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137: How to Stop People Pleasing and Take Control of Your Life w/ Nick Pollard · Harder Than Life

• 0:07
  I'm Kelly Siegel, and this is Harder Than Life, a podcast about self-love, self-awareness, business, and health. We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple, practical advice you can start using today. Let's get living.
• 0:23
  Welcome to the Heart of Life podcast. I got Nick Pollard. He's a world-renowned coach, speaker, and expert in people-pleasing, codependency, and addiction. With over 50 million views across his social media platforms, he ranks in the top 10% of coaches worldwide. Having battled through a traumatic childhood, addiction, and near-fatal rock-bottom moment in 2009, Nick ultimately reclaimed his life through recovery and personal development.
• 0:50
  He is the founder of the People Displeaser Movement, empowering individuals to set boundaries, break free from people pleasing and live authentically. Welcome, my friend, Nick. Sounds like I just gave my own intro. I mean, that's impressive if we have that similar dialogue. That's cool. Thank you for having me.
• 1:14
  I'm excited to have you on. So we got introduced by mutual friends. We did a whole deep dive on you. But I'm just getting to know you, and I'm fascinated. So my listeners that don't know who you are, give your backstory a little bit. Well, the People Displeaser moniker was an accident. So...
• 1:30
  all the good stuff is right yeah it happened through um i had taken a coaching course with a guy named preston smile and it was really a terrible course so i took this really awful you know how to how to start your coaching company in five days or less or whatever the hell it was back then one of the assignments was to make a video uh for social media and to start getting out there in terms of your socials and
• 1:52
  I was really irritated with the course, and so I did the thumbs up as kind of a joke. And then my partner in the cohort said, you know, it's really displeasing. And I changed my name to the people displeaser just to be a dick. And that's how that occurred. But my story is actually kind of a two-part recovery issue, or, well, three parts. I think anybody that's ever been through a massive amount of trauma, kind of midlife,
• 2:16
  um goes through kind of three stages and so what had happened was in 2009 um my father turned out to not be who i thought he was um and it was a pretty traumatic set of circumstances you know in you know in the realm of pedophilia and those types of things really ruined my life and up until then my dad had been my best friend um so
• 2:42
  So there I was, you know, when I have this kind of awful moment where I realized that my best friend is a monster and that that is the person after whom I had, you know, fashioned my whole life. So I've been kind of climbing a corporate ladder as a sales guy, vice president, and life was, you know, life was purportedly anyway going good. That's what they kept telling me that my life was awesome. And I never felt like that. Right.
• 3:11
  Um, but that's what I was told it was doing. I had the wife and the, and the cars and the house and the stuff, right. Um, and I was pretty miserable. And then, you know, this happens. Well, that launched me into a bit of a tyrant. I ended up in a mental institution for about three weeks. Um, that happened twice, um, kind of over Christmas and the holiday. Um, I found all this out on the day before Halloween in 09 and, uh,
• 3:39
  You know, I get out of the mental institution, you know, we'll call it the adult timeout facility because they thought I was going to kill somebody or myself, you know, most likely my father and then me. And then so they put me on a bunch of meds and I got fat. You know, I was miserable and I was unhappy.
• 3:58
  I thought, well, surely the thing to do with that is to drink a lot and do a bunch of cocaine. So it fixes it. Everything fixes everything. It was great. I had a great time for like the first five weeks because I'm on, you know, antipsychotics and cocaine. So basically, I'm just happy and not nuts, which. Great. I go through all that. I guess, you know, you fast forward a little bit. I started to level out about four years later, I guess.
• 4:24
  kind of, I shut down pretty heavily in 10 years or 2010, I ended up getting divorced, you know, because that kind of trauma, you know, not to blame the trauma itself, but to just to be clear that when you go through that and you don't have the skills to cope with it, you're going to, you're going to make some mistakes. And, um, I definitely made some mistakes with regard to
• 4:43
  some other issues and ended up divorced in 2010, I guess, 2010, 2011. And then right around 2013, I got married again because that was a great plan. And, but that did, I mean, admittedly, she helped me level out quite a lot. And to start to get some semblance at least of control over myself. That was, I was fine for about three years. And things were going pretty good. I'd started another company.
• 5:13
  I got into coaching. I got into dating coaching at one point. I was really good at it. I got into sales and executive coaching. I was really good at it. I kind of quit that because I had a falling out with a business partner. And he and I are now very good friends. He's a mentor of mine. So I started another company. And then in 2016, the old man goes and dies. So all of those wounds that I thought, Kelly, that I had solved, I had not.
• 5:42
  It appeared. I had been burying them beneath success and alcoholism. Hooray. And my life literally just imploded at that point. And then I go through the throes of getting divorced again, because why wouldn't I commit more infidelity and do more cocaine and drink? Which landed me in rehab in 2018. Finally kind of taking back some semblance of joy. And that's really when the journey started.
• 6:10
  So, you know, so those two first incidences were just like, okay. Okay. I got, I have a million questions. I could guarantee if I, if my producer jumps back on, he, his jaws on the floor, like mine is, I've interviewed 140 plus people. I've been on hundreds of podcasts and, and this is the first for me, Nick. So thank you. Um, I have a thousand questions and I'm going to go off script right away because first of all, there's nobody in the world more equipped to help people than you. Um,
• 6:39
  How old were you in 2000? I can work the math backwards. How old are you? I was 29. You know, 29 years old. I believe people don't even grow. The men don't even grow up till they're 40. I don't know how you handled. Oh, I didn't. Well, I mean, you're here today, so I want people to understand something. You had three traumatic experiences.
• 7:04
  issues and here you are ticking today. That's the, that's what we're going to take away from this. I know we're, we laugh and we're like, oh, you made it through. So when people think that there's, they're having a bad day, think of what happened to Nick. And there's people that will absolutely trade their fricking problems for you straight up. And I always have to remember that I worked 12 hours yesterday, came home, brain dead, fell on my face, passed up. And I'm like, what am I doing?
