Hi, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers podcast and you're listening to one of our new series of Squiggly Shortcuts.

These episodes are designed to be really short. They are designed to be very useful and to solve a problem that you might be dealing with right now.

So we are going to talk through some ideas for action that you can use straight away if this is a situation

that you're struggling with. So today's Squiggly Shortcut is on people pleasing.

If you are someone who finds yourself saying yes when you really want to say no, or maybe you're overwhelmed by

all the other things that people want you to do and it's meaning that you're not getting on

the things that are important to you, is likely that people pleasing might have become a bit

of a problem for you. And lots of people have this. So please don't feel like you're on your own

with it. But the good news is there are some very simple, practical things that we can do please don't feel like you're on your own with it but the good news is

there are some very simple practical things that we can do that don't feel too scary don't feel

like you're being too difficult a person you can still be yourself and you can still be nice

but you can also stop people pleasing getting in your own way so three ideas the first one is

pause before you find yourself saying yes.

So very often, yes, becomes the default. Yes, I can do it. Yes, no problem. Yes, I can get it

fixed by the end of the week. Like, yes just becomes the immediate answer we say when someone

asks us to do something. And what we need to do is to make yes more of a conscious decision. And the easiest way for that to happen is for you to create a pause. So a statement like, appreciate the request. Let me come back to you once I've had a chance to think it through. Like, find the sentence that feels like something that you would say, but it basically is going

to just buy you a bit of time so that you're not just saying yes by default and it becomes

a much more conscious decision where you have thought about the implications of it.

So find your pause statement that you can just say rather than just accepting whatever it is,

people throw your way. Because that's the first action. The second one is to start using the phrase,

I don't rather than I can't. So let's imagine I ask you to do something and you're thinking,

well, that's a bit hard.

...