Breaking the People-Pleasing Trap with Empowerment Coach Ludovica Colella

In this Episode

• [01:59]Ludovica paints a bittersweet picture of warmth and family connection in Italy, contrasting it with the reality of current distant relationships due to life circumstances and personal growth.
• [06:15]Ludovica dismantles the myth of feminine self-sacrifice, arguing that women are conditioned to exist as reflections of others rather than as complete individuals worthy of love.
• [12:37]Ludovica outlines the core “rules for living” that trap people-pleasers – avoiding conflict, seeking universal approval, and compulsively fixing others.
• [17:22]Orion asks how to handle toxic patterns with family members you can’t simply walk away from, particularly narcissistic relationships.
• [21:21]The cost of one boundary: When Ludovica simply asked her father not to shout or call her names, he chose to end their relationship rather than adjust his behavior.
• [23:05]The different types of boundaries (emotional, physical, financial, time) and the crucial distinction between understanding someone’s behavior and tolerating it.
• [32:55]Ludovica emphasizes teaching children self-love by modeling it, showing them that self-care is not selfish but essential.
• [37:51]Ludovica distinguishes between intellectual understanding and actual behavioral change, emphasizing that confidence comes from trusting your ability to handle challenges.
• [45:45]Three keys to stellar living.

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About Today’s Show

Hi, Ludovica, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. I’m excited to be talking to you about confidence and people-pleasing, because sometimes I teach it, sometimes I struggle with it. 

So thank you for being here. Before we begin, can you share with us one beautiful childhood memory?

That’s a very interesting question. I think the best childhood memory I have is not really one event; it’s more the idea of being with a family full of people who love each other. As we were saying before, I’m Italian. In Italy, obviously, we have this big culture. We’re very family-oriented. 

In my life, unfortunately, for one reason or another, I didn’t get to experience a lot—my family, my parents, my cousins, or the extended family as well, because I travel there a lot, and for many reasons that maybe we will get into, maybe not. But today, I don’t have such close relationships with all of them. 

Partially, that’s due to me moving around, and partially it’s due to just life happening. You know, as we were saying before, you never know what’s happening five minutes from now. I have this beautiful memory—I feel very lucky to have it—at home with my cousins, playing every day like it was always a party. Even though my family life hasn’t always been rainbows and unicorns, I can still hold onto the memory of warmth, closeness, and all the good things. 

That’s beautiful. How did you become an expert on people pleasing and confident?

It’s the relationship that reflects to you whatever lack you feel you have.

Well, when I realized I was a people pleaser at the age of 24, I didn’t know who I was altogether. I realized that my entire life, until that point and even a little later, had been built around other people’s needs and preferences. I had completely self-abandoned, if I can put it that way, even though I never really knew myself. 

I don’t know if I can, but unfortunately, I have had many experiences in my life where other people’s situations, needs, preferences, and wants were somehow more important than mine. When you grew up in that environment, obviously, you don’t really learn to listen to yourself, to understand yourself. 

You don’t know how to identify your needs. You don’t even know you have needs. You live your life before other people, and in doing so, you completely decenter yourself, making the other person your center. 

We see this specifically in people pleasers and those I work with in business. I don’t think it’s an exception, but they struggle a lot with their relationships. Because it’s the relationship that mirrors whatever lack you feel you have back to you. I had lots of toxic relationships. 

By the age of 24, I realized that something was off, that it was the other person. The problem was probably me. I was the toxic one, and I was entertaining toxic dynamics because I didn’t know who I was, and so at the number X, Y and Z relationship that failed, I was like, “I’m not doing this again. Let me learn how to change these patterns and understand where they come from.” 

That started for me. It started like that. It started with understanding what I wanted and how I could communicate that. The first thing I changed was when I told myself, “I’m not doing this again. I want to learn how to recenter myself, to be the center of my world, and feel whole within,” a concept we often use. 

Give yourself what you need, rather than outsourcing everything to the outside.

Sometimes we don’t know what it means, but essentially, it’s about recognizing your needs and trying to satisfy them yourself. This means giving yourself what you need, rather than outsourcing everything to the outside. 

Because people can give you love, they can give you so many nice things, but then at some point, they can stop giving you that. You need to be okay with the idea that relationships can also be transient. From there, I think I started to get to know myself a little bit more and to set boundaries in relationships. 

