During one of my childhood summers in western Pennsylvania, I experienced my first breakup.

No, not a boyfriend. A girl who lived up the street, and who decided she absolutely, positively wasn’t going to be my friend anymore when I chickened out one evening at her house and had my mom pick me up from what was supposed to be my (first ever) sleepover. After that, she declared war on me in the way only seven year olds can. She told me I wasn’t allowed to play with her dog over the fence anymore. She told our mutual friends that they had to choose — it was her or me. (They told her they were going to choose me, the friend who wasn’t forcing them to choose between their friends.) When those drastic measures failed, she introduced me to the middle finger as her last resort of hostility. And since I had no idea what that even meant, it also didn’t phase me.

At first, I’ll admit, I was a little confused and upset that this girl who was supposed to be my friend suddenly hated me because I had gotten scared at the thought of sleeping in a strange house. But I shrugged it off pretty quickly. Some people just don’t want to like you, I reasoned — a lesson I had learned at an even earlier age, from a cranky church nursery worker who determinedly disliked me because of my preference for active games with noisy toys, whereas she loved my little brother, who always sat quietly at the table with crayons and paper. So I let it go. My former friend didn’t like me anymore. Okay. I could live with that. I had other friends who did like me.

Somewhere in the preteen or early teenaged years, though, that became something I couldn’t live with. Everyone had to like me. I had to make everyone happy.

That’s a trap most of us fall into as we grow up, isn’t it? We become people pleasers. We can’t tell someone “no” for fear of upsetting them, even if it means we over-commit and stretch ourselves too thin. We go out of our way to participate in activities that we don’t enjoy, or worse, that we don’t agree with, simply to fit in. We worry and worry and worry that our very best won’t be good enough — that people will find fault no matter what.

Unfortunately, that’s all true. It’s true in our personal lives, in our businesses, in our community groups and churches and, more than anywhere else, it’s true online. Some people will get upset when we say no. Some will get upset when we don’t try to fit in, and some will most certainly find fault with anything we do. But you know something else? Just as it really didn’t matter what that one former friend thought of me, it doesn’t really matter what anyone who dislikes you thinks of you. If you can lose their favor so easily, were they ever truly favorable toward you to begin with? And if not, so why would you want to waste a single iota of energy trying to please them?

Live for the people who do love you. Live for your family and your close friends. If you’re a photographer or a small business owner, live for the clients who cherish their experience with you, not the ones who bristle at the very way you run your business. There are far too many people in this world to worry about appeasing the ones who don’t love you — because there are far too many people who do love you already.

~ Laura