Pleasing none of the people none of the time

The thing about random memes on Facebook is that most of them, aside from being poorly spelled, poorly punctuated, and frequently involving utterly invented quotes, are complete tripe. They sometimes make me wonder whether I really know my friends when I see the things they link to. On the other hand, there's the odd thing that pops up that stops me in my tracks and actually makes me think.

Here's one of them (with apologies for spelling, punctuation, grammar and colour-scheme):

And the problem is, I am absolutely not OK with not being liked. In fact I spend an inordinate amount of emotional and mental energy contorting myself attempting to be liked. I volunteer, I help, I smile, I cook, I step up, I try so damn hard all the time to be a person other people will like. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. The people who like me, like me anyway. And the people who are either indifferent to me, or don't particularly like me, are not going to have their minds changed by me spending hours of my free time doing things for them. They'll just willingly soak up my kindness and carry on with their lives, not liking me any more or any less than they did before. I am an irrelevance to them.

It would now appear that I have engineered myself into a hole. I have spent so much time contorting myself in desperate and futile attempts to be liked, that now if I stop being the ever-biddable, ever-self-sacrificing, ever-helpful me, I am resented for not bending over backwards. I am now expected to be all things for all people, and I am burnt out, unable to keep offering more and more of myself. And yet I keep doing so, because to stop, and to risk not being likeable enough is still unthinkable to my needy little mind.

Every day I receive emails, WhatsApp messages, text messages, phone calls, taps on the shoulder, all asking me for something. Sometimes it's a simple question about a date or a time, sometimes it's a request for information, and sometimes it's a request for help. But it's always something. Always requiring an answer, or effort, or work, or commitment. Worst of all is that sometimes it requires a decision. A decision that I know is not going to please at least one other person. And then my need to please slams up against my need to do the right thing, or my need to be clear and honest, or my need to be organised. It's not possible to be honest, and honourable, and moral and also please everybody.

I have to find a way to tell people things that they won't like. I have to find ways of telling people what I think or believe without worrying about whether they will or won't like it. 

I have to find ways of saying "No", without being paralysed by the fear of being disliked. I have to find ways of doing what I know to be right without spending hours agonising over the wording of the email that needs to be sent, and then days agonising of what I have (or more likely haven't) heard in reply. 

I have to find ways of accepting that I cannot please all of the people all of the time. I will be lucky if I can please some of the people some of the time. 

At the moment it feels like I'm pleasing none of the people none of the time.