Everything for me started with boundaries, which is also why I have a course on boundaries. I think that the number one thing for people pleasers that they can start to change almost immediately is communication. 

Why do you think a lot of women feel more than men, but some men become people pleasers? Is it something from our childhood? Is it something we learned along the way? What’s the reason for that? Do we want love, so we think this is the only way we can get love?

We’re conditioned to believe that women should be self-sacrificing. Women are meant to care for other people. Women are meant to make the other the center. Just because we can be moms, it doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice ourselves for the other; instead, we can support them. 

There is an idea that women find relating satisfying when they make other people happy. I completely disagree with this. I think that this is because nowadays, femininity in general is seen as self-sacrificing. 

We’re changing that very slowly, but at least, you know, so far, it has been like that under this patriarchal system. This is what the feminine needs to be. It needs to exist for the other, or as a reflection of the other, which I think is a huge problem. I don’t think you can seek love if you are not in love with yourself first. 

Women are not born to self-sacrifice. Just because we can be mothers doesn’t mean we must abandon ourselves—true love is supporting others without losing ourselves. Share on X

What was my breakthrough moment as well? I didn’t love myself, and that’s why the relationships I had were toxic. Also, I was born in a family where my parents were, I would say, troubled people, mentally and physically. They were often at the center of my attention, like everything I did. I thought about them every time I had to communicate something. I would worry about how they would take what I had to say. 

You were basically walking on eggshells near them. Sounds narcissistic, dealing with.

Exactly. It was like walking on eggshells. I was in survival mode, and so I didn’t have time to think about thriving. When you’re in survival mode, you don’t think about thriving because you think about surviving. You think about, ‘How can I get through this conversation without causing conflict or without being abused?’ 

At some point, I just got the message that I was worthless. I was unlovable. When you see other people who are supposed to take care of you struggling so much to the point that you become the parent, you become the parentified child. 

Then you’re like, “Okay, so that’s my role, taking care of other people. Where am I in all of this?” It didn’t matter. I didn’t get to that question, even, like, I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t care about where I was. All I cared about was making my parents happy. 

At some point, that changed when I realized that this modality could potentially work with them. It worked at some point in my life because I needed to survive in that specific environment. But when I used the same behaviors with other people, others perceived that I lacked self-love, essentially. 

That’s a perfect recipe to attract a toxic partner, or let’s say, a partner who benefits from that at some level. But to answer your question, I think that women more than men, and I would say the feminine more than the masculine. It’s believed to be a reflection of the other. It’s believed to exist just because he has to take care of something else.

Like a mother should be. Mother Teresa. But if you go into her biography, she wasn’t a people pleaser at all. I think I heard a story where she would come to mega-rich people, and she would pretty much demand money in the most direct way possible, putting them on the spot and stuff. 

But we all have this hallucination of what a mother should be, what a partner should be, where we get messages from our schooling system. We get messages from Disney movies. We get messages from movies in general. We get messages from our societies, our culture, and our biblical stories. 

Everything is teaching us what it’s like; we all have our specific ideal of what a partner or mother should be, and it’s based on sacrifice. Many, many times, if you sacrifice, if you were a martyr, then you’re a good wife, you’re a good mother, you’re a good partner, even good in business, or a good friend. Like, “I love this friend of mine who does everything I want.” If this is horse trading and conditional love, then it’s not love, isn’t it?

Everything you give out doesn’t come back.

I agree. Love always starts with us, and if we give up, if we pour our energy into people all the time, we don’t have anything left for ourselves. We, by definition, lack, and so we keep maintaining this cycle where we have a lack of love. 

We project that onto the outside by giving, and then what the other person gets is this excess of love, which then becomes self-sacrifice, but it’s never free, also, because dependency is born. ‘If I give you everything, or if I give you all my energy, all my attention, then I also want something back,’ and that’s very subconscious, especially in people pleasers. 

They have expectations after that, and their expectations often get disappointed, because in the end, you can’t really expect people to react in the way you would react, because you would react with self-sacrifice, but other people will not necessarily be on your same wavelength. 

