this advice might stem from good intentions and be aimed at “helping” you, remember that you’re ultimately the one who has to live with the life decisions you make—not your mom, sister, or friends.

So if you decide to go to law school even though you’re not into law, you’re the one who’s going to be miserable during law school and the long hours that you end up working on legal cases.

Similarly, if you marry someone just because they have an “acceptable” ethnic background or career track record, you’re the one who’s going to miss out on building a meaningful and satisfying relationship with someone.

So remember that although other people may have their opinions and expectations about how you should live your life, you’re the one who has to actually live it (and be happy doing it).

Discover What You Want

Once you’ve recognized that your life is YOURS to live, it’s time to discover what you want it to look like.

When you’ve spent years or decades making decisions for your life based on other people’s expectations, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters to you (or to not even know what this is in the first place). So to live the life that you want, you need to know what it is that you want.

The idea of not knowing what you want might seem crazy. That’s why a lot of my clients often say to me, “Oh, I know what I want. I want to be happy. I want my life to feel meaningful.”

Why aren’t these types of descriptions sufficient?

Because they’re very vague. They don’t describe how you want to spend your time, who you want to surround yourself with, and the goals you want to chase. So even though these descriptions might tell you that the life you’re currently living isn’t the life you want to be living, they don’t help you understand HOW your life needs to change to become more in alignment with your values.

Often, people say things like, “I just want to be happy” or “I want things to be different” because they don’t actually know what they want. This holds them back from truly owning their power and using it to create the life they want and deserve—even if they’re able to break free from the expectations other people have for them.

So to live the life YOU want, it’s essential to first discover who you are. One of the best ways to do this is to spend time alone. After all, you get to know other people by spending time with them. So to get to know yourself, it’s important to spend time with yourself. It’s ideal to do this alone so that you’re free from distraction and can direct your undivided attention toward connecting with yourself.

When spending time alone or doing activities by yourself, pay attention to your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Use them to identify the passions you have, the activities you enjoy, the dreams you want to achieve, and the values that matter to you. When you know what these are, it’s much easier to build a life that aligns with the real you.

If you’re looking for a way to discover what you really want in life, you might find it helpful to use one of my favorite resources—the My Personal Compass worksheet. It’ll help you gain clarity on what matters to you so that you can build a life that aligns with YOUR needs, desires, and dreams.

Notice When You’re Most Influenced by Others

It’s tough to resist the influence of other people’s expectations and opinions when you don’t even realize the effect they have on you. That’s why when you’re working toward living the life you want, it’s helpful to become aware of when you’re most influenced by other people.

To deepen your awareness of how you’re swayed by the people around you, pay attention to when you give in to other people’s preferences or expectations. In particular, notice whether this is most likely to happen with certain people, in certain contexts, or in certain areas of your life.

Through this process, you might find, for example, that you’re most likely to be swayed by your parents when it comes to the type of partner you look for. Or maybe you realize that you tend to make a lot of career decisions based on what your partner thinks is best for you.

Knowing when you’re most likely to be influenced by other people won’t automatically stop you from being influenced by them. But it can help you identify when you might need to be a bit more prepared with tools and strategies to help you stay true to yourself and aligned with what matters to you.

Recognize “Shoulds”

I mentioned earlier that sometimes we’re influenced not by a specific person’s expectations but by expectations that we’ve heard over and over again in our lives and, therefore, internalized. These are the “shoulds” I referred to above.

For example, you might tell yourself that even though you hate your corporate job, you SHOULD stick with it because it’s relatively secure and pays well. Plus, it would be crazy to leave a career you’ve spent years training for and are good at to go back to school or reinvent yourself. How would you even financially support yourself while doing that?

When you listen to the “shoulds” in your head, you end up making decisions based on what you think you’re supposed to do with your life rather than on what you actually WANT to do with your life. Why? Because we tend to treat “shoulds” as facts or commandments rather than simply as the beliefs they are. So you might often find yourself siding with your “shoulds” rather than with what your heart is telling you is right for you.

