Episode 61: How Working on My People Pleasing is Honoring Me with My Grief with Elizabeth Hester

Today I have Elizabeth Hester joining me on the podcast. She’s a current member of the Stop People Pleasing group coaching program that started back in January. She’s a mother, teacher, and lifelong student. She’s also the owner of multiple UPS stores in North Carolina. She’s been processing her grief from the loss of her husband in the ways that work best for her. Grieving goes hand in hand with people pleasing- it’s all about getting comfortable with uncomfortable feelings. While in the group program, she’s learned how to stop apologizing, how to say no, and how to respond when strangers ask her about her husband. Grief teaches you to acknowledge how short life is and not waste time people pleasing anymore. Can’t wait for you to listen.

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Transcript

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You are listening to the X Good Girl podcast, episode 61. I have a ray of sunshine on my podcast today. Uh, Elizabeth Hester is a current member of the Stop People Pleasing group coaching program. We just started in January and I was talking about wanting some podcast episodes to speak to what's it like? What are you doing? What are you learning? And she was so kind as a volunteer. And we're here, we're just I didn't send her any questions ahead of time. I'm just going to throw a matter and see how she does because she is good like that. How would you like to introduce yourself? So I'm Elizabeth Hester. I live in North Carolina. 58 years old. I'm a mother of 2, a 16 year old and a 28 year old. I was widowed. Uh, a year ago last week and, um, that has been the hardest journey of my life. And I'm so grateful that I found you in this journey. I have a background of, I was very varied. I was an engineer. I had been a ballet dancer before I was an engineer. Then I made decisions in my life to change and I ended up building and running a ballet company and then retiring from that to work with my husband in UPS stores. And so now I all of a sudden find myself owning a number of UPS stores and trying to figure that journey out. So. It's a lot of words for a simple question, but it gives you an idea of who I am. Well, one of the things that I have noticed about you in our time together is your ability to pivot. Right. And to, to transition and to, to do something new and try something new. How did you find me and stop people, the stop people pleasing program? So fortunately I have had other life coaches, business coaches. I knew the value of coaching when my husband died. And so when my husband died, he was my soulmate, my business partner. My co parent and, um, the world went black for me. I did not even want to be here. And my husband made me promise him before he was ventilated that I would find a way to make a happy life for my daughter and I. And, um, so I immediately started searching desperately and I listened to every podcast that I could find and on a widow coaching podcast, I heard you. And it came at the right time, because when I heard you on that podcast, um, I was struggling very deeply with, uh, I thought it was just parenting. Now I learned you apply to a lot more areas, but I was struggling very deeply with being able to go back to being a parent for 6 to 9 months. I was just beside my daughter. We were just surviving. I was not parenting, and parenting involves a lot of yes and no, and you can and you can't, and I had to relearn that, especially in the parent of a 16 year old, you're not going to always make them happy. And my deep, deep, deep people pleaser that I've worked on for many years in grief, she just exploded. And I didn't know how to put her back in Pantore's box. Um, and when I heard you, I hadn't heard anything that I thought could help me. When I heard you, I thought, huh, maybe she could help me. And then we scheduled a call and then I knew you could. Well, that's. Amazing to hear. Um, before we go on, I just want to say, and this might make me cry. The way you talk about your husband, just go straight to my heart. Every time. The kind of man that he was, the love he had for you and your daughter and your children and the life that he wanted. you to create for yourself and to create with you and for you to create for yourself. It's just so touching to me and I'm just so grateful to help you with a little tiny part of that, um, after his passing. So, so much. I, I, you know, one of the things I'm grateful for every day, his love drives me every day. And I say, I fall in love with him more every day because he came in my life after a lot of self work. I was the kind of young woman that accepted abuse from men that no matter how much I succeeded in life, saw my value is very little that I didn't fit the boxes that I grew up in, in the South. As for a woman, I was. I didn't fit in any of them, so I felt fundamentally flawed and, um, he set me free from all of that. He used to say, honey, you're missing a self preservation gene and you need to look at what's good for Elizabeth. And he taught me my value. And one of the other things I promised him, I told him, I said, you have taught me my value and I will not forget. And I will not go back to letting people harm me ever and he would be so happy that I'm reaching out and I'm getting the help. I need practically to do that because those are big words, but it's in the, it's in the little things that you do that. And he would be so happy. So, so thank you, Sarah, for recognizing that. That means a lot. Well, it's, it's worth saying, and I'm just grateful that you feel comfortable expressing his wishes for you and your feelings about him so freely. One of the things that you just said that I really want to highlight is the little things. We all want big before and after moments and we get kind of fed that in media that Uh, these big, huge moments of change or the way that it happens, but in people