Why Being Easygoing Doesn’t Make You a Better Person

Are you constantly apologizing for having needs? Feeling guilty every time you speak up for yourself? In this episode, I will teach you how to confidently advocate for yourself without guilt, reclaim your power, and create more authentic, meaningful relationships.

This show is for women who’ve been labeled, misdiagnosed, or misunderstood. Whether you have a diagnosis or just know deep down that you experience life differently, this is your space to stop fixing yourself and start trusting who you already are. My name is Amanda Hess. Let’s go.

It’s important, I think, to understand that being easygoing doesn’t make you a better person. So, this is going to be a guide for the woman who feels guilty even when she hasn’t done anything to feel guilty about. All right?

I have had this experience in my life and I’m sure that you have too, wherein somebody has done something or said something that has become a problem for you. And so you speak up. And the other person might be very uncomfortable with that. They might be dysregulated. They might not be okay with you bringing this up. They might be defensive. There might be a lot of things going on, but you directly advocate for what you need. You’re not easygoing. You let the person know, this is what I need, this is how I need it to be done, this is what’s got to happen. And you’re direct.

And then after, even you get what you want out of that scenario, you feel guilty. You feel guilty and you feel like you did something wrong because you feel guilty. And in the back of your mind, there’s this movie saying, “You could have been nicer about that. Maybe this wasn’t such a big deal. Did I need to make such a big deal out of this? This person probably thinks I’m a bitch. I should probably apologize.” Many versions of that. And it’s so common that we don’t even really question where those thoughts are coming from.

I think that what we need to start with is understanding that we have been socialized to be this way. You’re not broken for feeling things deeply or having strong preferences. But you’ve just been taught that being low maintenance is equal to being lovable. That we need to be low maintenance to be lovable, that they’re the same thing.

And so what will happen is we will start believing that and start hearing that messaging, and then as we get older, as we get more involved in our lives, as our lives become more complex, as we start to understand ourselves better and know more, we have friction here because we think about how this should be easier for us, right? That we should be able to ask for what we need, that we should be able to ask for what we want. But we don’t, because we feel like we can’t. And then we end up in this situation where we start feeling a lot of resentment. We feel resentful of the people around us because they’re not being easygoing and they ask for what they want. Why do they get what they want and we don’t get what we want? Right?

We start to be frustrated and overwhelmed because we’re taking on too much. And that’s because we’ve got to be a good person at all costs. We’ve got to do all the things. We’ve got to be easygoing. We’ve got to say yes, even when we deeply want to say no.

If you feel really, really tired, if you feel exhausted, if you feel like everything is landing on top of you and then you’re just supposed to be happy go lucky about it and you’re sick of it, I hear you. I understand you and we’re going to talk about this. And we’re going to talk about how to get through that. I want to first just talk about the culture of being an easygoing woman. We’re praised for being easy to be around. Have you even noticed with children that this goes on? That we validate the easygoing child. The easygoing child, the easy child. We validate that child. We validate the mother of that child. Like, oh, look at your child. They’re so good. They don’t cause any problems. They’re just so easygoing. How amazing. What a lovely child that doesn’t disagree, that doesn’t complain, that doesn’t have any problems.

But what actually happens is that we’re really just being taught that emotional abandonment is the way to go. So rather than deal with the emotions that we’re experiencing, we should shove them down. We should not pay attention to them. We should mask, we should ride over them, we should be different than how we are. And this is very, very common, especially with those of us that are neurodivergent. So if you’re highly sensitive and therefore all of the things that are happening around you are creating sensory overload for you. We feel this friction of, I need to be easygoing, but also, I’m so overstimulated that I’m not okay.

And we see this in so many different areas. I coach women who are mothers of Autistic children. And what I will say is that they feel that pressure. They feel that pressure for their child to act in a certain way so that everybody can be agreeable, so that we can all belong and so that we can all fit in.

I think that when you look at what does even “you’re so easygoing” mean, what it means is, what it implies is, you don’t complain. You don’t ask for too much. You’re emotionally convenient for others. And this is how we are. Easygoing is: you don’t complain, you don’t ask for too much, and you’re emotionally convenient for others.

And what I want you to know is this pressure to do this, it isn’t your fault. It’s systemic. It’s gendered, for sure. It’s pushed towards women. Men are by no means taught to be as easygoing as women are supposed to be. But it’s exhausting. And the truth is, the more you make yourself easy for others, the harder it becomes to live with yourself. Because you’re still in there. Your thoughts, your beliefs, your inability to process, that is still there. You are still dealing with that.