• 7:32
  But you know what? I didn't have to deal, you know, my father passed away 25 years ago, so, and he was my best friend, so it's, I get it. But there's a lesson here. Is there more that you wanna say? Cause I kinda go into some questions, cause it's just, you just, it's so fascinating. My jaw's on the floor, I'm like.
• 7:49
  And here you are today with a smile cracking jokes. You're remarried. Do you have children? I have two kids. I have two boys. If they're listening, Kai and chance, I love them very much. That's actually been one of the greater things that's happened in this. I would say that through that kind of addiction portion of my life, I wasn't really there as a dad. And it's, you know, among my greater regrets is that, and I think regret is a great way to look. Um,
• 8:17
  to look for growth. Um, it's a, it's a place that you can go, okay, well, how would I prefer to do that now? And, you know, through, you know, them getting a little older and getting cell phones and I was kind of, um, distant and I was on the road a lot and I've been able to, you know, I started text messaging them and started being playful with them. And, um, I've been able to really cultivate something pretty special with them. I don't know that I'll ever be considered top dad in the world. Um, but I know that I, they now call me dad and that's, that's such a huge win for me and I am engaged.
• 8:46
  So that's really cool to a woman I love very much. She prefers to not be mentioned on my podcasts. Nick, let me just tell you that I'm proud of you. You face some insurmountable things and you're coming back at it. So let's let's dig into this and let's help some people because that's what the Heart of Life podcast is about. It's.
• 9:06
  We're a top 20 self-improvement podcast. We're going to get up to number one. And this is what people are dialing in for. They hear about the struggle and they want to overcome the struggle. Because I've said a thousand times adversity is here. It just left or it's on its way. So, boy, I can tell you that when things get tough for you, they don't feel tough anymore because you've overcome so much. What turned you to drinking and drugs during that hard moment? Because usually in my life,
• 9:34
  experience in my education, there's always some usually childhood issue unresolved that's under seven years and below for that makes you go out and say, you know, I understand the event, the trigger, but what was the trauma from childhood? Oh, I didn't, I didn't mention in the arc of the story that his main abuse victim was me. Wait, there's more. Right. So the main abuse, abuse victim was me.
• 10:01
  And what had happened was in 09, I had suppressed all those. And I had buried them deep, deep, deep in my brain. So right about, you know, we now know, and I don't know if we even knew it then, the prefrontal cortex of a man really generally develops between the ages of 27 and 29. It's kind of when we come into our own. Through that, my emotional intellect, I guess, came awake. And then when my brain...
• 10:28
  Somebody else had mentioned that this was a problem. I literally locked up the brakes on my car at 29 and pulled over the side of the freeway, just started sobbing and rocking and like our post-traumatic stress disorder. That's what that looks like. And then all the memories come flashing back and they came all at once. So that's what precipitated it. Now, incidentally, I had been drinking. I started drinking when I was 12 and I was never really good at it.
• 10:55
  Well, I was actually great at it, but the problem was that almost every time I would overdo it. And that just kind of, once I hit the, I think in my 20s I was kind of normal with it. I would come home and have a couple glasses of wine at dinner and pass out and go to bed, rinse and repeat. Kind of living the same six months of my life over and over and over again.
• 11:21
  And then kind of through that, that, you know, precipitated the explosion of substance abuse. Why is addiction and people pleasing so intertwined? Why are they freaking related cousins? They, they operate on the same core framework. Dr. Glover, Dr. Robert Glover, I don't know if you know who he is, but he wrote the book, No More Mr. Nice Guys, my mentor and friend. He and I talked about this.
• 11:50
  at length once where he was describing nice guy syndrome, which I just equate to being a really toxic version of people pleasing and addiction operating on a shame framework. So if you really look at the typical addict and I've coached with, you know, when I was coaching rehab centers, I probably helped 1100 people get sober. Like I was just, I was just a machine and I've helped a lot of them, you know, still many of them will text me and say, you know, the reason I'm still sober is because of you.
• 12:19
  When you think of how shame operates, right, it's a constant feeling of I'm not only am I not enough, but I'm bad. Right. And it just keeps progenuating the cycle. So a people pleaser, for instance, who's addicted to toxic shame will lie to themselves and then be like, I'm such a piece of shit. And then they lie to themselves about why they did it. And then they're like, I'm such a piece of shit. It just kind of keeps playing over and over in this big circle. It looks like a snake eating itself. And addiction operates in the same way.
• 12:49
  Would you define people pleasing for me? Because I just had a breakthrough on this the last...
• 12:56
  week where i was on a plane there was no wi-fi which by the way is my favorite thing to do is take a little time to yourself and you'll have amazing downloads and i realized that i was a people pleaser but i didn't know it so would you define because there's probably people listening to this podcast right now going i don't do anything i i do everything for myself i'm a i'm a boss and i do that but people don't realize that
• 13:21
  how they're putting themselves last and that's people pleasing, but you're the expert. Would you, would you please define it? And why do so many people struggle with this? So people pleasing is challenging to define because it's actually not a behavior in itself. It's a constellation of different behaviors.
• 13:39
  Right. It's a lack of boundaries. It's saying yes when you actually want to say no. It's overcommitting. It's covert contracts. This is something Dr. Glover kind of invented. We've talked more about that. It's a lack of self-assertion. It's a lack of effectively telling people that you're good enough.
• 14:03
  or that you, you know, self-actualization and self-definition. So, but Mel Robbins actually has a really great quote on this. It can be defined in two ways. Mel Robbins defines it as an inability to deal with other people's normal negative emotions without making them about yourself.
• 14:22
  I'm a huge Mel Robbins fan and I love, I love that quote. I saw one yesterday. It was actually Scott Galloway talking about being rich. That has really changed something triggered in my brain. Cause when I'm on the treadmill, I listen to all the podcasts. That's what I like to be.
• 14:38
  I was listening to Scott on Chris Williamson yesterday. He was talking about how once you get wealthy enough, there are three buckets of things that people do in life. And those three buckets are things that I must do, things that I want to do, and things that I should do. So where people pleasers get hung up is in the should do category.
