Day 16: Stop People-Pleasing Your Way To Burnout
September Rentrée Series
🍂 Welcome to the September Rentrée! Every weekday this month, you'll get one bold, bite-sized piece to spark reflection, shift your habits, and help you design a life that feels good in real life. 1 month. 20 bold truths. A life-changing September. In France, la rentrée (the return) is a national event. It's about fresh routines, new ideas, and intentional renewal. And that's exactly the energy we're bringing here!
You said yes to organising the office party. Yes to helping your neighbour move. Yes to that extra project. Yes to staying late.
Yes, yes, yes, until your calendar became a graveyard of other people's priorities, and you became a ghost of yourself.
People-pleasing feels virtuous at first.
You're helpful, reliable, the person everyone can count on.
But here's the uncomfortable truth I learn the hard way: chronic people-pleasing isn't generosity, it's fear dressed up as kindness.
Fear of conflict. Fear of disappointment. Fear that your worth depends entirely on your usefulness to others.
The path from people-pleasing to burnout is shorter than you think.
Every "yes" you give to avoid discomfort is a "no" to your own needs.
Skip lunch to help a colleague? There goes your energy
Cancel your gym session for someone else's emergency? There goes your stress relief
Work through the weekend to meet an unreasonable deadline you should have pushed back on? There goes your recovery time
The body keeps score.
First comes the exhaustion that coffee can't fix.
Then the resentment that seeps into every interaction. You snap at loved ones, not because they did anything wrong, but because you've given away every ounce of patience you had.
The irony? In trying to keep everyone happy, you become someone no one wants to be around.
Breaking the pattern starts with recognising that “no” is a complete sentence.
You don't need to justify your boundaries with elaborate excuses. Your time and energy are finite resources, not unlimited wells for others to draw from.
Start small. Pause before responding to requests.
Ask yourself: "Am I saying yes because I want to, or because I'm afraid of the alternative?"
Practice declining gracefully: "I can't commit to that right now." Notice how the world doesn't end.
The goal isn't to become selfish, it's to become sustainable. When you protect your energy, you can show up fully for the commitments that matter.
You can give from abundance rather than depletion.
Stop setting yourself on fire to keep others warm. The light you provide burns brightest when you tend to your own flame first.
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