The single most important question to ask yourself to get past the fear of disappointing people

On Friday I hosted a webinar on letting go of proving, pleasing, and perfecting. We had a FANTASTIC group of women that shared SO openly.

If you weren’t able to join the webinar, let me tell you now – YOU ARE NOT ALONE in struggling with perfectionism or people pleasing or feeling like you have something to prove.

(Side note: Last week I did an Instagram poll about proving ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of people said they felt the need to prove themselves. Wow.)

A lot of themes came up in the webinar, but there’s one in particular I wanted to share today: A fear of disappointing people.

The fear of disappointing people was underneath so many other situations – having a hard time saying no, feeling like everything has to be perfect, doing or believing something different than what you were taught by your parents, teachers, or church growing up, working yourself into the ground to be successful (or to avoid failure, because that would be disappointing people).

Here’s the single most important question to get out of the disappointment trap: What is more important?

What is more important than disappointing people? What is more important than putting out “perfect” work? What is more important that questioning what you were taught and choosing a way that works for you?

Make the thing that is more important BIGGER than the fear of disappointing people.

The more important thing is completely up to you. It might be something big like expressing yourself or living aligned to what you know is most important or setting an example for your daughter about living a free life.

Or it could be something small, like it’s more important to sleep for an extra hour than to potentially disappoint someone by not responding to their email at 9:00pm.

What is more important to YOU?