• 15:00
  That's where we say yes to things we don't want to. We start doing activities that are boring or insurmountably stupid. What I'm playing with as of literally 24 hours ago is how does people pleasing, how do I help a people pleaser eliminate some of those should do activities? Make the ones that they actually want to pull from there so that if you want to pull from that bucket and put them in the must and want news. For instance, I should make it to one of my kids' karate classes every week.
• 15:27
  Well, I kind of want to do that anyway. So that's kind of a want to, right? Or a want to do. And then, you know, maybe I don't want to go to the birthday party of the colleague because I don't really give a shit about him. So that's a should do that I could eliminate. I don't particularly want to help you move. So that's a should do, right? That I could probably eliminate. So I think there's something to that too. But I think Mel's is probably the best description. And inability to tolerate other people's normal negative emotions without making them about yourself.
• 15:58
  I'm going to add to that should list a little bit just to give you my perspective. And granted, I'm a neophyte at this stuff, but I study it. I study shame. I study. I just I'm fascinated by it. I would tell you that as a people pleaser, half of the shoulds should be no's and then half of the shoulds.
• 16:19
  should be wants. Let me put it this way. You should focus more on the want to do because you forget what you want to do and you make it about other people. So half of the should should be no. And then the time that you freed up should be in the want list and then push forward. Cause when I find myself falling out of alignment, I'm doing things that everybody else that I should do for everybody else and not what I want to do.
• 16:45
  So literally I'll sit and say, what do I want to do? And I'll talk to my inner child and say, what do you want? And I give him what I want. Sometimes majority of the time. Now I've done so much therapy and so much work on myself. And all he wants to do is sit still, be safe and be seen. That's it. I grab a cigar, go sit down and just let his fricking pity pattern in my head. No harm, no foul. So the should, uh,
• 17:13
  Want and the must. Do more, focus more on the wants is my harder than lifeism. And then split those shoulds into half and get rid of them to just knows. How many times do we say, oh, it's the right thing to do? Who says what's right or wrong? What feels right for you? Not what feels normal. Normal is the should do. What do you want?
• 17:39
  With your permission, Nick, I want to dig into your father a little bit more. If I cross the line, this is my first shot at this. I want to be respectful. I am...
• 17:52
  I'm blunt and I don't mean to be. So if I say something inappropriate, we can edit this out or we can bleep it out or just say, I'd rather not talk about it. Permission granted. I'm super healed in this regard. So, you know, go nuts. And if you really push something, I'll let you know. I mean, I'm a boundaries guy. Well, it's for helping people. So you should do it. Um,
• 18:16
  So the question is, what role did your father play in shaping your early need to please others? Because I'm struggling with it. Like maybe I'm missing part of it. So can you expand upon that? Like if dad was this...
• 18:34
  Just run wild with that question. Sorry. How did him being who he was and what he did to you make you want to be a people pleaser? So first, I don't think I wanted to be a people pleaser. Right when that came out of my mouth, I was like, ooh, got it. I think there's a default there. Yes, sorry. No, you're fine. It didn't offend me at all. Trust me, brother, if you offend me, I'll let you know. It's really, really, really hard. So don't worry about it. The thing I would say...
• 19:02
  about the sexual traumas. I don't know that I knew that. So I didn't know that, but I did not know that until I was nearly 30. Right. So my father, you know, in, in the early years, um, wasn't really there for us as kids. You know, he was kind of the typical Gen X dad, or he wasn't Gen X. He was a boomer, kind of the typical boomer dad. He worked a lot,
• 19:26
  My mom also was, you know, out doing her thing. She was getting a PhD. And, you know, so I was kind of a latchkey kid for a good chunk of my existence. And that helps a lot. But when you have nobody, which teaches you a couple of things. Like my mom was the caretaker and caregiver. And I was never really initiated into the hard world of the masculine. So what people pleasing shows up as is a need to please the feminine in them.
• 19:51
  Right. So what we see is a lot of guys that are seeking validation for women. And and that's particularly toxic because, number one, it's virtually impossible and not because women are unhappy humans, but just because the way their default wiring is very emotional creatures and in the emotional moment. So you never know what you're going to get from moment to moment. So I think it was a combination really of.
• 20:16
  of experiences in childhood. You know, obviously being taught to please could be, you know, I suppose that could be correlated to literally having to do that in a very nefarious way, you know, quite literally. And then being taught that that's what my value was, was in pleasing.
• 20:36
  Um, which is not a fun thing to say, but, uh, you know, probably, I cringe when you just said that. Yeah. I mean, you, you look at, if you look at, um, there's two ways that this generally goes, um,
• 20:50
  in both men and women with early childhood sexual trauma, as I've seen it, I'm not a clinician, so, and I'm not Jordan Peterson, so, you know, don't come for me in the comments. The way that I see it show up is either in dominance or submission through life force, and then the opposite generally becomes true in the bedroom. So,
• 21:10
  which is interesting. It may be too much information for your audience, but whatever. So I had a very submissive personality in public. And one of those things that we can see, and I see it a lot in executive culture, is when I'm dealing with a people pleaser at that level,
• 21:25
  very often they're parentifying your boss. So they're trying to please their boss rather than to work for their boss. This can become really toxic over a long timeline because then you have somebody that can't accept that the paycheck is the thanks, right? And so I saw that would start to show up in my life in my early 20s. And I didn't know why. I was always like, why am I just trying to make my boss or my dad and my boss into my dad, right? It's because I didn't really have one. So I think that...
• 21:55
  I think that answers your question. Yeah, in a roundabout way. It's not very often that I...
• 22:02
  My show, so I get to say this. I disagree with one piece that you said, and I'm just going to put a little spin on it. I believe that everybody can be happy, including women. I believe that I would just change that a little bit that says you're trying to make women happy at the expense of your happiness. Sure. I will agree with you, actually. I don't think that women can't be happy.
