Gita’s Warning to the People Pleaser: Even God Couldn’t Please Everyone
Riya Kumari | Jul 02, 2025, 23:57 IST
( Image credit : Times Life Bureau, Timeslife )
I used to be a full-time, emotionally exhausted, constantly “available” people pleaser. Like, premium membership. No days off. You needed a ride to the airport at 3 a.m.? I was already outside. You wanted me to do your work and pretend you did it? Sure, let’s wreck my weekend. You wanted to insult me, but like, politely? I’d thank you and ask if you wanted a coffee.
If divinity itself didn’t win universal approval, maybe you can stop trying so hard to be everyone’s favorite version of yourself. There’s a quiet exhaustion that comes with constantly trying to be liked. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s subtle, like a muscle that’s always tensed. You smile when you don’t feel like it. You agree when you shouldn’t. You say yes because you don’t know how to say no without feeling guilty. You’re not weak. You’re just afraid of what happens when people don’t like you. But here’s the truth you’re not told enough: even God couldn’t please everyone.
1. When Krishna Spoke the Truth No One Wanted to Hear
In the Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna is breaking down, torn between duty and emotion, Krishna doesn’t say, “Let’s make sure everyone is okay with what you do.” Instead, he says:
Do what is right. Let go of the results. Stay rooted in who you are. Some people will still misunderstand you.
It’s not comforting in the usual sense. It doesn’t promise applause. But it frees you from the need to get it. Because the need to be liked by everyone is one of the most invisible prisons we build for ourselves.
2. People Pleasing Isn’t Love. It’s Fear in Disguise
Let’s get honest.
You don’t bend over backwards for others just because you’re “so nice.”
You do it because you’re scared.
Scared of disappointing people. Of being misunderstood. Of being alone. So you trade truth for approval. Authenticity for acceptance. And slowly, without noticing, you lose the sound of your own voice.
The Gita doesn’t ask you to become hard. It asks you to become still. Still enough to act from wisdom, not fear. Still enough to make decisions that are right, not just received well.
3. The Pain of Displeasing People Is Real. But So Is the Cost of Avoiding It
Here’s what no one tells you: there’s no way to live meaningfully without disappointing someone.
If you choose peace, chaos will call you selfish.
If you set boundaries, takers will call you rude.
If you speak your truth, people committed to false harmony will call you difficult.
The Gita’s brilliance is that it teaches you this: What others think is not your path. Your path is what you know to be right, even when it’s misunderstood. Sometimes growth looks like learning to sit in the discomfort of being misunderstood, without running to explain or fix it.
4.Stop Performing. Start Living
You are not a role. You’re not here to play the perfect daughter, friend, partner, employee. You’re here to live—with integrity, with clarity, with inner stillness.
And stillness isn’t passivity. It’s knowing who you are so clearly that the noise outside no longer pulls you in 20 directions. The Gita is not a text of passivity. It’s a text of powerful action, right action, done without the desperate need to be praised or validated.
In the End, You Answer to Yourself
You will never control how the world sees you. You can only control the clarity with which you see yourself. Even Krishna, who spoke truth, who lived wisdom, who was divine—was doubted, hated, misunderstood. But he didn’t bend. He didn’t overexplain. He didn’t try to manage everyone’s emotions.
He stood in truth and let it be enough. Maybe that’s your next step too. Let go of the performance. Let go of the silent hope that if you do everything right, no one will be upset with you. That world doesn’t exist. It never did. You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be honest.
1. When Krishna Spoke the Truth No One Wanted to Hear
Truth
( Image credit : Pexels )
In the Bhagavad Gita, when Arjuna is breaking down, torn between duty and emotion, Krishna doesn’t say, “Let’s make sure everyone is okay with what you do.” Instead, he says:
Do what is right. Let go of the results. Stay rooted in who you are. Some people will still misunderstand you.
It’s not comforting in the usual sense. It doesn’t promise applause. But it frees you from the need to get it. Because the need to be liked by everyone is one of the most invisible prisons we build for ourselves.
2. People Pleasing Isn’t Love. It’s Fear in Disguise
Fear
( Image credit : Pexels )
Let’s get honest.
You don’t bend over backwards for others just because you’re “so nice.”
You do it because you’re scared.
Scared of disappointing people. Of being misunderstood. Of being alone. So you trade truth for approval. Authenticity for acceptance. And slowly, without noticing, you lose the sound of your own voice.
The Gita doesn’t ask you to become hard. It asks you to become still. Still enough to act from wisdom, not fear. Still enough to make decisions that are right, not just received well.
3. The Pain of Displeasing People Is Real. But So Is the Cost of Avoiding It
Here’s what no one tells you: there’s no way to live meaningfully without disappointing someone.
If you choose peace, chaos will call you selfish.
If you set boundaries, takers will call you rude.
If you speak your truth, people committed to false harmony will call you difficult.
The Gita’s brilliance is that it teaches you this: What others think is not your path. Your path is what you know to be right, even when it’s misunderstood. Sometimes growth looks like learning to sit in the discomfort of being misunderstood, without running to explain or fix it.
4.Stop Performing. Start Living
And stillness isn’t passivity. It’s knowing who you are so clearly that the noise outside no longer pulls you in 20 directions. The Gita is not a text of passivity. It’s a text of powerful action, right action, done without the desperate need to be praised or validated.
In the End, You Answer to Yourself
He stood in truth and let it be enough. Maybe that’s your next step too. Let go of the performance. Let go of the silent hope that if you do everything right, no one will be upset with you. That world doesn’t exist. It never did. You don’t need to be perfect. You need to be honest.