I would say that’s probably good, but then you see that everything you give out doesn’t come back. Often this is when people pleasers reach for therapy or coaching, because they are like, “I am unsatisfied in my relationship because everyone likes people, but doesn’t value me. I’m always putting them on a pedestal. I’m almost always putting them first, and I put myself second, but they don’t do the same with me,” and that’s how it happened with me as well. 

I realized that at some point, I found myself alone in my life. I had no one, as everyone was busy with their lives. I was just 24, which is usually supposed to be a time of your life in which you’re very social and you have people around. I didn’t see all the people I knew; they were just so focused on their own lives. 

I was like, “Who was thinking about me?” No one was. They are on their own things, on their own life, and I was there just realizing that I probably gave the wrong things to them.

You can’t seek love until you fall in love with yourself first. Share on X

Probably many of the people who are listening are doing some sort of people pleasing. How do we detect that we are people pleasers, and then how do we get out of that trap? What is the fine line between ‘I’m helpful and I’m kind’ to ‘I’m a people pleaser’?

It comes down to a few general rules for living that people pleasers might have. One rule for living might be, ‘I need to avoid conflict all the time.’ If you resonate with that rule, you’re probably fitting the people pleaser archetype, or ‘I need to be liked all the time,’ which then has a number of implications. 

‘What do you do to be liked all the time?’ 

‘Well, I put other people first. I try not to rock the boat. I don’t talk about my things as I try not to burden people.’ 

There are several behaviors where you become completely decentered. You don’t exist. The other person, who is me, is the center of whatever decision you take. 

There is a rule: ‘I need to help people all the time.’ The so-called ‘fixer’, the ‘hero’, likes to be helpful to fix it for other people.

Sounds like someone I know personally.

That’s the thing as well; at some point, people pleasers become that way in their lives, at least for a period. At times, they think, ‘This is my personality, and this is a good thing. I’m generous. I’m kind. I’m someone who wants to help other people. What’s wrong with us?’ 

It’s people pleasers’ worst fear to become rude or selfish, and that’s why, in our sessions, we refrain from the idea of self-sacrifice as being kindness.

They create this whole personality around rules that were there because of a trauma response that happened back in Islamic times. But these rules stayed as part of their personality, and sometimes they take pride in that. 

I took pride in being someone who was there for others, never asking for anything, and not needing a space in their relationships; I just existed. I tried to be as neutral as I could, and being that person who, ‘Yeah, you see me, but I’m not here. I’m not gonna show up too much. I’m not going to show off anymore, too much. I’m not going to be loud. I’m not going to be myself.’

What was the transformation for you when you caught yourself and said, “This is it. I need to set boundaries,” but what kind of boundaries did you establish? Did you consider the reaction of the world around you? How did your relationship shift during this journey of boundaries? 

Sometimes, when people are people pleasers, they decide to stop and, in doing so, they go to the other extreme, becoming very unkind. However, they eventually find their way to the middle ground. Many questions in one, but feel free to answer what comes to mind.

That’s true. I think it’s also people pleasers’ worst fear to become rude or selfish, and that’s why, in our sessions, we refrain from the idea of a self-sacrifice as being kindness, then the first thing that people say is, “But if I think about my needs first, am I not selfish?” 

But there is a continuum. It’s not like a black and white type of thing. Often, people go too much the other way because they have the anger that they have inside for a long time, that they have been people pleasers, they couldn’t actually express because they didn’t know how to feel it. They suppress them, and it comes out altogether. 

They can go at times, the other way, but that’s what we try to avoid when we work on it, because we want to take small steps. We want to build someone’s confidence slowly. We want to use low-stick situations to start saying no and setting boundaries. 

Healthy relationships usually improve when you start doing that; toxic relationships don’t. Toxic relationships will just leave your life when you start setting boundaries. I had a situation like that, which obviously doesn’t stop being painful. 

At some point, you feel the pain of losing someone, but you also realize that that person was not right for you the way they were relating to you, the way you were relating to them. It didn’t continue. 

So if you try to change that relationship to make it a good fit for your new way of being, that’s an act of love. If they decide to walk away from you, then you know that’s just life. That’s when we need to accept that other people have their free will as well.

It’s easy to walk away from strangers, but what if it’s in your own family? There is some kind of toxic dynamic, usually, that combines a narcissist and a pleaser, because they just go together so well, and then when the people pleaser tries to shift, it’s very hard to deal with this dynamic and not step away from it. 