• 22:26
  um what i think came across that way well so i think the better way of saying that is that men are not responsible for that okay and inversely women are not responsible for men for men being correct right happiness is is an internal choice it's something that we all decide to be and um i say that a lot of my channels but the i think the the interesting thing about women and and you know forgive me i'm not in the manosphere but this may sound a little bit like
• 22:56
  is they're high in two things, historically speaking. They are higher in intuition than men by a lot. Like if you look at the intuitive nature of women, it's just a larger subset. So it's much bigger in terms of their quality. And then they're high in predation detection. So when you have a being that is consistently and overwhelmingly trying to intuit danger, they have more negative thoughts than we do.
• 23:25
  That's just the way that they're built. Right. And there's a reason for that. And it's not that they're bad. It's not that they're wrong. It's not that they're none of that's true. That's just evolutionarily how they're built, because what were they supposed to do? Protect the babies while men go out and hunt and kill. Right. Which is also speaks very interestingly, in my opinion. And this is opinion based only. This is my opinion. No factual data behind this. But I do believe that men's emotions are more linear and violent than women's. Because what was our job?
• 23:56
  to hunt, to kill, and to protect. That was it.
• 24:00
  And that's kept going, by the way, if you think about it, we talked about a last podcast I just had a couple hours ago and it's as men, we still do that. And we forget that we're human and we have needs. And this is hence where your boundaries come in. And really, I always mess with the boundaries and standards and I, I kind of keep them one in the same because you got to say, this is where I'm comfortable with and anything below it's just a no.
• 24:26
  Right. I'm going to go back to the beginning. You told us how you came up with the people displeaser, but what was the turn? I hesitate to even ask this question. What is the turning point that made you embrace that identity? Please don't tell me anything negative. So I was in a relationship with a narcissist. So wait a minute, you know, you need to be a standup comedian. That's what your next role is. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So
• 24:55
  And I play with you. I don't know that she was actually narcissistic. I think what happened... Oh, you were being serious? Yeah. Yeah, so what happened was I was in a two-year relationship. This is actually going to be in my book, part of it anyway, about some of the experiences we had with swinging and drugs. And I had relapsed bigger than shit. And I was off to the races with this one. And so we broke up in...
• 25:21
  January of 2021, immediately post COVID. COVID still locked everything down. I think the big problem was she and I were great in bed together. We had a lot of funding. But our value systems and what we wanted didn't align. And neither one of us knew how to say that. Right. So in 2021 or in 2020, we had renovated an RV. Right.
• 25:46
  We were going to travel the country in this thing. And then we were going to go to Minnesota and hang out with her family in the summer. And then go to California in the winter. And so we were going to snowbird, which is a great idea for a 40-year-old. So we were going to do all that. I was in roofing sales at the time. I was making decent living. Yeah, so things are going pretty well. Well...
• 26:08
  When you're dealing with somebody that has probably borderline, as both of us probably are, it got pretty toxic. And then she ended it while I was in Maryland. I was going on a training of some kind. And so she leaves my RV. So she. So we got to start it. You got to get a movie out of your life. So we were in an RV in Lake Havasu. She had driven me to Las Vegas. Yes.
• 26:35
  to go and get on this plane. And then she texts me and I'm breaking up you, your cheater and all the things. Yeah, whatever. I'm sobbing on the plane and I get off. I'm like, we go get drunk. So I did. And then, um, wait, wait, wait. And ended up with another girl that night. No, not that time. Um, so I go, well, she leaves my RV in Lake Havasu and she takes my dog.
• 27:03
  It just bails, right? So I literally have to fly back to Las Vegas and take an Uber to Lake Havasu, Arizona to go pick up my RV. That put me on a destructive path for about two weeks. This is one of the shortest runs I really ever had. I was like two weeks and I was drinking. And one day I woke up, like, this is going to stop. This is going to turn out bad. So I stumbled into an AA meeting on January 11th, 2021, somewhere around there. Anyway, I stumbled into an AA meeting.
• 27:33
  And I got sober that day and I stayed that way for a year. And I'm still, I'm what I call recovered. I'll explain that a bit. But sobered up for a year. And there was a moment, it was around March 4th, that I was, I had been writing a lot. So I'd been writing a lot, just kind of cathartically getting all this crap out of my way. And every experience I had ever had that was negative, all of the bad that had ever happened to me.
• 28:02
  outside of the stuff with my dad had been a result of my not prioritizing myself as equal to everyone else. And I don't actually agree with the narrative that we ought to put ourselves first. I think that's inaccurate. I think that's selfish. I think we need to make sure we're equalized against others, meaning that my needs are as valuable and as important as yours. So therefore, it's not self-prioritization, right? It's self-equalization.
• 28:32
  And when I realized that I was like, okay, well to really balance the scales on that, I need to do something for myself for the first time in my life. So I'm sitting at my computer, incidentally, it was a funny enough. It was this very computer, um, in my, in my apartment or not my apartment in my Airbnb in Huntington beach, California, shout out to surfer Joe, uh, the
• 28:56
  So there I was in my, in my Airbnb and I'm sobbing and I'm like, I'm just going to, I just opened my Google and I'm like, what countries are open after COVID and Costa Rica pops up. And I'm like, all right, Costa Rica. I booked myself a ticket and I was like, all right, I'm just going to go for a couple of weeks. I'd never traveled alone. Really? I'd never been out of the country by myself. And
• 29:18
  You know, that was pretty exciting and didn't end up happening. I went by myself. That's another bit of a longer story. So I go to Costa Rica really on this mission to just let myself have the time and to just do something loving for me and get into warm water, look at sunsets. And, you know, I traveled the world for a year, you know, stone sober. It was amazing. But I got there and it was initially going to be a three week trip. I was just going to decompress.
• 29:48
  What ended up happening was I didn't turn around for two and a half years. So I went from Costa Rica to Mexico, Mexico to Panama. Then I came back to the States for a week. Then I went back to Panama. Then, you know, I went to Uruguay and Argentina and Colombia and back to Costa Rica. And then I went to Japan. And then, like, I did all these really cool things in this two and a half year timeline. I learned to tango. I ate meat. Like, I had amazing wine in Mendoza. Like, yeah.
