Whom do you seek to please? Most of us choose to please others. In so doing, we often please no one. Pleasing others makes us weak and unhappy. For we can never please them enough. The traditional workplace is all about pleasing. Pleasing your boss is job#1 - pleasing your client is close.
Pleasing others usually ends in tears. We become a fake person who is designed to be what we imagine the other wishes us to be. We try and become mind readers. We try and control what cannot be controlled. In the end we annoy the very person we tried to please and we lose ourselves along the way.
I think this is why the workplace is often so toxic and stressful.
Ironically the best way to to please others is to be clear about who you really are and not try and be what you think they want.
Be close but not too close. Own only what you can control and to be clear about what this is. Be disciplined to know that you are not responsible in any way for others and make it clear to others what their part is in this dance that is our life.
Understand that, ultimately, we can control nothing. All we can really control is our reaction to events and to people.
Know that the only person who can make us happy or unhappy is ourselves.
When we can do this - we have grown up. When you can do this, you can be a really good freelancer. You will have the optimal inner skills to use your outer skills.
So how can you get to the place where we don't fall into the pleasing trap? The only answer I know is my own answer and my own assessment as to why I did this anyway.
The day I grew up was not long ago.
In 1996, aged 45, I was on a train with Fraser Mustard. We were returning from a trip to Queens University in Kingston, where he had been giving a master class to a group of senior people in the Canadian Government service. I had been working for him as an adviser for about a year. Working with him was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I asked him if he would consider taking me on full time.
"You are an adult now Rob. Time to go out on your own." He paused and then added. "I am tired. You cannot rely on me for your life."
The greatest advice I have ever had given by the greatest man I have ever encountered.
As I look back, I can see that nearly all my working life had been a replication of the most important thread of my family story. I wanted my father's love and explicit approval.
This meant in my early life, that I was going to meet or beat his milestones. It was all about public success. To say that I was driven was an understatement.
Even my father's early death did not stop this drive. It made it worse. For not only, did I still pursue "Success" but I also looked out for other father figures in the work force that I could finally impress. I chose roles where I could serve the "father" directly. I became the ideal chief of staff person. No matter how difficult the assignment, I would make it look easy. I was into jumping over buildings, catching bullets in my teeth.
But like a love affair, reality would set in over time. He would seem less god like. I would seem less magical. We would start to get annoyed with each other. There would be a break up and I would find another "father" and the cycle would start all over again.
Fraser was my last attempt to find a new dad. He never played the game. As soon as he saw what I was up to, he sent me packing.
I don't think that my work trap is unusual. You may not seek to find your dad's approval. But my experience is that I see people playing out a whole range of family stories. Beat my brother. Find my mother. Play the parent. Play the helpless child. Sons find dads and dads find sons. Tyrants find slaves and slaves find tyrants.
Many take their unresolved family issues into the workplace and play them out time and time again. They do this I think because, the traditional workplace appears to be like a family where parents adjudicate between unruly children. The more more bureaucratic, the more removed from results, the more toxic and more dysfunctional family like the workplace becomes.
But most of all, we play either the parent or the child who wishes to please.
This simplistic idea of pleasing is connected to feeling that if only we had more money or stuff - we would be finally happy.
For of course, there is no pleasing enough or no amount of money that is enough to fill this need. For as long as we play this game, we avoid dealing with the central issue. That we have to leave our family behind to grow up.
We can never have authentic relationships with others so long as we play these family games.
So what to do? How to stop pleasing?
In my case it was to find out how to please myself. To know that the only person who can do this is me.
How did I find this? Not by enlightenment. Not by reading someone else write this.
But by having the messiest and most painful mid life crisis. So bad that in the end, it was to acknowledge this or die. Maybe not die a bodily death but to give into the game itself.
I regret to tell you that there is no easy or graceful way. Maybe the crucifixion story is the metaphor. To find the better life, the childish person has to die. Die publicly in a humiliating way, abandoned by friends. But loved by a few, who wait patiently and without blame for you to chose to grow up.
And the result?
A new relationship with the world. For the Freelancer only superficially stands on his or her skills.
Most of all she or he bases their life and all their relationships on love.
Not the love of a child. But of an adult that bears the scars of life and our failings. The underpinning of this love is compassion. To know how hard life is and to see yourself in all others - especially in those that annoy you the most.
For the true freelancer can only influence another or events by their own lives. It is not the great idea, the power point, the report. It is only you. To have any influence, others have to know and trust that you are really there for them. That you are them.
Paul of course says it best. His plea for adulthood is my Freelancer's creed.
1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
