Being a people-pleaser is exhausting, and demoralizing. For us, and everyone around us. Believe me, I know.  That’s why I fell hard for Erika Napoletano and her TedX video.  She doesn’t know it yet, but we’re BFF’s.

Have you ever been afraid of what people might think about a decision you have to make?  A decision that could potentially be very unpopular?

That opening scene where she’s standing with her dad in her wedding dress? Knowing that she must choose between making the biggest mistake of her life, or disappointing a LOT of important people? Well, unlike me, she chose right.  And, man, did she learn some important lessons, which she shares here.

Just a few of my favorite sound bites:

Being unpopular is about making decisions that honor the two most important audiences we’ll ever have: the people who will love us for everything we are and everything we’re not, and ourselves.

We spend our lives trying to build ourselves into something other people think that we should be, when, in fact, we should be spending our time trying to actively polarize our audience.

It’s no wonder that by the time we get to be adults we can’t honestly tell anyone around us who we are, what we love, and what we’re feeling.

Bet you’ll find some of your own.