• 30:15
  just this amazing kind of outer worldly experience of seeing what was available to me. And through that, I started talking about this journey, right? So this, what that happened in Panama was I started making videos and that I think would help me realize to the videos really helped were my only therapy that I could afford. Um, so I was really talking to me the whole time and, um,
• 30:42
  so through that i was really able to kind of ferret out like oh this is a this is a problem of uh not of character but of prioritization and then i was like i'm a people pleaser and i remember i was in i didn't go viral for six months i started making videos in june and i didn't have one hit until december
• 31:09
  It was December 3rd. And it was the real cost of people pleasing volume 13. I think that was a 60 part series, by the way, they were a little 15 second blurb clips on Tik TOK and one hit and, and the people displeaser has been born. So that's the story on that. But I think the turning moment was sitting in my Airbnb alone with just me and my music and my Sour Patch Kids.
• 31:37
  Two months sober and crying because I realized that everything I'd ever wanted, I didn't do because everyone told me I couldn't. I had been doing everything in the should bucket, not in the want bucket.
• 31:49
  That's I'm going to speak for everybody. That story is bananas. And I, I'm sitting here shaking my head. Like, I don't even know what to say. So I always say that the answers you seek are still in the silence and solitude, but apparently it's sour patch kids and sobriety as well. Yeah. Did you,
• 32:08
  Did you do ayahuasca in Costa Rica? I did not. I really want to. I'm pretty excited about that idea, but I'm also really terrified because, listen, there's some dark s*** going on in my brain. And I don't need the mother medicine coming down and just been rewiring my s***. That could go really bad for a guy like me.
• 32:30
  But I, you know, I eat a good amount of mushrooms. I'll say that. Like, I love a good mushroom from time to time. I don't eat a lot of them. I find that where psychedelics are concerned, I find just a little bit goes a long way for me. Like, it really brightens my mood and it kind of helps my brain and helps me to be more creative and powerful in that regard. And I love that. But.
• 32:48
  I haven't done ayahuasca. I am actively seeking how to do that because a client of mine has now, I told him, he was like, you need to do this. I'm like, all right, listen, if you sign up for the whole six months, I'll rock it out. He's like, done, wire sent. I'm like,
• 33:06
  Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. So you've said that fear doesn't actually exist. Can you explain that concept to the listeners? So that's a clunky one. You did some research on me. Damn it. So fear in the context of people pleasing actually doesn't exist.
• 33:25
  So, for instance, if you and I are walking in the woods, we're on a hike, you're a big dude, but if a bear pops out, we're both going to shit ourselves. That's going to happen, right? Or we're going to shit ourselves and do whatever we're supposed to do for a bear, which is be bigger than we are and all this. And try to rescue ourselves. Incidentally, if a dog that looks like a bear were to pop out, probably you and I would have the same reaction until we realized it was a dog.
• 33:52
  Right. So fear is entirely based on context. Right. So when we think about conflict avoidance, this is where I mean that fear doesn't exist. As an example is pretend you and I are mad at each other and you are conflict avoidance. You're going to say, I don't want to hurt his feelings. I'm afraid he's going to get mad. But the reality is you're actually afraid of the feeling you're going to get. If I get mad.
• 34:19
  you're not actually afraid of me or what I feel. You're afraid of what you feel, right? So the interpretation is more about what's in you than what's actually real. So think about it another way. If you imagine, are you married? No, I have a girlfriend, long time ago. Okay, so imagine you and your girlfriend are gonna kiss for the first time. You remember that moment, right? What a cool experience. You get the butterflies in your stomach or wherever you feel that.
• 34:49
  Now remember the last time you thought you were going to die. You're really similar, aren't they? Yeah, I would say anxiety and exhilaration feel very similar to me. Yeah. Anxiety and excitement are identically the same in the body. Right. So were you anxious or were you excited? Right. I'm always excited. Right. So this is one of those things I ask people all the time about when they start talking about, well, I'm afraid to have this conflict. Is that true? Are you excited to resolve it?
• 35:16
  And just that reframe alone can be like, oh, wow, maybe I am excited to resolve it. Maybe I'm excited to get this out of the way. So when I say that fear doesn't exist, of course, fear exists in the physical, like I'm going to die. But where people pleasing and nice guy syndrome both exist, the challenge is most people pleasers are what they like to call empaths, which I also think is for s**t. We're not magically empathetic. We just are able to recognize...
• 35:44
  social cues better than everyone else because we were in danger most of our lives. So it's not, you're not an empath. You're just really good at reading faces. So when we see the face happen on somebody else,
• 35:59
  Right. We then interpret that as we're in physical danger. We think we're going to die when we make somebody. And that's what it feels like to us is, oh, God, I'm going to die. So it's learning to calm your nervous system. And you don't do that through going to an ashram or having a 25 year old life coach wave sage at you. That's not how that works. What you do is take a breath and a little bit of suppression goes a long way.
• 36:25
  Not every emotion is valuable. Wait, say more about the suppression. You had me right up until you said that. So sometimes your feelings don't matter. I've never heard this before. Keep going. Right? So, all right. So I'm in a board meeting. And I'm about, okay, great example of this. I'm literally on the verge of inking my first book. Very exciting stuff.
• 36:52
  Now, pretend I'm sitting with these editors and they're presenting me a contract and something they say triggers a response in me that I'm I'm afraid or I or I feel fear. Do I just start sobbing? Well, no, no, I don't. Right. Because that wouldn't make any sense in the context of the meeting. So when we say people say, well, you shouldn't repress or suppress your emotions. Because in that moment, I can't go. Can everybody just give me a second? I need to go outside.
• 37:21
  You are noble. You are direct. Let me add a little. My Kelly Siegelism. I just named the emotion. And I say, there you are. And I kind of laugh at it. I say, you're feeling a little inadequate or you're feeling something. And I just giggle about it. I go, it's okay. And it doesn't suppress it. I release it.