pleasing, it doesn't. It's a series of little tiny things shifts in the way you see things shifts in your ability to tolerate an uncomfortable feeling that really create the big success. And that's one of the reasons why at the beginning of every session, we celebrate. And I don't know if you've noticed, I will just be quiet until someone speaks up because everyone is saying the same thing in their mind. Oh, this is not that big a deal. Oh, I don't want to take up time. Oh, this is not something that everybody wants to hear, but it really is. How has focusing on the little things helped you, affected you? What has it taught you? What are your thoughts about the little things? You know, I think there's And big aha moments come from a lot of little steps, like you're walking up the mountain and then you get to the top and you go, Oh, I can see the next mountain. But it was all the little steps up. It's been the truth in all of the steps in my life. It was, it was little steps for, till I got to aha moments and then more little steps. And I love that about your program. I love, love, love that several things you say are really powerful. One is not letting us apologize. And I've realized how much I apologize. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm crying. Oh, I'm so sorry. I have inconvenience to you. Oh, I'm so sorry. I have this little thing that I think is little, but it's not someone else in the group needed to hear it. I love that. But you don't let us apologize and you don't let us say it's a little thing that all little things are big things. And. Um, I'll share what I did this week that I came to. Um, so you challenged us to say no to someone who didn't matter the to us. You know, it wasn't a high value in our life. The waiter, the insurance adjuster. And I couldn't figure out where I wasn't saying no in my life. Where was I not saying no. And then I realized as I cried in the parking lot after meeting an insurance adjuster, I had met him in a parking lot and I was in a good mood. And then the man who doesn't know me from Adam asked what everybody asked, I had to tell him I was a widow. And he asked me, oh, how did he die, if you don't mind me asking? You get it every time you say it. And I've always answered it. And I've always answered all the reoccurring questions. The, well, was it fast? Did you know it was coming? So this time I answered it like normal. And I got in the car and cried as he drive away and my sunny day, which I've worked very hard to have sunny days, uh, was gone and I was wailing in the car and I don't mind when I wail in the car. I mind when I was having a good day and because a stranger was curious. I gave away my good day and I thought, Oh, there's something I don't say no to little thing that affects me all the time because everybody asks, or I go avoiding things because I don't want to have to deal with it. And then you taught us about. Doing a script coming up with how we would say it and I got feedback and now I've gotten it down to like this 3 sentence. Um, you know, that question is not very helpful to me. And so if you would love to talk about my husband and our life, I'd love to share that. But that's just not a helpful question to me. I, I love that so much for a couple of reasons. First of all, women are programmed that anytime we're asked a question, we should answer. It's rude not to answer. And we try to be kind. We try to be nice. But we were supposed to answer, but what that insurance adjuster was doing was centering his curiosity about one of the most terrible things, if not the most that has ever happened to you and you centered yourself again. You're like, that question is not helpful to me, and I will be centering myself and my needs and my wants so that I can have the day that I have worked so hard to give myself. Well, one of the things I heard myself say after something you taught on this was I made what was important to me important. You have taught me when I give myself away. When I abandon myself, when I do something that harms me to make somebody else comfortable or because I should, or because it's habit to not beat myself up, which would have always been my go to. You say, no, you can't learn it until you see it. I love that you teach us that, but That if you see that you did it, that's a win. That was huge for me because I have not yet said those words to somebody, but I will, but had I not learned from you that just seeing it is a win versus, Oh, Elizabeth, why do you do that? Totally. Why'd you say little thing, little shift of perspective, huge outcome, huge. That really just makes me happy because I think that for so many of us that the thought is you should have seen that you should know that. Why are you still X numbers of years old and still doing this? And all of that does is just lock it down and shame rather than making it accessible for us to be like, well, that's so interesting. Why am I saying that? Why do I feel like I owe this insurance adjuster an explanation of something so tender to me and. That's going to have such a, a harmful effect on the rest of the day that I'm trying to have. So it doesn't even matter that you haven't said it yet. The, the pride in your face, the, the energy behind it is all of that matters just as much as the moment that's coming when you are going to say it. Oh, it, it, it's huge. I mean, it's empowering and getting tools where I can speak up for myself again, to find confidence again in such a little thing is so huge because we, we build our lives by a brick at a time, getting the gift that you've given us in a tool to find, I have this piece of control. I have this piece of power in my own life. It's like momentum. It's like, you know, the train is stuck and you get it rolling just a little. And then you think, Oh, okay. Let me put a little more coal in that fire. Let's go to some more groups. Let's do some more of our homework. Let's try to figure this out. It does. It gives you hope. It gives you hope