How to Find Your Core Values When You've Spent Years People-Pleasing

Dr. Ernesha Smith
Jun 11
4 min read

If you've spent years asking "What do they need from me?" this is your invitation to ask a different question: What actually matters to me?

Values are a word that gets thrown around a lot in wellness spaces. We're told to "live by our values" and "make values-based decisions" as if values are a list we've always had access to, neatly organized in some interior filing cabinet.

But here's what I know from working with high-functioning, high-capacity women who have spent years sometimes decades organizing their lives around what other people needed: values are not automatic. They have to be excavated. And when people-pleasing has been your primary operating system, that excavation takes real work.

This essay is about what values actually are, why people-pleasing disconnects you from them, and how to start finding yours in a way that feels honest instead of performative.

Why people-pleasing disconnects you from your values

People-pleasing does not originate from selflessness. It originates from fear.

Somewhere along the way in childhood, in a relationship, in a family system that required you to manage other people's emotional states you learned that your safety was contingent on other people's approval. So you became exquisitely attuned to what others wanted, what they needed, what would keep the peace or earn the love.

Over time, your internal compass the one that was supposed to orient you toward your own values and desires got outsourced. You stopped consulting yourself and started reading the room.

Values are not ideals to perform. They are internal anchors, the deep "yes" in your body when you're living in alignment, and the quiet grinding discomfort when you are not. People-pleasing teaches you to ignore both signals.

When you've spent years overriding your own responses, you often lose touch with what those responses even are. You may feel vaguely uncomfortable without being able to name why. You may make choices that look right from the outside but leave you feeling hollow.

That hollowness is information. It's your values trying to get your attention.

The difference between values and obligations

Before we can identify real values, we have to be honest about what we've been mistaking for them.

THIS IS AN OBLIGATION	THIS IS A VALUE
"I have to be available for everyone."	"Connection matters deeply to me — and it has to be mutual."
"I should always put others first."	"I value generosity — when it comes from abundance, not depletion."
"I can't say no without a good reason."	"I value integrity, which means my 'yes' must be genuine."
"I need to keep the peace."	"I value harmony — but not at the cost of my own truth."
"Being needed makes me valuable."	"I value contribution — and I am valuable independent of my usefulness."

The difference is subtle but seismic. Obligations come from what you were taught you must do to be acceptable. Values come from what you actually believe is worth living for.

Questions that reveal your real values

Your values often reveal themselves not in moments of calm reflection but in moments of friction, loss, or righteous anger. Pay attention to what makes you viscerally angry, that anger is usually a signal that something you value is being violated. Pay attention to what makes you feel most alive, most whole, most yourself. That aliveness is your values speaking.

QUESTIONS TO EXCAVATE WHAT GENUINELY MATTERS TO YOU

When have I felt the most alive, the most energized, the most like myself? What was I doing? What did it say about what I value?
What makes me viscerally angry or genuinely sad? What does that tell me about what I believe matters in the world?
If I could give up one obligation tomorrow something I do out of "should" rather than genuine desire what would it be? What would it free me to do instead?
When I imagine a life I would be proud of at the end not a successful life by other people's standards, but a life I chose what does it look like?

How to make one values-based decision this week

You don't have to overhaul your life to begin living by your values. You just have to start noticing the small places where you're making choices from obligation versus authenticity and begin, very slowly, making a different choice.

Name one decision you're facing right now.

It can be small. A commitment you're considering, an invitation you haven't responded to, a conversation you've been avoiding.

Ask: Am I moving toward something I value, or away from something I fear?

Both can look like a yes. Both can look like a no. But the internal experience is completely different, and your body usually knows.

Choose the values-aligned option, even if it's uncomfortable.

Discomfort is not the same as wrongness. Living authentically after years of people-pleasing will feel unfamiliar. That unfamiliarity is part of the process, not a signal to retreat.

Notice what happens in your body afterward.

Not the anxiety, that's expected. Notice whether, underneath the anxiety, there is also a sense of rightness, of standing taller. That is what integration feels like at the beginning.

This is not a one-time exercise. This is a practice. And like all practices, it gets easier, clearer, and more natural the more consistently you do it.

If you want a structured, supported space to do this work alongside a community of women doing the same the Healing Circle was built for exactly this.

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

"If you've spent years asking, 'What do they need from me?' this is your invitation to ask, 'What actually matters to me?'"

The Healing Circle a guided community for women returning to themselves. Three membership tiers. Join where you are.

JOIN THE HEALING CIRCLE →