• 37:40
  So it's the same thing in a different direction. Right. And, you know, we say when I'm in my, so I own an IT cybersecurity firm. When I'm in meetings, I say, guys, I need facts over feelings. Because how many times you're in a meeting and you hear somebody say, I feel like we should do this.
• 37:58
  Well, show me the facts. So you'll hear in a meeting in my, and in my company, always that we like, they'll say, I feel, Oh, I know. Or the, or the data suggests. Sure. That's just such a default, which everything that we're talking about is really also talking about how difficult it is for most people to say no. So what advice would you give someone struggling to say no without guilt? Because it goes right on what you were just saying.
• 38:27
  So first, guilt is a perfectly normal negative emotion. Guilt is normal. Especially writing down notes left and right. I'm like, wait a minute. I've never thought about it this way. Well, every feeling is normal. The problem is that we label them either good or bad. So you feel guilty because you feel like you're disappointing people. Well, there's a couple of components to that. Number one, I said this on another podcast. It's one of my favorite things to say. It's like, if you say no to somebody, are they going to be devastated?
• 38:56
  No, they're probably just going to ask somebody else. So just relax, right? The feeling of guilt is the fear. It's not the guilt itself, which actually means saying no isn't the problem. It's not saying yes. It's not a problem of saying no. The issue is that you're not saying yes. You're so used to saying yes that you're uncomfortable.
• 39:17
  Right. So and I know this from my own life because I was a yes man dude. Like, hey, you want to help me build a fence? Yeah, come right over. You know, and if somebody would call me and be like, hey, will you help me move? Sure. Of course I do that. I'll drop everything. I'm in the middle of screwing my wife and having a great day, but definitely want to come help you do that. Right. Shovel snow in my driveway. Lend me a thousand bucks. Hundred percent. Let's do it.
• 39:39
  Right. Meanwhile, I'm just getting more and more resentful. There's an exercise I do in my boundary boot camp that I absolutely love. It's one of my favorites. I give it away for free all the time. So I'm doing it again here, which is I call it the game of no. So the game of no goes like this. There are three rules to playing the game. Number one, you can tell everybody you're playing. You can tell everybody in your life. I'm playing this game where I'm going to say no a lot. Right. Number two, you can change your mind on any no, but you have to wait 90 seconds.
• 40:09
  And number three, you can only play for a week. Because after a week, it kind of becomes deep. So the game of no is structured like this. You have to say no to everything that will not get you fired for seven straight days. Not, well, think about it. Not, maybe, fucking no.
• 40:31
  Nope. It's so stupid and simplistic, but I can see what you're doing. You're just getting them comfortable with the uncomfortable. It's brilliant. So James Clear in the book, Atomic Habits, talks about how habits are not created over timelines. They're created over repetitions over timelines. Well, if you're a people pleaser, you've been saying yes to a lot for a long time. So if you start saying no immediately, you're going to notice a couple of things. Number one, your no doesn't mean that much.
• 41:01
  And nobody gives a shit. Number two, your yes is even more meaningless than your no. And number three, and this is the most important one, is a no is a hell of a lot easier to come back from than a yes. If you had called me and said, hey, bro, you want to come to my podcast? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. And then like an hour ago, I call you and go, I don't want to be.
• 41:23
  I'm a dick. I'm wasting your time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. If you had called me and said, hey, man, do you want to come on the podcast? I'm like, I really don't have time until like next year. And then I call you two hours later and go, you know what? That wasn't fair to me. It looks like I do have some time on my schedule. Can we do it this day? Then I'm a hero. So what people don't realize is that the value of your yes is diminished the more you say it. Oh, say that again. The value of your yes is diminished the more you say it.
• 41:49
  you're available to everybody it's you're cheap and you're free i i get it oh so good so we we've gone 45 minutes without talking about boundaries is which really what we're getting to which is if you say no and you and you put yourself on equal footing uh i've over corrected i say no so much people don't even ask anymore that's a win i do what it is people don't realize that it's it's
• 42:14
  No, I don't want to go out. I just don't. I really enjoy. I'm reading a book about the Holocaust and I am enthralled in it. And it's like, I'd rather do that than anything else in the world right now. I just, I'm working so hard. I want to recharge and that recharges me thinking about nothing. I'm in this story.
• 42:31
  And then I flip back. The next book will be something about self-improvement. It's just me time. And I'm going to do a whole lot of nothing for me. I love that your version of nothing is reading a book. Like, it's so funny to me that so many people say, I don't want to do nothing. Dude, you're expanding your mind and that's your joy. Do you know how cool that is? Thank you. I received that. I guess my version of nothing is I'm not, I'm doing me. I love the expansion of my mind. I'm a sponge. I want to learn it all.
• 43:01
  So, and part of this is also just the recharge and relax and release to do what I'm doing right now. We're launching a huge coaching program. We're trying to get this podcast number one. Oh, by the way, I also own an IT cybersecurity company. If you haven't figured out, there's more cyber incidents going on right now than ever before in the universe. So every time that some new cyber attack comes out, my team of guys are writing new AI to counteract it. It is...
• 43:30
  a constant battle of good versus evil. Sure. But it's a blast and I'm having the best time of my life. And I'm constantly doing things that don't feel normal, that are uncomfortable, that I don't even, I don't have the answers. I don't have the answers to some of this, but I'm going to be fearlessly walk into this and keep going and keep going and keep going. So let's talk about these boundaries. How do you handle relationships with people who continuously violate said boundaries and,
• 43:58
  And part two of that question is what are real boundaries versus fake boundaries? I've heard a lot of people, oh, I'm boundaried up. And then I look at their decisions they make. I'm like, you don't even understand what a boundary is. Right. Well, so that's one of the core concepts around boundaries. That's a real core misconception really is that boundaries have anything to do with anyone else. They have nothing to do with anyone else. Your boundaries are about you. They're about how you show up. True. True.
• 44:24
  So they delineate what you'll tolerate, not tolerate. That's the delineation effect of what other people are, what you see, what the external is. But your boundaries are enforceable only by your action. So for instance, I'm a person that doesn't tolerate screaming. Like screaming at me in any context, unless we're in bed, is not going to work.
