9 ways to stop being comfortable with others

People like it when you try to meet their expectations and make your interactions as easy as possible. Communicating with someone who tries to please, earn approval, and doesn’t want to inconvenience or deny you anything is a pleasure for the person who prefers to take advantage of it.

But for yourself, the habit of being comfortable for those around you hardly brings any good. Most likely, you often feel disadvantaged, cheated, or unimportant; you have to put up with injustice and keep your discontent quiet.

Life is too short of making things easier for everyone at the cost of your comfort and needs. We’ve put together some ways that you can stop being comfortable for those around you. Start changing as quickly as possible, so you don’t waste time.

1. Don’t hide your feelings and emotions

When you want to be comfortable with the people around you, you try not to bother them unnecessarily with your problems, make them nervous with your emotions, and not offend them or take up their time. But what you feel is no-nonsense; emotions don’t go away when you try to stifle them. Internal resentment grows in you, stress levels start to go off the charts, and you find it hard to communicate with someone who may not even know there is any conflict between you.

The longer you procrastinate, the worse your mental and physical condition is. Eventually, your attempt to suppress your feelings will fail – you’ll spill out everything you’ve been saving up for a long time and put your communication with the person at risk.

2. Learn to be persistent

No, if you don’t learn to insist, slightly more confident people will turn the situation in their direction every time without asking for your opinion. Saying once what you want is not enough. Sometimes you have to say it a few more times and say it louder and more insistently. In the most extreme cases, you may even need to pressure the person, but if it is important to you to get something and you know that you won’t harm others with your actions, pressure is justified.

3. Don’t take responsibility for someone else’s feelings

This doesn’t mean you can act like you don’t care about the people around you. Treat them with respect and understanding, but try not to take responsibility for their emotional reactions. For example, if you don’t want to accept a person’s offer, you should gently tell them and say no. But if on your polite refusal interlocutor responds with offense, anger, or irritation, do not be in a hurry to make yourself guilty of this. The person chooses how he perceives the information.

4. Don’t settle for less than you want

Stop agreeing to what the people around you offer you. If their offers don’t live up to the bar you’ve set for yourself, say no. Don’t compromise when they’re not beneficial to you, don’t put up with someone not wanting to keep their promises, and demand that people perform their duties well and to the fullest extent. You have every right to do so.

You’ll have to embarrass people, point out their mistakes, make comments, and remain as persistent as necessary to get what you want. You will be uncomfortable initially, but you will fit in quickly, especially after the first positive results.

5. Put yourself first

Think of yourself first. This is not selfishness, as many egoists think, forcing you to follow their views on life, but a respectful attitude toward yourself. It would help if you came first: your health, your needs, your desires, and so on. And only after you have satisfied all your needs can you direct your resources to help those around you. Remember this rule and repeat it to yourself whenever someone presses on your sense of guilt or duty. You only owe yourself and give everyone else what you can and want.

6. Don’t follow other people’s rules

If someone is living by rules that don’t resonate with you, that you disagree with or that you think don’t make sense to you in particular, don’t try to conform to their way of thinking about life. Live your life the way you think is right. Your idea may not conform to conventional wisdom, but as long as you’re not harming those around you, you have every right to do as you want. Yes, you will cease to be comfortable for everyone, but you will also begin to live in harmony with yourself, which is a much greater value.

7. Don’t try to boost your self-esteem at the expense of other people’s approval

It would help if you didn’t care how your surroundings judge your words and actions. If you think you’re doing everything right, that’s how it is today. Of course, you may regret your decisions after a while, but only because you will become more experienced and can look at the same situation differently. In any case, it is better to make mistakes and learn from them than always to follow the advice and warnings of others.

Your self-esteem should not depend on the approval of others. In seeking to please those around you, you can often go against yourself. Accept that you will be judged no matter what you do, and if there is no point in pleasing yourself, why follow this strategy?

8. Rely on your thoughts and feelings

Base any decision you make primarily on your thoughts, feelings, desires, and needs. You may often choose to do something just because someone else has convinced you it’s the right thing. Or you can agree to what you don’t care about and don’t care about to strengthen your relationship with the person, to please him, to seem better, smarter, and stronger than you are.

All of this is a deliberately losing strategy. You try to fit the needs of others, to meet the expectations of other people, but you disappoint yourself. Stop pretending to be someone you’re not.

9. Talk about your needs

If you need help, you’re not happy with something in a relationship; you want to be made happy, say it directly. Talk about what you need, don’t try to hint, and certainly don’t keep silent while waiting for other people to guess your needs.

Yes, not everyone wants to work hard to make you feel comfortable and your life change for the better. But don’t put up with the inconvenience – when you state what you need out loud and say it confidently, the person has no choice but to either do what you want or turn you down and bring clarity to your communication.