The need to be liked
I am now receptive to the idea that the need to be liked is a reflection of what needs to be healed. Sit down. This one is going to be rough. It may rub you the wrong way or upset your ideas about some things you thought were important. It may even ruin the activities you had planned for today, which means you are going to have to shift gears and find something else to focus your life on. You may think you know this already. Perhaps you do. I bet each time something happens to remind you, you scratch your head trying to figure out why. What is it? Here it is: Everybody does not have to like you! In fact, everybody can’t like you! Everyone must not like you! That is not their job! Liking you is not anyone’s purpose in life except yours. There are times when, for no apparent reason or for no good reason at all, people decide that you are not like-able. They may even profess to hate you! They will say things to you or about you that will hurt your feelings. Sometimes, they will go out of their way just to be mean and nasty to you. No matter how hard you try to make them like you, they wont! This does not make them bad people. Oh, no! It simply means that they may have ‘stuff’ going on with them that has nothing to with you and that will trigger your stuff! That’s right! The behaviour of the people who don’t like you will bring up your abandonment issues. Your issues about being rejected. Your issues about not being good enough, or not doing things right enough. The minute you discover that somebody you think is important to you doesn’t like you, all your people pleasing stuff will be triggered, and you will be forced to deal with it. What a blessing! This is precisely the stuff you need to heal. You may have been concerned because you know that there are people who, who for one reason or another, just don’t like you.
Just for today, concern yourself with figuring out why you think they should. I will be devoted to examining any need to be liked and accepted by other people!
Taken from ‘Until Today!’
by Iyanla vanZant
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