that you can, you can have influence over your own destiny in life. Amazing. So where else have you seen people pleasing popping up for you? So, I am organically a people pleaser. I am, I am a Southern woman who was raised in the deep South, who is a Christian, who was raised in, um, but who believes now very, very differently than a lot of people who share my faith. And, um, but all of that is so entrenched in me. I see it in the way I answer a question. I see it when I'm sitting in a group at a meeting, and I'm the only female in my position, and I think I need to be nice instead of just. The truth, like the other multi center owners in the room, I mean, it comes up everywhere. It's in every area, every area of my life. One of the things that you have said a couple of times that has been so impactful for me is that you're not only working on your people pleasing, but you're working on it in a state of grief. And how does that change it? What effect does that have on it? Let me say first, I am in a state of devastating grief. I think that as people pleasers, and especially, we are often grieving at what we are giving up. We are often grieving at how we have abandoned ourselves. We are often grieving at the choices we make that don't resonate with ourself, and then we have to live with. So, I think there are levels of grief, and I have never known this level. For And it gets really easy to not people, please, because you really don't give a damn. You really don't like, uh, I drew three circles of what mattered to me. It was my daughter, my business and myself. And so I had a rule that if you weren't in those three things, I didn't care. Uh, I didn't have the energy and I didn't care because you weren't going to help me survive and I had to survive. What's been so interesting is, as I am learning to more than survive again, it's interesting is it would be really easy to lose that clarity. I don't want to because there's something very clear about what you think and what matters in life. When you walk into death, it becomes very, very clear. So, whether Susie thinks you volunteer enough at school, it's not even a, like, it doesn't cross your mind because you're so clear on what matters. If it matters to you to go volunteer to that, you do. But otherwise, Susie doesn't cross your mind what she thinks, then as you get better, Susie starts to have a voice in your mind again, uh, and so I would say that the one thing I, one of the gifts of grief is one of the reasons I contacted you is I don't want to lose that clarity. I've realized the shortness of life and the gift of life, and I don't want to give away any of my life to people pleasing anymore because it is just a life sucker. It does no one any good. And so it has been a, it has given me a lot of clarity, Sarah, and I want to try to keep that. I know my days are limited on this earth. And I want to be the decision maker on who I am and and so it's a matter of now. I'm going to listen to those voices and decide which ones I want to keep and invite new voices in and and have my own voice. Listen to my own voice. Because I think that's the key of it is we're trying not to listen to our own voice. Uh, so I really think people pleasing would be a barrier for me to to live well with my loss. So I'm here, so wise and eloquent what you just said, do you have tremendous skills in, um, giving us tools to help us help ourselves and, um, it's changing me and it's changing me in a way that's, um, giving me hope that I can't have a happy life again. It's really powerful to cut the group coaching, um, with you. Is a very, very powerful that I'm so grateful. I'm in. Well, I'm so grateful to know you. It is an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to, uh, to be a part of this with you and to not only get to know you as a human, but your story and the, the life that you are trying to rebuild as we wrap up here. Is there anything, is there anything that's not working for you in the group? Any, any part of the experience that hasn't been what you hoped it would be? I wish I had more opportunity because my schedule, but it's not the group. I struggle with my schedule. So when I miss, so when I, I can't get to, I mean, you've seen me, I've been on the beach, I've been in the doctor's office. I've been like, uh, um, so no, it has been a godsend to me and, um, and has made a difference. I mean, and that's what, that is priceless. So no, no, Sarah, it's, it's been a beautiful experience for me. Well, it's been a beautiful experience for me as well. I just so appreciate your willingness to do this with me. So thank you so much, Elizabeth. Is there anything you want to say here as we wrap up? What I would say is if you're thinking about this program, um, have a one to one with Sarah. That I, I was, I am a skeptical person by nature. I'm a civil engineer. I was a teacher for 20 years. I ran a school and a ballet company. I have 2 kids. Um, I worked really hard for the money and the time I get. And, um, I was skeptical. And so I took because that's how I'm nature and I'm an investigator before I'm going to jump into any waters. Um, especially in something this vulnerable. And this important and when I met with you one on one, I knew I wanted you in my life. And, um, I knew that. And so that's what I would encourage is for people to listen to your podcasts. Um, I listened to a bunch of them and I thought this, this person has something to teach me that can make my life different, better. And then I took the time to meet with you. And, um, so that's what I would say is if you're toying with the idea that You would like a life coach who could help you become a better, truer you to take the time to have a one on one conference with you that it would, you will, you will not be disappointed that you did. So that's my last word. Well, I appreciate that so much. Thank you so much for your time. And for everyone listening, thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week. Bye. Bye.