In an extract from his new book on making the most of our finite time on Earth, the writer argues that worrying about how friends and colleagues are feeling is an agonising way to live.
I found the cure for my anxiety!! For years, I possessed a remarkable superpower: I could turn almost any work opportunity that came my way, no matter how exciting, into an unpleasant emotional drama, simply by agreeing to do it. And that I rarely enjoyed myself fully at social gatherings, owing to a deep suspicion that the others present, however happy they appeared, might secretly only be spending time with me reluctantly.
People-pleasing tendencies develop for different specific reasons, but right at the core of all of them lies a fundamental denial of what it means to be a limited human being. A vast proportion of conventional productivity advice consists of techniques for maintaining the illusion that you might, one day, find a way to fit everything in. And you have to allow other people their problems.
Or, by the same token, that your presence at a social gathering is so utterly consequential that it has the power to ruin it for anyone else. But what if someone genuinely is furious, disappointed or otherwise upset with you? Still โ at the most fundamental level โ not your problem. Many of us make it to middle age still craving the approval of our parents, whether or not they happen to be alive, or of substitute parent figures. And you wonder why it stresses you out so much to get a text from the boss!
Suppose your cantankerous manager is bugging you for a reply to his email, or your anxious partner wants you to hurry up and make a decision on your travel plans. Yet the full reality of the situation will be radically different. You need only face the consequences. They have no magic power to reach out and force you to act.
