“Give people pleasing the finger!” Fearne’s no longer trying to be liked

Are you a bit of a people pleaser? Wish you could care a little less what people think about you? To celebrate her new book, Likeable: How I Broke Free From The Need To Please, Fearne’s looking at all the ways she sacrificed her needs and self-expression in order to be more palatable to others... In this chat, Fearne covers: -The real personal impact of people pleasing -How exhausting it is showing up as a performative version of yourself -Catching yourself feeling like a saintly martyr when you’re putting others’ needs first -Peer pressure making you change yourself to fit in -Why differing opinions don’t have to mean conflict -How to be both kind and boundaried -Prioritising and voicing your own needs -Being ok with some people not liking you Fearne’s new book, Likeable, is out now! Want to join the chat? Send us a voicenote, DM, or comment on Instagram @happyplaceofficial! Listen to Fearne and Friends Christmas special https://pod.fo/e/36b071 Child on the line is a three-part documentary podcast series celebrating the Volunteer Counsellors of Childline, and the brave children & young people who contact the helpline service. Listen here: https://www.childonthelinepodcast.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hi, I'm Natalie Dormer and I'm proud to be an ambassador for Childline. This year, Childline turns 40. To mark it, I've made Child on the Line, a three-part documentary podcast. We hear why children needed a helpline in 1986, how it was built against the odds and the challenges children face today, from abuse and mental health to social media and AI. Search Child on the Line and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

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  Confidence. It's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life: The Power of a Promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  It's time. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

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• 2:14Fearne Cotton?

  Where do I begin? Of course they didn't see my needs. I wasn't telling anyone I had any. For all of us, there are people out there that don't like us. There might even be people out there that really fucking hate us. I've learned to live alongside being disliked without turning on myself. If I want to put 80 love hearts after a text, I'm gonna do it. You're too loud, you're too quiet, you're too shy. I don't care if you think I'm... Too keen, too loving, too much. I don't give a shit. It doesn't mitigate the fact that you're gonna piss people off. You probably will. Let's give people pleasing their finger. It can fuck right off. When we ditch people pleasing, we get to be ourselves.

• 2:55Fearne Cotton?

  Hi everyone, I hope you're doing well. It's Fern here and this is a little solo episode of Happy Place and I wanna really dive in to the subject of people pleasing today, if that's alright with you. I've got my new book out, Likeable, and well, you can see from the tagline, "How I Broke Free From The Need To Please." I'm very much still a work in progress with that. It's an everyday thing, but my god, am I better at it than I used to be. And that's what I wanna really drill in on today. So normally on these episodes, we look at what's making us happy and what's making us unhappy. Me and the whole of the

• 3:36Fearne Cotton?

  Happy Place team, and if you lovely listeners have any feedback or things that you wanna chat about, you can do so on our Instagram page. We're here for it. Normally, we start with what we love. I'm gonna start with my dislikes today. My dislikes of people pleasing. What is the fallout from people pleasing? This is what I talk about at the start of the book. And each chapter of the book, by the way, starts with a question. Questions like, "Will you like me if I keep my mouth shut?" Will you like me if I'm perfect? Will you like me if I'm more like you? Will you like me if I behave, et cetera?

• 4:17Fearne Cotton?

  So these are some big questions that I've asked myself because of the shape shifting that I've done over the years. And I personally think my biggest dislike when it comes to people pleasing is the fact that you show up as an entirely different version of yourself. So whatever situation you're in, whether it's a dynamic that plays out every day and you find yourself behaving in a way that placates the other person, pleases them, doesn't rock the boat, doesn't cause a drama. Or whether it's in your workplace or it's in a familial setting, that you show up as this malleable person that will be a chameleon in any situation to just

• 5:01Fearne Cotton?

  keep the peace or just not rock the boat or just not cause a scene. I have done that in so many areas of life. I can't, I don't even know where to begin with it. And I didn't realise it was a problem until so recently. Some of the time, I even tricked myself into believing that I was doing the right thing, which moves into the territory of martyrdom, where you're like, I just do everything for everybody and I make sure everybody else is okay and happy. And on the surface, on paper, that looks delightful. What a great person, what a saint, how selfless of you. Fine, if underneath you're not going, fuck you, I resent you, I'm irritated, I'm frustrated, I'm angry.

• 5:45Fearne Cotton?

  I didn't want to do that thing I said I was gonna do. That is not saintly in the slightest. And I ended up in that place all the time because I wasn't showing up as myself. I was this other version that always did the right thing, always said the right thing, made everybody else around them happy. But inside was usually quite frustrated and angry. And I felt like my wings were quite clipped in lots of different dynamics and situations in my life. So the biggest dislike is that. And all that you achieve in those moments. So you show up as a different version of yourself and everyone around you is pleased. They like you. You are likeable because you are this shape shifting, malleable person.

• 6:27Fearne Cotton?

