Today I’m exploring the topic of how women want to be liked and how it can get in our way.
At some level all of us humans want to be liked don’t we? However for women it can be very much more pronounced. Author Tara Mohr covers this subject of likeability in her book Playing Big – an inspiring and practical book for all women by the way. She explains it like this – for millennia as women we could ensure our survival by complying with what was approved of or desired by those with greater power, we didn’t have financial independence, social status or physical strength, so being likeable to powerful people was a survival strategy. So there we have it, generations old conditioning about what is required to survive – being likeable.
This desire to be liked, whether it’s wrong or right, also has a critical relationship to power. The qualities we tend to like in women (modesty, humility) are not the qualities that get professional recognition.
As women we are relationally focused, we think of ourselves in relation to others, being caring and nurturing is expected of us, we are afraid of rocking the boat or offending others and this can sometimes stop us speaking up.
As part of our conditioning we often also have a heightened ability to read others reactions, for instance in a meeting when we are speaking we pick up on who’s engaged and who isn’t, this can be very useful to us however it can also send us into a tail spin of panic. What happens is that we see someone not engaged and then we tell ourselves a story around that, things like ‘they think I’m talking rubbish so have switched off’ ‘they don’t understand what I’m trying to say, so I’d better explain more’ or ‘they don’t like me’. Now some of these stories may be true but equally true might be the fact the that person who doesn’t appear engaged may not show their engagement or might have other things on their mind that day. Our tendency is to think it’s about ourselves, to doubt ourselves and to connect it to being liked.
The bitter truth is that no matter how hard you try, there will always be people out there who don’t like you. Learning to be okay with that is hard work, but you’ll like yourself so much more for it if you do.
Here’s some thoughts on how to learn to be ok with it.
Focus on doing a good job instead, take your emotion out of it, empower yourself by reflecting on how your perceive yourself and work on liking yourself more and recognising your own ability.
When you’re in the spotlight and you know you’ll be worrying about if you’ve got it right and will people like you – think – am I prepared? what’s my role here? how can I do a good job here?
Remember it’s impossible for everyone to like you. You don’t like everyone you meet do you? We don’t actually have much say in who likes us and who doesn’t, it’s incredibly subjective.
I hope you’ve found today’s blog useful.
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