What can someone do if they have someone in their life that is like that, but it’s a sibling or a mother or an uncle or somebody they can’t just be like, “I’m cutting, I’m going away, goodbye,” but someone you have to deal with on a daily basis?

I’m probably the worst person to ask this question to, because I had exactly the same situation, and the person I’m talking about is my father. He was way too present in my life, not physically. 

When you see other people who are supposed to take care of you struggling so much to the point that you become the parent, you become the parentified child. Share on X

Like living in your mind, whispering in your ear every day.

Absolutely. Every time I thought about whatever decision, like, I wanted to change this to this, or we moved to this city, I would think first, ‘What would my father say? How would he take it? How can I present this to him in a way that doesn’t rock the boat?’ 

He was really controlling. At first, he came across as a very caring person who wanted the best for me, but then you will see that the more I allowed him into my world, the more he became judgmental.

Over-giving, but holding the leash really tight. The more he gives, the more he holds you by.

Exactly. I wanted him to be part of my life, so I was creating space for him. I will tell him my business. I had a very good relationship because I would just be open with him, but I knew that there were certain things that I had to say to him in a certain way. 

But then I thought, ‘He’s a parent. It’s fine if he has things to say. It’s fine if sometimes he criticizes some of my choices. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a parent doing a parent’s job.’ 

But then, at some point, it became, “I want you to live life according to my rules.” That was very clear to me.  I had no doubts whatsoever. That became even more apparent when I met my now husband. 

Grounding yourself is the first thing people pleasers should learn, as they often struggle to recognize their feelings.

Initially, it was warm and open, and it was very nice to be around, but then he flipped, and nothing happened. He just decided from that day onwards, he didn’t want to be nice to be around anymore. He started to become very controlling. He started to criticize all my life choices, to say that this person was not made for me, that this choice was a wrong choice. 

I could move back to my country, because, as you know, he had everything, everything came out suddenly. Yes, I was shocked. It wasn’t the first time that happened to me, but it was the first time in my adult life, after a few years, that he suddenly flipped like that out of nowhere. 

I said, “Just one boundary. Just one boundary. Well, there’s not really a boundary,” but I set a rule. “Do not talk to me like that.” That’s what I said. 

That’s all he needed to say, “Okay, then don’t talk to me at all.” He reacted to, I would say, an attempt to create a better conversation. It’s not like I said, “I don’t want to hear your opinion at all.” 

I said, “Can you please not shout and scream and call me names?” That was the gist of it. John talked to me like he immediately liked me. He has a future ego, by the way, he got very reactive to what I said, and it was very easy. I didn’t cut him off. He cut himself off because I wasn’t controllable anymore, I guess.

You see, that’s the fear with people who are stopping people pleasing, is losing someone you love in such an extreme way. I’m sure, from his perspective, something subconscious happened where he felt like he didn’t have his little girl anymore, felt abandoned, felt maybe older, and could not control his own life. 

So wanting to control yours, whatever the reason is, doesn’t matter because the pain of emotionally losing someone like that is grieving. It’s hard.

There are different types of boundaries. There are emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, financial boundaries, and time boundaries.

But I have to say this is an extreme case. I think that most times you can be assertive, also with people who try to push the boundaries, but the main thing that you need is to understand how to do so in any given moment. When they make a request, for example, and they try to push a boundary, how do you feel, and what do you need? 

That’s why I say grounding yourself is the first thing, and sometimes it’s the first thing we teach to people pleasers, because they often don’t know how they feel about things, so they don’t know what their needs are, because they just make anxiety or a sense of being overwhelmed by certain situations. 

But they cannot go deeper than that. One of the first things is realizing what this person’s trick is. What’s this person triggering within you? What kind of emotions are coming up, and what do you need from this person, this interaction, and this conversation? 

Then, we move on to the communication side of things. But essentially, everything starts with you. You need to understand what you feel. You need to understand your triggers and what you need from someone to be.

How do you ground yourself, and how do you start treating yourself better and putting better boundaries? 

I have one on my website. I have a freebie about boundaries, because the first thing that we need to do is to understand what those are. There are different types of boundaries. There are emotional boundaries, physical boundaries, financial boundaries, and time boundaries. There are many types. You need to really be reflective about the kind of deal breakers, boundaries, and things that you will tolerate and accept in your life. 