  But they don't like you. They like the pretend version of you that you've created to make everybody else happy. So they don't even like you. The whole, the whole thing is so mind blowingly ludicrous. And this is a revelation I had literally in the last two years. I used to think I was doing the right thing and sometimes I was and I will still help people in my life. Reach out when people are having a tough time, compromise, make decisions that feel very tricky. To aid other people, of course, that goes without saying, but when it comes from the right place where I really believe

• 7:08Fearne Cotton?

  that I'm doing the right thing for other people and me, because I used to be bottom, bottom, bottom of the pile. And I thought that's where I belonged. And now I'm gradually moving myself up the list to take my wants, desires and needs seriously. And my God, does it feel uncomfortable at times. And my God, does it feel alien at times, making a decision that works for me and might piss somebody else off. Excruciating, but not impossible to live alongside. So my biggest dislike is that not showing up as myself. When I put this question to team happy place, I've got some really interesting answers.

• 7:49Fearne Cotton?

  Lana from team happy place, her dislike is the peer pressure to fit in just to be liked. And I think that is something that no matter what age you are, we feel in the book, I write a chapter that I mentioned earlier. Will you like me if I'm more like you? And of course, it's a real human nature to wanna fit in, to find your tribe, your community. And sometimes, you know, if you think back to, I don't know, secondary school, I used to copy my friend Lucy's bubbly handwriting. Cause it was so gorgeous and I thought, oh, I just wanna be a bit more like her. And then I copied Haley's lilac headbag because I wanted to be a bit more like her. And then I started to laugh in the Similar way to Ali because you wanna be in that gang and feel safe and secure and part of it's

• 8:33Fearne Cotton?

  human nature and actually if you listen to the episode of Happy Place at Christmas where I got together with all the women I've just mentioned, we are all sort of a version of each other because we spent such a condensed amount of time at school together and living in the same town that we merged into sort of like a homogeneous person, like one person. So it is human nature, but I think when there's peer pressure and we feel like we have to do the thing because everybody else is doing it, even in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, you have to have the same beliefs as other people around you because you don't wanna rock the boat or you don't want people to dislike you because you think differently to them. That's when I think it's a real problem. And I don't think

• 9:15Fearne Cotton?

  having your own set of values, rules, beliefs means that you're then in conflict with anybody else. I think actually the most interesting friendships or partnerships are ones where you do think really differently and you can have really exciting, curious conversations about why and what that means to both of you. And perhaps again, my beliefs have changed on that because maybe before I would have thought I had to have friends or partners or people in my life where, you know, we always agreed. For instance, you know, me and my parents, we're, you know, generations apart, we have very different beliefs about certain things. And I think we've all got to a position where we know that that's okay. And we might get a bit heated with certain conversations,

• 9:57Fearne Cotton?

  but actually, we can live alongside each other perfectly harmoniously, knowing that we think differently about certain situations and that's okay. So I think ditching peer pressure is a big one. Let's now move on to my personal likes around ditching people pleasing. Where do I begin? I mean, so much of this has been discovered through the writing of this book because I started off, I mean, the first bit of the book is the explanation of the knowledge of me.

• 10:33Fearne Cotton?

  People pleasing and how detrimental it's been just being front and centre. I hadn't seen it. I literally hadn't seen it before. I just couldn't understand why I kept ending up feeling burnt out, resentful, pissed off, like nobody else understood me or saw my needs. Course they didn't see my needs. I wasn't telling anyone I had any. I was making out like I had none. I was just colluding with everybody else's needs and desires and wants and I ditched my own. So no shit they didn't know. So all of this has been a revelation. And I would say the biggest change for me, there's been two. My first biggest like about ditching people pleasing is the lack of stress and tension,

• 11:17Fearne Cotton?

  or certainly the lessening of. Now, nothing's changed in my life circumstantially. I still have stressful shit to deal with, like I'm sure you do. The everyday stuff, which is, you know, more maybe the mundane stuff of running a home, having kids, school runs, the juggle, all that stuff, work stresses. But actually, there's bigger ones that all of us will encounter at some point or another, whether it's grief, loss, separating from somebody, friendship fallout, being sacked. Like there's some bigger, big events. Even those life moments, I'm dealing with differently. So it won't make any of that go away. Nothing can. That's life.

• 11:59Fearne Cotton?

  But how I'm dealing with it has changed so hugely, seismically, I don't even know where to begin. Stuff that would have taken me down two years ago now seems manageable. And that's not to say that I won't flip out, you know, have a bit of a tantrum, maybe have a cry here and there, feel like I can't cope. But the recovery is so much quicker. And the time that I feel, you know, sort of chronically stressed has reduced. And at times, I don't even understand it. I'll talk to one of my best mates and go. I sort of feel all right. I sort of feel like I can cope with whatever it is that I wouldn't have coped with two years ago. And I don't know why, but I sort of do. I think a lot of it is down to this.

• 12:45Fearne Cotton?

  Caring less and spending less time worrying if other people think I'm an asshole or not. People will, and and this is the, one of the other big lessons is that for all of us, there are people out there that don't like us. There might even be people out there that really fucking hate us. That might be the case, just like we don't like certain people. And sometimes there's maybe no science behind that. You just think, I don't really like them. Again, it's human nature, but I'm able to live alongside that, which again, I think reduces tension and stress. That that is the real big second like for me of ditching people pleasing is knowing that I can live alongside the discomfort of being disliked.

