Episode 6: Why Trying to be Liked is Killing Your Courage

In my work, coaching women, it is a common theme that one of the hardest parts of being brave and showing up as your truest self with your work and ideas is the risk of not being liked.

It feels so viscerally terrifying to contemplate that someone might not like us.

In this episode, I'm talking through why likability has been such a big deal for women, how it shows up in life and work and how fixating on likability is killing our courage.

+ Click here to read the transcript

Hello. And welcome back to Courage Is Calling. Thank you so much for tuning in this podcast is so fun to do, and I really hope that it is become ago to space for you to have your very own personal pep talk. Um, so this week I want to talk about the concept of likeability, uh, in my work coaching women, it's a really common theme that one of the hardest parts about being brave and showing up as your true self with your work and your ideas and all that good stuff is the risk of not being liked.

And for us it feels so viscerally terrifying to contemplate that someone might not like us. Am I right? And I imagine even right now, just as you are listening on hearing me, me talk about this, that you could recall a feeling that related to the fear of not being liked. And partly this has to do with our human kind of hardwired need for connection.

With that then comes a desire to relate so we see likability and being likable as like a gateway to connection. But further than that, there's this research from the university of Montreal. And it's shown that women in particular are actually more highly tuned into the emotional feedback of other people.

So in social or work situations, we pick up more and we pick up more quickly, the cues, both verbal and nonverbal, like body language of how other people feel about us or about any given situation. So we're always reading the room. Um, and so when it comes to Sharon about anything important to us, we are of course, more acutely aware of what other people's body language means are high. They respond to us when we shake, we speak up or we share, and there are, there's so many complex reasons as to why this is so there's epigenetics, which is a fancy word for inherited experiences from previous generations where. You know, these evolutionary psychologists have actually suggested that females because of their generationally ascribed roles as the primary caretakers, they are wired to quickly and accurate accurately detect any kind of emotional distress and infants. And of course, as the generations have gone on, that has been passed on to us. I wish we have fine tuned and being able to use, uh, to detect and any other kind of relationship. And then there are these multitudes of societal or cultural reasons, as well as to why we are more hyper aware of how other people respond to us. So obviously women have spent more time in society, out of the picture. Quiet and small, then we have in this beautiful, brave, new world of where, of where women's voices are being, uh, projected more. So it's inevitable that we will still find it really tricky and a bit awkward tick and courageous steps to maybe talk about what we do or share our offerings online, or put ourselves out there in any way, because for centuries.

Women have had to operate in an orbit or rind, male visibility around masculine priorities and around male centered power. Um, and so for centuries, the CFUs most significant way that we could have any kind of say, or input or security was to make sure that we were likable. So likability has become currency for us.

It's a thing that we've had to use that our mothers and our grandmothers had to use in order to be safe, to be provided for, to be understood. And likability has been the thing that women have historically had to leverage to have a say in something, to negotiate into new spaces, to move around in the world or to function in the workplace.

So it's really, really very normal and inevitable that letting go of the attachment to like ability is going to feel scary for us. You know, the risk of not being liked historically has had really big consequences for women. For economic consequences, physical and emotional survival. And when we had no access to earn our own money and needed the provision of man to ensure that we survived, we stayed in our land.

We did what we needed to do. We made people happy. We were likable and we kept the status quo, but this is not the case anymore for women. And. We can do the job of reminding our brands of the many ways that society has evolved in our favor when we see that protection of likeability, maybe showing up for us. And so I thought in this episode, I would just give you a few examples of maybe how this shows up a few ways that I can see, um, how women tend to fix it on likability and how that actually really kills our courage. One of the sneakier ways that I think this happens is by softening our communication, to make sure that we don't get labeled as we often do as Becci or aggressive or abrasive.

So often caveating ourselves with, um, well actually, or I just wondered, or I just, or maybe statements like, like I'm not an expert, but. Or maybe finishing all our sentences when we have explained something with, does that make sense? Um, and this is a way to soften how we say things and to make sure that we come across.

You know, humble or nice or likable, instead of just saying what we need to say, sharing what we need to share with assertiveness or authority. So that's the first kind of example. The second is how we ask for everyone. On their ground, nice opinion on what we're doing and what we should do instead of taking action on the things that we really want to do.

So often women tend to consult all areas more, right? Including polling, Instagram, constantly. And it's usually as a way to buffer some ownership because we've been conditioned to believe that ownership can come across as threatening or arrogant when a woman. Displays that. And so by getting other people's opinions, we're making sure that people are willing to affirm or permit us so we can stay likable.

Another example might be fixating on metrics, right? So surmising that numbers are really good indicators. And that if we increase the metrics, it will mean we are more likable. And that's a really sneaky little way that we fixate on likability by attaching numbers and figures to something that literally could never be quantified. So then if the metrics don't come in, we're more willingly going to scrap our ideas and convictions, which is a terrible idea, right? So fixating on metrics is not a good indicator. Of whether something is good or not. It just isn't. Um, another sneaky way that likeability, uh, can kill our courage is by being an eternal editor.

Right? So being an eternal editor is also. A way that our fear of not being liked can show up because what happens when we are forever and ever editing and perfecting things behind the scenes, what happens when we spend all our time agonizing over our ideas? What happens is we never actually let them see the light of day. They just stay in drafts forever. And what's more protective for our likability. Then hiding straight up, hiding what we have to say or do or bay, and then finally contorting and blending. No, these are not new makeup techniques. I am not qualified in that department. And that is, this is not the podcast for that. But what I mean by contorting and blending is what happens when we prioritize, being liked over being loyal to ourselves. When we prioritize other people's values and opinions. An ideas over our own values and opinions and ideas. When we stay silent about things that matter to us when we blend in or contort to protect ourselves from the risk of not being liked.

And the reality is any women putting themselves out there in any way or doing something that takes some bravery. What we're doing is activating a magnet and that magnet both attracts and repels that's its job. Right. We can't rig it so that the magnet only ever attracts that's totally impossible. It wouldn't be doing its job, but we can equip ourselves with compassion.

We can equip ourselves with loyalty, to ourselves to show up, honestly, to show up authentically and trust. Not the people who really understand and connect with us as we are. Are there because we've been ourselves, not a version of ourselves that is hoping to be liked by everyone. And once we understand that it's not our job to get everyone to like us, it really does feel like for you. Now we get to be ourselves. Doesn't that sound good? And once we can begin to shed expectations and people pleasing metric fixations and endless opinion gathering from other people, we can recognize that actually like ability that desire to be liked is really quite a heavy load to carry. And it's so much more light to be yourself. I hope you find. Helpful to explore a bit about why and how I, this idea of being likable shows up for us, where it shows up and maybe has helped you recognize where it might be. Just killing your courage as always, if you've got any thoughts, reflections on this episode, feel free to get in touch on Instagram, share it or email me.

And I'd love to hear from you. And you can reach me at hello@melwiggins.com