The fact that you can understand someone’s behavior, like you were saying before, maybe your father was triggered somehow in the relationship with you, so he then behaves like that. We can understand almost everything, specifically people’s diseases. 

They can understand a lot, because they’re very empathetic, but then what you know is something we decided to tolerate something else, and that’s the first distinction that needs to be made. What are you tolerating? That actually is not right. What behavior you accept from other people, will you tolerate from yourself? Where are you self-abandoning? 

If you don’t really know yourself, if you don’t stop and think about, ‘How do I feel right now?’ If you don’t build that connection with yourself, if you don’t increase your sense of yourself, you need to become more sensitive to your emotions. 

If you are in survival mode, the people-pleaser response will be automatic.

If you don’t stop, and you ask yourself, ‘How do I feel right now?’ Then you will never know. Because if you are in survival mode, the people-pleaser response will be automatic. Immediately you say yes, immediately you will not be setting a boundary. You will be thinking straight away about the other person. 

You need to start thinking about yourself first. But this is a job that you do every day, if you want to work on it every day. How do I feel today? What do I need from myself today? When you find yourself in interaction with someone, you’re going to become more aware. 

That’s what self-awareness is like. It’s not just about knowing things. It’s also about how this interaction is affecting me. What’s triggering within me? How can I show up for myself in this conversation? How can I also be kind and generous in this conversation? But still, kindness is also self-kindness. That needs to be clear too.

When you have clients come to you, what are some common themes that you get, like common behaviors, and how do you quickly fix them? 

I don’t think there’s a quick fix, per se, but the first thing I think that helps people is to understand where their people pleasing comes from. The first session usually is quite revealing, because we go straight into charter dynamics. Sometimes it’s not the family origin, sometimes it’s the peer group, sometimes they have experiences of building more toxic relationships, even later in life. 

But many, many times, if you’re dealing with a “people pleaser,” it’s mainly the family origin that groomed the person to be a people pleaser, and so we make a list of the experiences that they had that they think really impacted the way they see themselves. 

Then we make a list of all, let’s say, the old ways in which these experiences impacted their belief. For example, my parents were absent from my life because they worked a lot, so I found I spent lots of time alone, and that made me feel I wasn’t really worth it. Then we start talking about how your mind is protecting you from that feeling of worthlessness nowadays. 

‘What is your brain making you do to make you believe that you are worth it?’ 

‘Well, I try to always be nice to people. I try not to be a negative presence in their life. I don’t want to be a burden.’ 

Then you start seeing all the rules for living that come up about how they should be in their life. All these rules are actually linked to actual behaviors. 

‘When you feel like you have to put other people first, how does that show up in your behavior?’ 

‘Well, if I go for dinner with my friend, I just go with whatever they want to eat, and I don’t even express my preference.’ 

It can be that silly. That’s small. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. You start with really small behaviors. When you start changing, you start with small behaviors. I had a client come to me once, and the first experiment we made was around deciding what she was going to have for dinner with her husband. 

You can't expect people to react in the way you would respond. You would react with self-sacrifice, but other people may not necessarily share your perspective. Share on X

She was going to cook something without asking her husband if she wanted to. But it was a really small thing, and she never did it. We started with that, and she was like, “Okay, he did it. Nothing happened.” 

Sometimes it’s just the fear. Sometimes the fear can be legitimate and real. Other times, it’s just we never go against the pattern. So it can be a really small thing. You build the confidence to do another experiment.

‘I want to decide I want to take two days off and go on a girls’ trip with my girlfriends without thinking about what everyone else is thinking.’ 

Okay, let’s do that, see what happens. And then you start getting slowly away from your schema, from your pattern, and you enter into a new framework of being essentially.

This is so strong in my life, especially since I don’t know the last. I think the previous year was a journey into that, because I always want to be the best mom ever and to give as much as I can to my son. I noticed that I’m the last to eat at the table. 

Subconsciously, I’m just like, ‘Okay, I took care of everybody else. Just start eating.’ I’ll come later, whenever, and I’ve tried to start changing. That doesn’t happen all the time, but I make sure that I’m at the table with everyone. 

