You're not for everyone? GOOD!

Like most of us, I grew up believing that the more people who found me pleasant, enjoyable and likeable, the happier I would be. It was a direct correlation, and it seemed to make logical sense. If we are ‘social creatures’ as everybody says, surely by maximising my social desirability and agreeableness, I would maximise my enjoyment of life.

In order to meet this objective, a number of compulsions emerged. Never say ‘no’ to anyone. Do everything in your power to ensure you have something in common with everyone. Let people borrow whatever they wanted from you: time, money, clothes, favours, and never expect anything in return. Inconvenience yourself for others comfort. When in doubt, beg to be liked, throw yourself at their feet, pander to their ego.

It should come as NO surprise that this, in fact, didn’t make me happier. It made me miserable. I didn’t know who liked me for me, or who liked me for what I offered them. I found conversations a minefield because one wrong step would signal that I wasn’t who I said I was. And when I inevitably came across someone I couldn’t impress - either online or in real life - it felt like I became a desperate animal and I would spend weeks, months (years if we’re being honest) obsessing over their reasons.

But I read this quote a few years back:

“The second half of your life begins when you realise being liked by everyone means being disliked by yourself.”

Let’s explore what else we gain when we see being disliked as a WIN rather than a LOSS.

Why do we need to pathologically liked?

The most simple explanation is that we are and have always been safer in a group. When we can rely upon others around us to support our individual needs, because they like us, because they see us as one of them, because there is reciprocity, we are better primed to survive in the long run and to be fulfilled.

There is an instinctual drive to return back to the herd that has been embedded in us since the very beginning. The herd represents a system we can predict, compared to the unknown of being on our own. That is why so much of our behaviour is determined by our desire to attach and be liked.

We know this is a fundamental drive because we feel it when it’s not met. Specifically, we feel lonely.

Loneliness is like hunger, like thirst, like tiredness. It is an emotional but also biological sign that something we need for functioning, in this case social acceptance, is not being met. Rejection and loneliness affect your body in almost identical ways to physical pain. Pain is not felt in the body, it’s felt in the mind. When you scrape your knee, the part of you that goes “ouch” is your brain interpreting that sensation. Those same internal systems are activated by loneliness, meaning not feeling liked can literally feel like being physically wounded.

What do we lose when we try to be for everyone?

We so often view being chosen or liked by everyone as an asset. What we don’t focus on is what we actually lose when this becomes our mission.

1. We lose a coherent sense of self

If we are constantly becoming an emotional, social chameleon to fit in with what we think others will like, how do we know who we really are?

Being individual requires having strong preferences i.e really liking things, but also really disliking things, really caring about certain things, not caring so much about other things. That means you will naturally become aligned or misaligned with certain people who don’t think the same way as you, and for some people that can breed dislike. That dislike, that opposition is often a good thing. It’s a sign that you have strong enough feelings and know your own self well enough for someone with equally strong feelings to not agree with you.

That disagreement, and maybe even dislike at times, can only occur because you had some skin in the game and because you possessed passion. Lose that passion, yes, you may gain likeability, but you also lose yourself in the process because you stand and care for nothing. That level of compromise is deeply disruptive to your stable sense of self.

2. We never find our people

Forcing a persona that is liked by everyone means the people who would genuinely like you for you can’t find you underneath all the other layers of crap we’ve piled on top.

You become less honest, less natural, less you, and therefore you aren’t rewarded with deep and meaningful relationships. A study from 2004 showed this in the context of romantic relationships. People know when somebody is being inauthentic, and it becomes a barrier for closeness because true intimacy requires vulnerability, and the core foundation of vulnerability is authenticity.

The more you hustle for approval, the less at ease others will feel with you. They will sense something untrue in the way you speak, they might notice you contradicting yourself in front of a different friend. People can even begin to feel manipulated, as if they’ve been tricked, so they leave or want less to do with us. Therefore, the friendships and close relationships we can be left with don’t actually match us, they match a specific version of us we have created for someone else, so you can end up around people you may not even like.