• 44:50
  Right. So the way I position that is when somebody yells or starts to scream if we're in an argument or we're having just a conversation, I'll simply say we need to pause here. I am not a person that enjoys screaming in my conversation. Therefore, I'm going to take a break from this one. I'll be back in 15 minutes. We continue. Right. That's what a boundary sounds like. I'm not going to keep doing that. What is a boundary if it's not the word no? No.
• 45:17
  Everybody's like, what are my boundaries? Just learn to say no and you'll have boundaries. It's fine. That's why I asked the question right after we were talking about no. Right. It's like, that is a boundary. No is the number one boundary. So the answer to your question about people who consistently violate your boundaries, right? Well, first, when somebody violates your boundaries, that's you issue, not a damage, right? Your boundaries are not there to compel other people's behavior. Let me say that again for a fact. Your boundaries are not there to compel other people's behavior.
• 45:45
  not their speech, not their actions, not what they do, not how much they drink, not how much they hang out with other people. None of that is boundary-based, right? Your boundaries are what you will tolerate. And the moment, it's the same rule you said earlier, the moment you
• 46:02
  violate a boundary you signal the universe to send you more of it and it's it's guys that's the you got to hold that line and hold it like your life depends on it because it does and once you have a firm boundary and the whole universe knows it and everybody knows it they never cross it never people don't yell at me there's there's certain things that i know and it's not because i will get mad or read anybody the riot act right so one of my big boundaries is around time like don't show up late
• 46:25
  So my boundary sounds like I respect my time in the time of other people, and therefore I am punctual and on time. And if not, I will let somebody know. Right. So if you're going to be let's say you and I have dinner and you're going to be 15 minutes late. If you don't let me know, I will order, assuming that you're not coming.
• 46:45
  Well, I take it a step further and it's just no for me the next time. And it's a hard no. And I don't even explain it. No is a complete sentence for me. When you're here, you listen to the end of this conversation, this podcast, you're getting all the meat. We had to hear all the backstory and all the bananas to get to this point. This, this last couple of minutes has been just an absolute masterclass in loving yourself. So guys go back and listen to this. No is a complete sentence. That's it. I don't need to explain to you why.
• 47:14
  I think that's the funniest thing about boundaries. And first, yes, I'm talking to you, the 25-year-old life coaches who have manufactured a trauma to tell us how to be more boundaried. I want to leave on this in the self-care vibe. We've talked a lot about boundaries. We've talked a lot about people-pleasing my story. Not every adversity you experience is traumatic. Right.
• 47:41
  Everybody goes through breakups. Everybody goes through hard. Everybody has a parent that sucks. Like, welcome to living.
• 47:49
  And the more that we try and personify our traumas and the more we try and pathologize them and the more we try to put on therapy as a personality trait, the weaker we become. Sure. Is it loving to yourself to go and do the healing work, get with a therapist, get with a good coach? Absolutely. Is there ways to improve on yourself? Probably. But for the most part, you're probably fine.
• 48:14
  And it's the decision to be above average that is in itself how you become above average. But if you want to remain average and you want to have an average house and an average car and an average life, it's awesome. Good for you. If that's what you love, be that. But stop making everything about why you can't and either accept where you are or do that. Do you believe in God? I don't.
• 48:43
  I believe, and so does my producer, that the God energy source, something exists. I believe it's God. And I would tell you that for those that do,
• 48:55
  that the adversity is steering you on the path that you're meant to go on. So I tend to agree with you. I just want to add that since you don't believe God, I'd say it's just we can agree that everything's energy. There's some energy source that's saying, don't go this way. Right. Let it go. Be fine. Right. Bill Burr says a really funny thing. Oh, boy. He said, oh, I would rather just be the guy that thinks it's going to be fine
• 49:25
  than the miserable piece of s**t. Wouldn't you rather just be that guy? So one thing you and I agree on and can agree on is that whether I believe in God or not, there is a relevancy to this because if you ask a theologian to define God, they will tell you, always has been, always will be. It can never be created or destroyed, constantly moving through form into form and out of form. If you ask a physicist to define energy,
• 49:52
  can never be created or destroyed. Always has been, always will be. It's constantly moving through form into form and out of form. So energy and God are the same. So is there an afterlife is a great question. We can answer it on another call, but the reality is, is that energetically we never leave. So do the best with this version of your energy and let the next thing do what it's
• 50:15
  Now we're getting the good stuff. It's like the last little bit's great. I mean, I love the personal story. Let's talk about your personal bill of rights and how someone can create their own. Okay, very quickly. The fastest way to do that is to go through your shoulds list. Write down all the ways you're supposed to show up.
• 50:32
  This is one of my favorite things. Okay. He says, say more. So when I say your shoulds list, you talked about that, those three buckets, right? What do I, what I want to do? What must I do? And then what should I do? Go through your shoulds list, right? And I, and I like to categorize them. So like, maybe you write down, how should I be in relationships? Like romantic relationships. How should I be as a friend? How should I be as a dad? How should I be in sex? How should I be at work?
• 51:03
  Right. So for the very successful entrepreneur, this that should list on the work side. I should always be nice, but I should always be honest. I should always get all this that you'll come up with. And as you think through of the ways you're supposed to show up, the way you've been programmed to show up, you'll come up with this list of shoulds. Once you've done that, you then know the operating system from which you're you're basing all of your decisions. And most people never even do that step in their life. Wait, say that again. You will know the operating system from which you're basing all your decisions.
• 51:33
  Your voice dropped on that. I want everybody to hear that. You will know the operating system. It won't be the answers. You have the operating system and the platform and the standards that you're willing to then keep going. Then once you do that, you say, okay, if I was to keep any of these, what would they be? Brilliant. First step is you want to look for the contradictions.
• 51:57
  Right? So the contradictions usually show up. My favorite one, and it usually shows up every time. Everybody I've ever done this with is, I have to be nice. I knew you were going to say that. And I have to be honest. Well, help me understand, because let's say I was to find out your girl was cheating on you. The nice guy thing to do is just be like, well, I don't want to hurt his feelings. But the kind thing of me is to come to you and go, hey, Kelly, I saw something and you're going to hate what I have to say next.