Sometimes the fear can be legitimate and real. Other times, it’s just that we never go against the pattern.

My five-year-old loves mangoes. When we lived in Miami, we had a huge mango tree with huge, juicy, delicious mangoes. There was a season when he would eat seven mangoes for breakfast. Here, it’s summer, but I’m not gonna get him seven mangoes for breakfast. I get a few mangoes, and he eats them, but I always take the rest, a little bit of what was left on the pit. 

It’s weird. It’s not like I cannot afford my mango. I never eat the whole mango. The other day, I had a breakthrough. I was alone at home, and I looked through the mango, and I’m like, “I’m gonna eat the whole mango by myself. I’m eating that mango. This is my mango,” and just sat, and I ate the mango, and you know what? I started crying and laughing. It was a very cathartic, stupid mango.

That’s amazing. That’s a perfect example of how small an action can be. But then it’s not just a kind of change. You’re eating the whole mango. The thing is that the mango symbolizes something, and that, for you, was a cathartic moment that triggered other things. 

It doesn’t matter how small, really; it’s just about getting away from a specific pattern or script that you have been reenacting, either consciously or subconsciously, for a while. Then you eat the mango, and you’re like, “Whoa, I liked it. That’s perfect.”

But there is another pattern schema, you call it, that I also noticed I have been going on, since childhood. There is a childhood memory where I had to save someone, and since then, I have been saving my family. I’m just a savior. 

Even when I was in acting class in New York, there was this super cool Russian lady whom I really liked. However, the American kids were bullying her, and it eventually led to them bullying me, too. 

I stood for her because I’m always like, “I’m going to be the savior. I’m going to be a protector of the weak. I’m strong, and I’m going to be there for the world. I’m going to have a podcast, and I’m going to teach people.” 

But I noticed that, especially now we came back to Israel like, ‘Wow, I am here for my family, and maybe in a not so helpful way,’ because I’m over helpful sometimes, and it comes on my expense, on my time, my health, my well being, and I’m starting to put boundaries and structures, but it’s not very easy when you start putting boundaries on people who were almost like getting a sense of entitlement because you trained them for years on who you are in their lives. They don’t like it. No, they don’t love it.

No, but sometimes they need to. They also need time to adjust to a new version of you, so you can give them the benefit of the doubt and see if they can then understand what’s changing and why it’s changing, because they say that the best thing you can do for a child, for example, is to show them self-love, and what self-love is. 

If you put yourself at the center of your own life and take care of yourself, then your child will understand that’s how self-love is made.

If you put yourself at the center of yourself, and then obviously you take care of your child, then they understand that that’s how self-love is made. What you are doing is the calling that you have to break certain patterns, and it is certainly the right path for you. You just need to find out how that translates into action. You need to work out in practical ways. 

What does that mean to me when I am being extra helpful? When I step into the savior archetype, what part of me am I leaving behind? If I’m putting so much energy into this relationship, into this situation, what am I avoiding, or what am I not putting energy into? You know, it’s a typical “Oh, if I’m saying yes to you, then what am I saying no to?” 

We always benefit from our victimhood; from whatever we do, there is always a benefit to it.

Yes. That’s not often. It’s not obvious, right? It’s a secondary game, because the savior archetype, very much like victimhood, can be an archetype, but let’s say the mask. Because we step into a specific role, and then when we become it, we feel like we have become that role. We become that role. 

Then other people relate to us via that role. Wherever we gain in terms of relationships, life, opportunities, or other things, we attach it to that role, and so we feel like, at some point, “If I’m not that, who am I? If I’m not that, what am I gonna do? How are the people gonna love me?” 

That’s why it’s essential to step out, because then you find out, even if you step out, people still love you. People still care for you, and you can still hold your family together. Everything is fine. You’re just not sacrificing yourself that much.

I’m a pretty strong mom. How can I not make my child a people pleaser? Because he loves me. I’m teaching him stuff like when a stranger comes, or even a neighbor, even his grandma, they come and they want a hug or kiss or a high five, I actually taught him not to give them that kiss or high five if he doesn’t feel like it. 

It’s essential to step out, because then you find out, even if you step out, people still love you.