I want to talk about when you’re not easygoing. When you’re not easygoing and you express needs or you take up space, you start experiencing this internal messaging that I’ve already talked about, right? That internal shame starts to grow. Why can’t I just go with the flow? Why can’t I be easygoing? Why do I always have to be a problem? Why can’t I be the kind of person that just lets other people have opinions and not share mine and not care? Why can’t I be that way?

We have the fear of being seen as difficult, dramatic, or needy. And let’s be real, nobody wants to be that kid and nobody wants to be that adult. And so we will definitely mask over our behavior to keep ourselves from that place, to keep ourselves from being identified as such. And then what happens is we end up with an emotional hangover after advocating for ourselves.

And so what will happen is you will speak up. You will say, “This isn’t okay. I don’t like this. This doesn’t work for me.” And the other person might reject you in that moment and you might have friction, an argument, a disagreement, bad blood. And that emotional hangover is where we believe that we’ve done something wrong because this is what’s happened. And we start getting stuck in all of the thoughts of how we’re not good enough, we’re not likable, we’re not lovable, people won’t accept us for who we are. We can’t be normal, we can’t have normal relationships, et cetera, et cetera.

So the reframe that I have for you is that feeling bad for having needs doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means that you’re unlearning something harmful. And I just want you to sit with that for a minute. When you feel bad for having needs, it doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. It means you’re unlearning something harmful. So important to sit with that with yourself and have compassion for yourself. We have learned a harmful way of being in the world, and it is making our experience of our life more difficult, less connected, less peaceful, harder, more anxious. So where do we go from here?

I want to talk about where the guilt and the shame come from. The guilt starts when we’re in childhood. And as I referred to, that whole idea of being a good girl, right? That good girl programming that we have: be good at all costs. Good girls don’t speak up. Good girls don’t make waves. Good girls don’t make other people uncomfortable. Good girls don’t disagree. And that’s important to know.

Then there’s religious, cultural, or familial messaging wherein the church tells us that we must be easygoing. Our families say, “Ours is the kind of family where we don’t have difficult conversations.” Where we are in an experience where if you ask for what you need, you will be called needy or called dramatic, and that’s an insult. That’s a derogatory expression to be needy, to be demanding, to be dramatic.

And so, because we have all of these things happening, these people talking to us, learning both consciously and subconsciously through how our parents behave, how our teachers behave, how the world behaves, what TV is like, what social media is like, we start to bring all of that in as being the truth, right? That’s the truth.

And so guilt is often just a reflex. When we advocate for ourselves, when we say, “Hey, I don’t want you to do it like X,” or we say, “I’m not okay with the fact that you didn’t get back to me on time.” Or we say, “I don’t agree with you doing this thing in this place. I don’t like being treated this way. I don’t agree with blah, blah, blah,” right? When we do that and we feel guilt, it’s a reflex, just from social conditioning from before.

So know this: if guilt is your first emotion after self-advocacy, after sticking up for yourself, after taking up space, that’s not intuition, it’s conditioning. You’ve been conditioned to feel guilty here, but you don’t have to be. It doesn’t have to stay that way. We don’t have to stay trapped in the guilt. Just because you have that reflex doesn’t mean we can’t program something new. And I guarantee you want to program something new if you want to start living a life that you really like living.

The first part of this, and the place that I always start, is building your emotional resiliency when you’re not easygoing. So we’ve talked a lot about emotional resilience here and emotional capacity, and just to reiterate, emotional resilience or emotional capacity is not being able to tolerate emotion longer. It’s actually being stronger with the emotion. So if you think about doing one pushup and that being really hard, but if you continue doing pushups for an entire year, you can do 50 pushups and it won’t be hard at all. That’s emotional capacity. That’s emotional resilience. That’s what we’re looking for, that elasticity, right?

So what we can do to build emotional resilience here is, first of all, we need to name the guilt instead of obeying it. And this is going to require you to slow down. We can’t go super fast. We need to slow down and notice, “I’m feeling guilty.” Like, “Oh, this happened today and now I feel guilty. This is guilt.” Just name it. And then breathe through the discomfort of potentially not being liked. This could be a whole other episode of how your job doesn’t need to be being likable.

But know this: if you want to start advocating for yourself, if you want to start creating things you want in your life, if you want to start having your needs be met, we must learn how to be unliked. It’s okay. It’s uncomfortable, but it also doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. People are allowed to dislike me and nothing has gone wrong.

