1. People-pleasing is exhausting.

Maybe it’s a bad habit. Maybe you’re just so quick to want to fix everything, make everyone happy. Whatever your reason for people-pleasing, it gets tiring. Putting everyone before yourself, trying to make all parties involved feel good, wanting to keep everything under control—it’s impossible, first of all—and over time it will wear you down. As much as you want to fit everyone’s mold, be what they need you to be, ultimately you’ll just exhaust yourself.

2. You’ll never be enough.

There will always be some tiny part of you that doesn’t measure up, some way that you’re lacking, something you didn’t do right. You might meet someone’s expectations, but fail another’s. Or maybe everyone’s expectations are just too damn high. You can’t spend your life trying to be what everyone wants you to be. In the end, as hard as you try, you’ll never be enough because you’re not perfect—so maybe stop trying to be everything to everyone and just try to be you.

3. You won’t find real love.

When you try to be what someone else desires, you keep switching, keep changing, keep adapting yourself until you’re just what they want, and not what you want. Relationships are based on two people being themselves and loving one another. And as much as this truth hurts: You’re not going to find something real if you keep changing yourself into someone you’re not.

4. You’ll lose your sense of self.

People-pleasing means shifting your own perspectives, thoughts, ideas, and feelings to accommodate someone else’s. And if you keep doing this, you become what others want you to be, instead of who you really are. You’ll lose your sense of self, your desires, your individuality. And that sucks.

5. You’ll end up empty.

Give. Give. Give. Give. In the end, all that’s left is your tired body, so lost and so depleted it’s unrecognizable. Wanting to care about others and give what you can is good, but people-pleasing to the point that you lose who you are? That will only leave you broken, unhappy, and empty.

6. You deserve the love you keep giving away.

This is the biggest truth. You deserve the love you keep giving so freely to everyone else. People-pleasing means putting others first. What about putting yourself first? What about stopping your constant need to be what everyone else wants to be, and instead be who you want to be?

7. You’ll be happier.

When you stop worrying what everyone thinks about you, when you stop gauging your worth on someone else’s perspective, when you stop worrying about being what someone else wants and needs you to be, you give yourself a chance to focus on yourself. You learn to love yourself. And in the end, you start living a happier, more positively-centered life.