We tried a ninja class the other day, the instructor was like, “High five,” and he just looked at him, saying, “No.” People are really surprised, and they look at me, expecting me to say, “No, little guy, give him a high five.” I’m like, “No, this is your body. It’s your boundaries. If you don’t feel aligned with your energy to touch someone, then not even a high five. No way, Jose.”

But that’s a great way to start introducing the idea that you are more important because that’s essentially what you’re doing when you’re teaching them, you first check in with yourself, and then you do whatever is aligned. And again, it can start from a small thing, apparently, a small thing is the high five. 

To go back to the point you were saying before, that’s even more true with little girls. How many times are little girls told to be nice and polite? ‘You got such a pretty smile. Why aren’t you smiling?’ 

You started something. It’s especially a little girl. I’m gonna say, “Oh, you’re so pretty. Why don’t you smile?” I’ve never heard it said to a guy, “You are handsome. Why aren’t you smiling?” 

Of course, because that would be creepy. Guess what? It’s creepy. What you’re doing is great, but also, to go back to what we were saying before, if you prioritize yourself, your children will see that, and they will not take it the wrong way. They will learn that self-love is a concept that needs to be taught, and that includes teaching them love and self-love. 

Since I don’t have children, I don’t fully understand the complexities of raising one. There is a book by a very famous psychologist from a long time ago, called Erich Fromm. The book is called The Art of Loving. 

He discusses this concept, saying the mother doesn’t just give milk, but also honey, to emphasize that it’s not just for survival, but also to teach love and self-love. If you want to go deeper into the concept of those concepts, I think it’s a great book. It’s a small one, but powerful. But if you pull yourself first at times, I think that will be good for your kids, because they will. You’re modeling, right?

That’s a great point. When you’re constantly sacrificing your time and playing martyr, you end up feeling tired and angry, which isn’t the best way to be a mom.

My husband was also a people pleaser, and when I asked them, “Where do you think you took this from?” and was like, “I don’t know if I was taught directly to become a people pleaser, but I can tell you that my mom is the same.” 

His mom is someone who constantly thinks about other people’s opinions and talks a lot. He got the message at some point in childhood. This is important. 

‘I should be thinking about what other people think of me. I should adjust myself to other people’s expectations, needs, and preferences, because that’s what you do. That’s what my mom cares about. That’s what I need to care about.’ 

Somehow, he became that person, and later in adulthood, I realized I was so similar to my mom.

I get that. How did you get more confident? How did you find self-love for yourself?

Confidence is not something you know when you start talking, when you start learning about self-love and confidence. These are all very nice concepts. There are lots of theories, a lot of people who tell you, “This is the way to love yourself. This is the way to be confident.” 

During the learning process, you read a lot, listen to numerous podcasts, and attend therapy. I go to therapy, for example, which is a way I’ve learned to take care of and love myself. You are in the process of learning, and then at some point, you feel like, “Okay, so I know enough. What should I do?” Many people stop there, feeling overwhelmed by information and unsure of what to do or where to go. 

Start aligning your life with the person you want to be.

But it starts when you make the changes; that’s how you start changing, really, the way you feel. It’s not when you change your mind, it’s when you change your behavior and your life. You start aligning your life with the person that you want to be. It’s not going to be overnight, because nothing is overnight, but even just the fact that you managed to change one thing that was there to do this, that you wanted to do, that gives you confidence. 

Because confidence is not like, “Oh, I’m the most amazing person, that’s just having a big ego, and I’m gonna leave it aside.” We don’t like that, but what we want is the idea that we can trust our ability to take care of ourselves and to change, and we can trust our ability in our skills. 

I trust myself in the sense that if I face something difficult and challenging, I know I can get through it. When I say confidence, not looking or doing what appears, “I don’t care about this stuff,” that stuff will come when you start trusting yourself. 

But if you don’t put yourself in a position in which you can develop. You can grow the so-called ‘outsider comfort zone’ type of thing. How can you change? Just stay in your comfort zone and do things you always do. There’s no change. There’s no growth in comfort zones. 

Out of the comfort zone, and you start doing things differently—worries, fears, and negative thoughts will show up, and you just remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. You shift your attention away from all these inner chapters, and you become extra focused on your purpose. 

It’s so easy to be in the mind. We’re living in a time where a lot is online. You look at social media, videos, and shorts, and there are so many concepts. Everything is from the neck up, and when we consume a lot of information, we think we’re doing something, but we have to take action. 