And then I want you to also consider and track the moments where being honest has actually created more connection. And I think that all of us have had those experiences where we’ve said the hard thing. We’ve been honest. We’ve said, “Hey, this really hurt me when you said this.” Or, “You know what? I don’t want to do X because it doesn’t really work for me.” And had somebody see you in that moment and go, “You know what? I get it. I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant to do. Let’s repair. Let’s figure this out. Let’s do this together.”

I do think of it in this way of upleveling myself and you upleveling yourself. Giving yourself the ability to uplevel and ask people to step up with you. And they will. Everybody won’t, but a lot of people will. And I do think about it from the standpoint of you can have better connection from this place because it’s more authentic, because it’s more honest, because it’s more real. I will tell you right now, people want more real in their lives.

One thing you could try saying, and just maybe write down as something you could say to somebody is, “I know I usually go along with this, but today I’m not okay with it.” Deep, powerful, hard. Try it on. Maybe you don’t need to say it out loud. Maybe you just need to think it before you proceed with what you’re going to do. Being easygoing is something that is celebrated by society, right? But it doesn’t mean that it creates results you want in your life. If you are a naturally easygoing person and you actually don’t care, cool. You get to keep being that way. But if you’re not, also cool. And you get to keep being that way.

The disconnect is when we reject ourselves for that. And the reason why, as I explained, is because we’ve been taught to reject ourselves for that. There is a deep need inside of us for belonging. So, of course, we don’t want to rock the boat, make other people upset, make other people unhappy with us. We don’t want to do that. And that’s fine. That’s valid. That’s real. But we can’t want that ahead of taking care of our own needs. And we have to get to a place where we approve of us more often than we don’t.

So I get to be difficult because I get to want what I want. I don’t need to hide that. I don’t need to mask that. I don’t need to cover that up. I just need to own that. This is what I want. If you don’t want to do that, let me know. I’ll move on. It’s a different vibe. It’s a different way of being. I’m not easygoing, and some people might think that’s being a bitch, and that is okay. Okay. I don’t need to be easygoing. Now, I do want to live my life according to my values. I do want to show up the way I want to show up according to me. I allow for imperfection. I’m not expecting perfection of myself, but my compass is mine to decide where I aim it, right? Probably not the greatest analogy. So maybe it’s your flashlight.

But ultimately, you want to start leaning into the idea that being easygoing doesn’t have to be the goal. And quite frankly, shouldn’t be the goal. And instead, authenticity, leading your life through your values, taking care of yourself, taking care of your needs, being there for you, making you an important character in your own story, these things matter the most. They will have the biggest impact.

So often when I coach somebody, they will say to me, “Amanda, I just want to be happy.” I heard it today. And I just looked at her and I said, “You know, we’ve got to define what happy is.” Because otherwise it’s a very general description of who knows what. What I suspect most people are meaning when they say they want to be happy is that they want to be in mental and emotional peace. They don’t want to be overthinking everything. They don’t want to be regretting every decision they’ve ever made. They don’t want to be worrying about everything that’s upcoming. They want to feel safe. They want to feel acceptable. They want to feel whole. They want to feel like themselves and like being themselves in their natural state is good enough.

And so in order to do that, we’ve got to break up with the idea that we need to be more easygoing because we don’t. We need the opposite. We need to take up more space. We need to be willing to be disliked. We need to learn to advocate for ourselves. And that is what will make all the difference for you.

If this touched you in some way, if this made you feel seen, if this gave you greater understanding, I would love for you to send me a DM over on Instagram. Just go find me, The Amanda Hess. And let me know of a moment where you saw yourself feeling guilty for speaking up. And let’s have a conversation about it, because I’d love to help you through that. And I find that through specificity is the best way to do it.

The other way that you can do this is come into my membership. If you go to joinamanda.ca, you can get into the membership and you can try it out for free for a week. You can get on a group call. You can get texting coaching from me directly. There is my private podcast and there is the community. It is a beautiful space to be.

So my friend, that is what I have for you today. I hope you have a beautiful week, and I will see you here next time. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening. You can look forward to a new episode of this podcast every week. And hey, if you like this podcast, do me a favor and leave a review. When you do, it helps this podcast grow, and it allows me to help more women just like you. And if you just know that you need help putting this all together, why don’t you book a free consult with me? We can talk about you and what’s happening in your life and put a real plan in place to manage the stress and anxiety for good. Just head on over to amandahess.ca/bookacall to set that up.