• 13:29Fearne Cotton?

  I did not think that was possible two years ago, three years ago for the entirety of my adult life. I felt like if people didn't like me, there was something inherently wrong with me, that I was getting life wrong, that I was, I didn't know the rules. I was doing it wrong. And that's why people are upset with me or they didn't like me or or maybe I'd even turn it into paranoia and go, God, there must be something really strange about me and I just don't realise it. I think I'm at an age and a point in my life where I can now go, I'm just being me. And if people don't like that, there's really not much I can do about it. I can certainly try and convince them, but that might be a waste of time. So

• 14:11Fearne Cotton?

  I I've learned to live alongside being disliked without turning on myself. So that's what I used to do. I would go, oh, my God, so and so doesn't like me. I must be an, I'm an asshole. I am an asshole. I'm a dickhead. I hate myself. And that was it. Day ruined, year ruined, it'd gone for months on end. I I will not do that anymore. I will not turn on myself. I actually, there's a quote in the book that's from my friend Claire, who gave me some very solid advice when I was going through a situation like that. Where she said, all of this is fine as long as you don't turn the gun on yourself. And that's, you know, harshly worded statement that I certainly needed to hear. But those moments where someone says something to us and we immediately turn on

• 14:54Fearne Cotton?

  ourselves, we don't back ourselves up, we don't believe in ourselves and we don't like ourselves in that moment, I am, I'm not willing to do that anymore. And I, I might still feel remorseful if I've messed up, I might apologise to somebody if I've done something wrong, I certainly would apologise to somebody if I'd done something wrong and I upset somebody. But turning on myself entirely, it's not happening anymore. No, no, no. Let's look at some of the Happy Place teams' likes when it comes to ditching people pleasing. I mean, both Lana and Anushka from Team Happy Place are alluding to simply being themselves. Anushka talks about getting grief from people when you use perhaps too many exclamation

• 15:38Fearne Cotton?

  marks or kisses in an email. Modern Wisdom says that women should take these things off emails as it reads to being too eager to please, but she just likes them. And I'm the same. I am very extra in lots of areas of my life. If I want to put 80 love hearts after a text, I'm gonna do it. I don't care if you think I'm too keen, too loving, too much. I don't care. I don't give a shit. Lana says, when you start ditching people pleasing, you can really embrace being too much. I think women specifically get told they're too everything, whether it's about physical appearance or outward expression

• 16:19Fearne Cotton?

  of personality. You're too loud, you're too quiet, you're too shy, you're too brash, you're too rude, you're too annoying, you're too fat, you're too thin, you're too tall, you're too short. It's, it's everything. We're too everything. What's, where's this perfect middle point where we're just, I don't know, like plateauing in all areas? It's impossible. I think most women get to a point in their lives where they really want to be too whatever that thing is that makes them feel like them. And, good, we should be doing that. That for me is a big tick, is a big, big like. When we ditch people pleasing, we get to be ourselves. And that might be too much something for someone,

• 17:00Fearne Cotton?

  it might be too little for someone over here. Who cares? For you, it's just right. And that is a really important place to land. And I'm not sat here saying, I've nailed it. I love myself every day. I'm always so happy to have, you know, people give me harsh critique. No, all of it still hurts. You know, if someone has a pop at you or someone on social media says something mean, of course, I'm a human. It hurts. But as I said earlier, what I'm not willing to do is turn on myself, show up as a version of me that isn't me, which also may add changes every day. Cause some days I'm up, I'm down, I'm energetic, I'm sloth-like.

• 17:45Fearne Cotton?

  That's, that varies. But having the confidence to show up as me on any given day. And I'm not willing to hear anybody tell me I'm too anything. There are so many beautiful little gems that come out of ditching, people pleasing. It doesn't mitigate the fact that you're going to piss people off. You probably will, but you can live alongside the discomfort of that. And it's a far more tolerable discomfort than the one of sitting there going, yes, yes, yes. I'll do everything for everybody and feeling like shit inside. And I say that from a place of absolute experience. I've done it.

• 18:27Fearne Cotton?

  I've tested the theory for you, although I know many of you are either living it now or have previously. So if you want to ditch people pleasing, like I'm attempting to every damn day. It's a daily practice. Then I would love you to give this book a go, whether it's the audiobook or reading it. It's definitely my most honest book. And there's lots of memoir in there. Each chapter starts with a story where I've people pleased, I've placated others, I've kept my mouth shut. I've kept small and hopefully is rounded off with positive stories of not doing that anymore. So let's give people pleasing their finger.

• 19:10Fearne Cotton?

  It can fuck right off and let's care a lot less about being likeable.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Confidence, it's listening to your gut. It's moving forward even when the path ahead is unclear. For nearly 160 years, Pacific Life has helped people keep their promises, building confidence for generations. Whether you're confident in your financial future or just beginning to envision it, we're here to help. Ask a financial professional how. Pacific Life, the power of a promise. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York. Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.

• 20:19Speaker 06

  Hello, I'm Joanna Fletcher.

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