You Are Allowed to Change Your Mind

I am not surprised, I always loved a song I could pretend to live in. As a chronic people pleaser, I basked in Maren’s bold and unapologetic voice on this song. I found myself clinging to her self-assurance as she sang one line in particular:

My only resolution’s I’m allowed to change my mind.

I like to pretend I’m not a resolution gal because the psychology says it is not the way we humans create change. However, if I let myself have one for 2025, it’s this: I’m allowed to change my mind.

The alternate title for this post was My New Year’s Resolution is to be More of a Disappointment, but I feared that might unsettle some people. At the time of writing this it is still 2024, so I have eleven more days to hold tight to my people-pleasing protective strategies. That is often what people-pleasing is: an attachment-coded response we learn in childhood as a way to protect and maintain our most important relationships. People-pleasers learn through observation and experience that conflict threatens connection, and if I am a young child dependent on my caregivers for survival, my smart little nervous system is going to learn that in order to survive, I need to keep the peace and prioritize others’ needs.  

As an adult, I get the chance to correct this response (hellooo therapy!). But nervous system habits die hard, so I am still learning that asserting myself does not always mean disconnection.

What does this have to do with changing my mind? People-pleasing on a very microlevel for me, looks like holding myself to rigid expectations that avoid inconveniencing others.

When I work with clients around changing longstanding protective strategies, I always like to work with the “lowest hanging fruit.” What is the least threatening disruption we can pull off to start?

For me it’s going to look like sending a lot of texts like this in 2025:

• Actually, I changed my mind. Can we meet in East instead? I am really craving Mitchell’s Deli.

• Hey, I took a closer look at my schedule and I can no longer make Thursday work.

• Meeting via Zoom was working great for me, and now I’d actually prefer to come in person. Can we arrange that?

Whenever we are changing a protective strategy, it is common to feel an increase in anxiety, so we want to pair it with some extra self-care. After I send a text like this, I’ll probably throw my phone on the couch and turn on Maren Morris.

If you are a chronic people pleaser, why don’t you join me in changing your mind this year?

Julia