• 52:29
  That's not a nice thing to do. It's a kind thing to do. And kindness and honesty can't exist without one another. Otherwise, you end up either cruel or manipulative. It's really very easy. So that's the first thing. I look for all the contributions. Then after that, I go, okay, what do I want to keep in my shoulds list? So maybe it says I should always be kind. Then I move that over to my Bill of Rights. I'm allowed to be kind. I take the should off of it.
• 52:58
  and turn it to preference. Then I go back through and say, okay, if these things are things I don't wanna keep, what does the opposite of this look like? Perhaps I should always be nice, needs to be changed to, I want to be more assertive, like I wanna show up. I want to, a good example question might ask is, what would I have to do if I wanted to be more assertive? I wanna go into the boardroom and speak my heart. I'm allowed to speak my mind in meetings. Woo, that's a scary one for somebody in middle management.
• 53:26
  Or I want to be more playful in bed. I'm allowed to laugh during sex is in my Bill of Rights. Maybe I want to be more assertive. I'm allowed to ask for sex. You may not always get it, but you're certainly allowed to ask. So when you think of what the Bill of Rights is, it delineates this idea of who do I get to be and who do I want to show up as. When you play that game with yourself and you do it every day, you start to program this in your mind. Now, I learned this method
• 53:54
  It's not this particular method. This method is kind of a deconstruction of Aziz Gaspari plus Zig Ziglar. So Zig Ziglar was a friend and coach of mine on and off for years. And I don't know if you know who he is, but he was something else. You've got to show me a book.
• 54:13
  Okay, there it is. The definition of a salesman in here, I love it. I always have a phone. So when I was 19, I called him and I was in my first sales slump. And I left him a message and I didn't think he would call me back, but he did. And I'll tell you that story another time if you want. But anyway, he ended up calling me back and he talked me through these kind of lessons. But one of the things he gave me was on his website. And this is like a 1999. Yeah.
• 54:34
  Maybe 2000s, like right when websites were a thing. So he was ahead of the curve. And he had this one little thing. And you could click on it. And it would blow up to a whole page. Because we didn't have PDFs back then. And it was this long paragraph that he had me read to myself in the day.
• 54:51
  I'm going to show up and I'm going to do this many calls. I'm going to take care of myself this way at work. Not going to stop until I'm done. That kind of stuff. And at the end, they read, the eyes are the windows to the soul. So be careful what you look at. I would read this to myself every morning in the mirror because the eyes are the windows of the soul. And I was going to look at me saying this. And therefore I would believe what I was saying. Fascinatingly, it did make a huge impact because I would, I'd have these moments where I was about to screw off. And then I'd hear myself in my brain go, you said you weren't going to do that. Damn it. Get back to me.
• 55:20
  But so with the Bill of Rights, it's only as it's only as powerful as as as you use it. So you don't if you don't read it to yourself, if you don't care enough about it to put the time and energy into it, then you won't have a power. You'll just have a list that you think.
• 55:38
  I did it in this, this, I believe statements. And then I crushed them out. So we take that offline, but we're up against it. I want to ask one final question because it's pertinent. What's your advice for someone who wants to quit people pleasing, but fears losing the relationships? The only reason that you would lose relationships, there's only two ways that that would happen is if you conflate not being a people pleaser with being a dickhead, then you will lose relationships.
• 56:03
  Or if the relationships you're in are toxic. Those are the only two ways that that will happen. So remember that the opposite of people pleasing isn't being a jerk. Don't try to find the balance between those two toxic extremes. Identify all of the things in you that you love first. Maybe you're generous. Maybe you're agreeable. Maybe you don't give a shit where you go to dinner. A million things that you actually like about yourself. Write all those down. Keep those.
• 56:30
  And then find the behaviors on the other side of that coin that you may not like. Maybe you say yes too much. Maybe you overcommit. Maybe you are seeking validation and that's the only way that you know your value, right, is through the validation. Maybe those are, you know, and I can give you a constellation. But when you go through that list and say, okay, how do I work on those one by one and integrate that shame into my personality so I no longer have to feel shameful about saying that? And you will not get over discomfort until you get uncomfortable.
• 56:59
  Right. Like, look at the arms on Kelly. He didn't get that way by sitting on his couch being comfortable. That's how it works. Now, remember, one of those relationships you want to get rid of, guys. So that's people don't realize, oh, my God, there's a lot of toxic people in your life that you grew up with and they're there. Your boy or your girl's been with you for 30 years. Sometimes you got to cut them loose. I'm up against it. I want to know when is your book come out? What's the title? The book is entitled.
• 57:29
  Presently. You're kidding me. Dude, you know, this is unbelievable. This has got to be one of the strangest, but yet.
• 57:38
  fulfilling conversation I've ever had. I've done this, like jaw drop to heart burning. I think you are one of the most fascinating polarizing individuals I've ever met. You've made a friend of mine. When does it come out? Sorry, when does it come out? You can look for my book. It should start the finalizing of the process. I imagine we'll see it on shelves January. January.
• 58:03
  of 2026 so we're getting close um we're we we are just now um inking that with publisher and getting that all kind of accomplished um if you would bleep the name for me because it occurs to me that i have not bought the website i don't have the trademark yet okay so um i i love that it will be bleeped as well because i think that's what it is um finding me now is probably the best best place to do it is either instagram or youtube um at the people displeaser and then if you want to get involved with my boot camps you want to know more about my coaching just click on the link in
• 58:33
  I'll be happy to help you. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time and you coming on. And I appreciate you've had nothing but harder than life. And now you're living happier than life. And I'm proud of you. And you're doing great work. And thank you for coming on the Harder Life podcast. Thanks for having me, man.
• 58:49
  Please rate and share this podcast. I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Segal supporters. Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity. Visit TrustNTM.com for more info. Until next week, be harder than life.