I trust myself in the sense that if I face something challenging, I know I can get through it.

If you’re not taking the action, you will never learn the lesson. You don’t know things until you do them. Get out of your comfort zone and eat that whole mango or cook that dinner without asking, or wear the thing you want to wear without the little things you take action on. We live in a world of action. 

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We have to have the human experience to connect to our spirit and heal and move forward and become better and greater. 

In my life, I took tons of self-development workshops where I had to walk on fire, burn, break an arrow, and break a board. I walked on glass. I jumped from a telephone. But even those actions that were symbolic gave me way more than, I think, a year of thinking about what it’s going to feel like if I’m going to do it. 

That’s true. You have no idea how many times people come to a section, and that’s the first section, and they’re like, “You know, I know everything. I know all my problems. I know where they come from, and I know how to change it. I just haven’t changed it yet.” 

So what’s up with that? But many, many times, we think that thinking is equal to doing, or just because we ruminate to overthink about something, we’re changing it or doing something about it. But the fact that we understand something doesn’t mean that we are changing it just because we were thinking about it. There comes a time when we’re not always ready, but that’s not the point. Action is key.

Sometimes we think we understand something. We know we don’t have a knowing of it, because we never experience it. You have to experience. You’ll never become a great speaker unless you’re willing to fail a few times on stage or step up to the challenge. You can think about it all day long, but you have to take action. 

We live in a world of action. We need to take action, and that will move us forward, even if it’s just a tiny step every day, because you build up on that. 

Doing podcasts or being a guest on a podcast was one of my biggest fears. I had a huge fear of public speaking. This is not public speaking because it’s just me and you, but it is public speaking because people are going to hear us talking. I was terrified. I was paralyzed. I was a type of person who, when a teacher asked a question in class, even if I knew the answer, I wouldn’t raise my hand to say it. 

I was that “bad” and had huge anxiety over speaking in general. When I decided, “Okay, I want to have my own business. I want to do my own thing, but I felt too cold to tackle fast-paced tasks. I didn’t feel I could do it.” It was the first podcast I recorded. I had anxiety for three days prior. Then at some point, I did it once. I did it twice a day, and by the fourth time, it had disappeared.

There comes a time when we’re not always ready, but that’s not the point. Action is key.

I love it, but actually, I can relate. Ten years ago, when I was younger, I started this podcast. I didn’t start it because I wanted to; there was a person in my life who believed in me more than I believed in myself. It was my husband, and I told him, “Who’s gonna listen to me with my English, with my accent?” 

Like you said, in the classroom, I would be a good girl and raise my hand and answer, but if I go to a conference, I would be afraid to go to the mic and ask questions. That’s what I started doing. I would go to a conference, then I would go to the mic, and my knees would shake, and my voice would shake, and I would be in my front right.

So much to that, like university presentations, team meetings, everything, for me, if there was a group of more than three people, to me, it was public.

Before we say goodbye for today, what are your three top tips for living a stellar life?

I would say there are two tips in one, probably. First of all, don’t listen to your mind too much, because your mind is not always logical. Most of your thoughts come from your experience, so they’re already conditioned. 

The second tip is to listen to your intuition more, and emotions are not actually that illogical. When these two things come together, listen less to your mind. Think less, and feel more. Because sometimes, emotions and intuitions tell you more than your thoughts. Your mind can be conditioned, your emotions cannot.

Where can people find you and learn more about the offer you made regarding boundaries?

It’s on my website, which is lu-cole.com. It’s on the first page of my website, and all the other pages also. But you can just subscribe to the newsletter, and you’ll get this freebie, along with many other freebies. 

But essentially, the whole newsletter is about setting boundaries, communication, becoming more confident, and stepping away from the people pleaser script. 

I also have a blog where I write weekly about topics that are people-pleasing or related to people-pleasing, and that’s about it. 

I also have social media. My handle is @ludovica_colella_coaching, and you can find me there as well. 

Thank you so much, Ludovica. It was a pleasure and an honor to meet you. That was really fun. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me, and best of luck to you in the future.

Thank you and thank you, listeners. Remember, do not listen to your mind. Listen to your intuition and feel more. Connect your heart and have a stellar life. This is Orion, till next time.