Becoming aware of and recognizing your “shoulds” won’t make them disappear. But it does help you understand when you might be straying from what really matters to you based on an internalized belief. Ultimately, this can make it easier to identify when you might be more susceptible to being influenced by external expectations rather than by your own internal compass.

Spend Your Energy On What Matters to You

When you know what you really want out of life and when you’re most likely to stray from this, it becomes more feasible to direct your time and energy toward the things that truly matter to you.

For example, if you love writing, you might carve out time to do it a few times a week, even if your family thinks it’s a silly hobby. Similarly, if you like gardening but currently live in a condo in the city, you might decide to move out to a suburb where you’ll have a yard to call your own, even if all of your friends live in the city.

Remember that this is all about spending your time and energy the way that you want to. So as long as what you decide to do with your time aligns with your passions, goals, and values, there are no right or wrong answers here.

Of course, even when you live your life for yourself, you’ll still sometimes have to do things that you’d rather not do. For example, we all have to go to the dentist, stand in line at the bank, or visit family members from time to time.

But when it comes to the activities and decisions that you do have control over—like the job you have, what you do in your free time, what you eat for dinner, and who you form relationships with—it’s important to do what matters to YOU. 

When you start spending your energy on what you want to do, you’ll feel happier and enjoy life more. And it won’t be just because you’re doing things that you enjoy. It’ll also be because you’re pursuing a career or building a relationship for yourself rather than to please or impress someone else.

Set Boundaries

To maximize your success in sticking to what YOU want to do with your life and avoid being swayed by other people, you’ll probably need to set some boundaries.

For example, if you find that you’re easily influenced by your parents when they talk about the type of person you should date or marry, you might decide that it’s time to set a boundary with them. Specifically, you might decide that you won’t discuss your love life with your parents anymore or that if you do, it needs to be you who raises the topic with them.

It might feel like setting boundaries seems rigid or puts restrictions on your relationships with other people. But the reality is that when you set reasonable boundaries with compassion, they help you and the other person or people understand what you are and aren’t okay with in the relationship.

At first, your parents might not like that you’re telling them what they can and can’t talk to you about. But if you know that you’re easily influenced by their expectations and opinions and will feel pressured to please them, setting a boundary is the most loving thing you can do—for you and for them.

After all, if setting the boundary helps you do what’s right for you, you’ll feel happier because you’ll be pursuing the type of romantic relationship that you want. And you’ll have a healthier relationship with your parents because you won’t be resentful toward them for pressuring you to be with someone who isn’t right for you.

It’s Time to Live Life for YOU

When you’ve spent your life pleasing other people and trying to meet their expectations, it can feel scary to get in the driver’s seat and start living your life for yourself.

After all, you know that most of the people around you mean well when they give you advice. And the idea of letting them down or going against their wishes can be enough to make you think that maybe you should just keep doing what they say you should.

But if you want to be happy and feel fulfilled, living the life that YOU want is the only way to get there.

Making the switch to living life for you rather than for someone else may not be a walk in the park. But it’s something I KNOW you can achieve. Because the power to do it is already within you.

If you’re ready to tap into this power and start living your life based on what YOU want, the tips I’ve outlined above are a great place to start. But I want to give you something else to make you even more successful in living life for you.

You see, when you live life for other people, you do it because you hold specific beliefs—beliefs that tell you that the key to being happy is to meet other people’s expectations.

To help you break through these beliefs and gain confidence in your own internal compass, I’ve created a FREE worksheet for you called Busting Your People-Pleasing Beliefs. 

It’ll help you critically analyze and transform your people-pleasing beliefs so that you can put yourself first and start living the life and enjoying the relationships that are truly right for you.

And if you haven’t done so already, follow me on my Facebook page Vera Velini – The Assertive Happiness Coach. That way, you’ll be among the first to hear about new blog posts, resources, and master classes.  

See you again soon!

Vera

P.S. Why do you limit the joy, love, and meaning in your life when you try to meet other people’s expectations all the time? Check out the video I made on the personal costs of people pleasing.

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