3. It’s honestly just exhausting

The psychological toll of pretending is enormous. On top of everything else you’re doing to just exist, you then have to monitor every word, every action, every step you take. That puts you into a chronic state of hypervigilance, draining your cognitive resources, draining your energy, fragmenting your sense of identity, all for someone else who probably doesn’t even appreciate it.

The science backs this up. A study from 2025 found that higher levels of people-pleasing were associated with lower psychological well-being, greater loneliness, and more emotional distress. Participants with the strongest people-pleasing tendencies had the worst mental health profiles overall.

Being everyone’s favourite person doesn’t work if you have no time for yourself.

Here’s something else that’s important to know. Despite all your striving, all your efforts, there will ALWAYS be someone who doesn’t like you anyways. This is known as the rule of 25.

25% of people like you and always will.
25% of people will like you initially but may change their mind.
25% of people won’t like you initially but may change their mind.
25% of people will never like you, irrespective of what you do

We can’t change everyone’s minds, but we can change how we engage with out need to be liked. That is where true freedom comes from.

How to be okay with being disliked

Accepting that people don’t like you is basically just accepting a much deeper truth in life: you can’t control everything, and you waste precious time trying. Time you could be using to side quest, make visions into reality, be whoever you want to be.

A study from 2018 showed that people who accept difficult mental experiences, such as disapproval from others, achieve a greater level of psychological health and social enlightenment, because this acceptance helps them change the narrative around why this is happening to them to be something more neutral. Basically, they stop searching for a personal explanation and realise this is a common, human truth.

Start asking: do I like everybody?

If you want everybody to like you, well it seems only fair you have to like everyone. Are you okay with that arrangement? Can you honestly say everybody is your favourite person? No. And is that necessarily their problem? Also no.

Just like you don’t have to change your opinion of these people, others don’t necessarily have to change their opinion of you, because we’re not owed other people’s approval.

Recognise the way your fear of being disliked mirrors the things you already dislike about yourself.

Specifically, it mirrors the things you unconsciously haven’t fully accepted yet. If you’re deeply afraid that someone will find you “too much,” “too quiet,” “awkward,” or “unlikeable,” it’s often because, on some level, you already believe that about yourself. Focusing on that root insecurity will remove the need for the approval you crave, because you become comfortable with those things maybe being true about you, or maybe not, but whatever the outcome is, not caring too much anyway.

Instead of “do they like me?”, you should be focused on “do I like them?”

This first requires interrogating your fears and anxieties a little bit: why is their opinion more important than yours? Where did that start? What is it that frightens you about someone not liking you? Is it that it reminds you of when you felt left out at school, and you never want to be in that situation again? Are you worried that you will be lonely or abandoned? Can you think of a time where that wound was first opened? And then, can you find a way to be okay with that feeling perhaps occurring again, knowing you could fill that hole yourself?

You are going to be so much more fulfilled leaving a social situation if you enjoyed yourself because you felt like yourself. You can also go further than just ‘did they like me?’:

• Was I genuine?

• Do I have my own approval?

• Was I reacting genuinely, or am I crafting responses?

• Was I caretaking, or am I responding truthfully?

• Did I enjoy myself?

I think it’s also worth remembering: people are responsible for their own emotions. You don’t have to manage their discomfort for them. Their negative feelings, their upsets, their annoyances are not something you have to fix, especially if they don’t raise them with you.

Separate your worth from your likeability.

Sit down and make a list of all the things that would still be true about you even if suddenly the whole world turned on you. What anchors you beyond other people’s opinions? Even if the world decided you were the worst person in the world, you would still be kind to animals, you would still be curious, you would still be creative, you would still be a good friend, you would still notice the small things, you would still work hard, you would still think deeply.

Thinking good things about ourselves is not arrogance, it’s self-protection. Other people’s opinions may impact us, but only if we let them breach the gates of our self-esteem. Affirmations (such as these) that become self-truths are our guards.

For even more tips and a further breakdown, listen to the full episode below: