Summary 

In this episode, we dive into the intricate world of people-pleasing, especially as we approach the holiday season—a time filled with gatherings, high expectations, and the potential for stretched boundaries. Joined by my friend and master coach, Sara Bybee Fisk, we unpack the roots of people-pleasing, why it’s deeply ingrained in us, and how it plays out in family dynamics, social settings, and professional environments. Sara shares insights on how to navigate these situations authentically, balancing the desire for connection with self-respect. This conversation offers practical tips for maintaining your boundaries and preserving your joy, so you can walk through the holiday season with less stress and more fulfillment.

Sara Bybee Fisk is a Master Certified Coach and Instructor who teaches women how to eliminate people pleasing and perfectionism from their lives. She is an anxious optimist and born again feminist who listens to more books than she actually sits down to read. She loves a good hike, good dark chocolate and good conversations. Her big dreams include learning to sail and to sing and dance like JLo and helping thousands of women create the big, juicy lives they want to be living. She is a wife and mom of 5 and she enjoys those roles most of the time.  

Sara’s Links:

Stop People Pleasing: Holiday Edition Class: https://pages.sarafisk.coach/spp-holiday  

Website: www.sarafisk.coach

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/

Free Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stoppeoplepleasingwithsarafisk

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach?lang=en

Podcast: https://theexgoodgirlpodcast.buzzsprout.com/share 

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-bybee-fisk/

Learn more: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/ 

Get the Body Reset Private Podcast: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/bodyreset

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• Recognize where people-pleasing tendencies come from and why they're so common, especially in women.
• Set boundaries without guilt and understand why it's essential for personal well-being.
• Balance the desire for connection with the need for self-respect and autonomy.
• Use practical strategies to pause, reflect, and respond authentically in challenging situations.
• Embrace vulnerability and honesty to foster deeper, more meaningful relationships.

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Download the full transcript here.

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  Priyanka Venugopal: I was one of those kids who would shoot her hand up in the air, be front of the classroom, want the big person in my life, the teacher, the parent, even my friends and eventually colleagues to like me. I never really thought of myself as a people pleaser as I was a child growing up, but I can see now looking back and even in my young adult life that I have had so many little and big people pleasing tendencies. Today, I am so excited to be joined on the podcast by an amazing friend and guest  Bybee Fisk. She is an expert on people pleasing. She's going to be talking about not only how people pleasing is healthy and normal, but at what point along the way it might start to turn into something that you want to take a deeper look at. Especially as we are walking into the holiday season, there are so many cultural festivities and special events and dinners and time together with friends and family. This I thought would be the perfect time to have her back on the podcast to talk about specific strategies that you can feel armed with in your back pocket. So you walk into and out of the holiday season, feeling truly connected with yourself. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast conversation with master coach Sara Bybee Fisk. Let's get into today's episode. Hey, Unstoppable Friend. You're listening to the Burn Stress, Lose Weight podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, a physician turned stress and weight loss coach for professional working moms and the founder of the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable small group coaching program. This podcast is going to inspire change at the root for you on and off the scale. I've lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids and an unpredictable schedule. And along my journey, which was full of many, many imperfect moments, I have learned how to skip past the fads and the gimmicks. I am on this mission now to share with you how you can have a real strategy and mindset skills to really have more of the life you want that you have worked so hard for. Let's get into it.

  Hey friends, welcome back to today's episode. I am so, so, so thrilled to be joined by my good friend, master certified coach, , you're going to tell us a little bit about you. And I really had wanted to have you on the podcast specifically at this time of year. We've had you on the podcast before. I will link that show in the show notes, but I wanted to talk specifically about why this time of year around the holidays, special events. All of this brings out some of our very natural desires to people. Please. So tell us about you. We're talking about people pleasing and the holidays. We're going to get into the episode.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: I, uh, first of all, love you. I love your work. And I am a master certified coach and instructor. I come by the work that I do very honestly. I was an excellent people pleaser. I did a really, really bang up job making everybody else happy and ignoring like the river of resentment that just kind of ran underneath all of that. And one of the things about the holidays is It's the height of everything that we want. Connection, love, togetherness, traditions, like it's when we bring out all of our favorite things, we have high expectations, we take time off of work, we travel to see family, our kids come home. It is really this beautiful Potential time of like togetherness and spending time with the people we love and want connection with most. But the flip side of that, or kind of the other facet of that, is it's also the height of all of our expectations for women, especially. We end up feeling like we are in charge of putting on. This celebration for the people in our lives, or we are in charge of meeting the expectations of the people that we love, and it can cause some real problems.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah, I think, you know, what I've seen with my clients and with myself is it's the time of year that feels like it should be the most, I'm going to say should be, should be the most joyous, but it's also filled with the most disappointment and the most discouragement and this like mismet expectations. And it creates a lot of heartache, I think, in, in a lot of scenarios. So before we get into, uh, Specifically the holidays. I'm just kind of curious on your take. We talk about people pleasing on the podcast. I did a whole series on FON as one of our stress cycle responses and how it's so normal for us to have this FON response. But I'm curious about how you would describe where people pleasing comes from for women, especially, especially for these like smart, professional women where logically, you know, I know I'm not meeting my own needs here. I'm not meeting my own expectations. Why do you think it is that we still come back to this very, very automatic reflex?

  Sara Bybee Fisk: It is because it is programmed biologically in us since birth. And here's what I mean by that. A baby comes into the world completely incapable of taking care of itself. All it can do is cry. And then hopefully a big person comes and changes it, feeds it, cuddles it, helps it go to sleep. And so in the mind of a baby that doesn't even understand yet that it is a separate being from the big people, they understand, okay, I do something, I cry and someone comes hopefully, right? That doesn't always happen, but usually there is some big person that comes to take care. And so they form a bond with that big person. And then that big person becomes the center of their survival needs because the job of every baby, the job of every I mean, I have 22 year old twin boys. I'm still waiting for them to be like totally independent. Who knows when that actually happens, the jury's still out. But until we are completely capable of meeting our own needs, our job is to win the care of bigger, more capable adults. In every scenario that we're in, home, school, church, sports. So if you think about that biological imperative to win the care of bigger, more capable adults, we do that by pleasing them. If a baby smiles, what does everybody in the room do? Oh my gosh, the baby's smiling, so cute. And then the baby learns, oh they like that. And they do it more. They wave, they clap their hands, all in response to what the big people like. And there the pattern is set. And it is actually essential and good. You and I are here today because we were very good people pleasers. We won the care and the attention and the affection and the help. Of bigger, more capable adults and so that people pleasing pattern is actually how we survive because baby then is picking up thousands of messages who they like that. Oh, they don't like that. And we soon learn there are behaviors we get rewarded for. And behaviors we get punished for we get punished with separation with an angry tone with, you know, with various forms, forms of punishment, but it is clearly delineated in in baby than toddler than young child's mind. They like this. They don't like that. They like this. They don't like that they like this. They don't like that. And so we learn the rules. Of all the groups we belong to, and we learn to keep them if we want to get rewarded, we learn the roles that we are expected to fulfill. The good girl, the one who gets good grades, the one who doesn't have any needs, the one who makes everybody else happy by being the funny, silly one. And those rewards are literally what help us survive. So it is programmed in every single human to please to get the care that they need.

  Priyanka Venugopal: This is so good. So, I mean, for those of you that are listening, if you're feeling like, Ooh, she's describing me to a T, it just goes to show that you're not alone in this.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: This is everyone. It's so important.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Like, I really love to start with validating. If you identify as someone that. Has met kind of what  was just talking about. It's because it has been rewarded behavior. I still remember back, I mean, first and second grade were my best, my best years. I was like teacher's pet, raising the hand. And I still remember Miss Block. And then I went to her wedding and she became Mrs. Davis. I mean, she's my favorite teacher to this day. I still remember. How I would feel on the inside when I would rate like my hand would be the shooting up and she would call on me and I could see the smile on her face like a twinkle what I would assume a twinkle in her eye. I'm like, Oh, she likes me. She approves of me. She thinks I'm smart. And at least for me, and I think, you know, this is the overachiever part of a plus gold star. You know, driver is that was where I think I got a lot of my worth and value was, Oh, she likes me. She thinks I'm smart. She, that, that person thinks I'm funny. And this wasn't just with teachers. This was of course with the big people, but also with peers, with friendships. We've talked about this offline. I definitely have called myself a people pleaser in the past because I wanted people to like me. And I think what, for me, and I'm curious what you think about this is it kind of came at this cost of, I didn't learn the skill at a young age of how to like myself, how to validate myself, how to create safety and connection for myself. This is, I think, a deeper conversation, but I'm just kind of curious about what you think about, at what point along the way does a very natural and important trait of creating safety and bonds with the big people, how do we start to allow ourselves to also validate ourselves and the world? Create that safety and connection.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: I just want to say, you know, usually, and I'm sure you hear this as well. We get women in their like 60s, who are like, what is wrong with me? Why can't I stop doing this? I know up here in my head that this behavior, it penalizes me. I feel held hostage by it. Why can't I stop? And I just want to say, take a deep breath because we all want people to like us that is a universally human trait and we need people to like us. We have diagnoses for people who actually don't care if anybody likes them. And right. It's like narcissist and psychopath and those, right. We don't want to be that guys. It's okay. Yeah. If you want people to like you, you are absolutely normally human because we are made to exist in loving, connected relationships and communities. That is how we thrive. That is how humans do best. And so there's nothing wrong with you. Absolutely nothing. The only problem, and actually I'll go so far as to say, people pleasing has a healthy role in relationships. If you and I, and we are friends, Priyanka, I dropped what I was doing this morning. I know to record this with you, because I love you and I want you to please, yeah, I know, but I did it without a second thought because, and it wasn't that, you know, it was just some back office stuff, but yeah, it was because. I want to please you. I want you to know that I'm interested in you. I want to contribute to your success. I want to have a responsive and reciprocal relationship with you. And that is good, right? The problem happens when no one teaches us to be self connected. And make decisions, not from worry or fear that you will be mad at me, that you will not like me anymore. But real reasons of wanting to be in a good relationship. So let me restate that a different way. The fact that we want people to like us and we want to please people is not a problem. The problem is when we don't know how to disappoint other people when that is what is best for us. When we don't know how to set a boundary and maintain it, when that is what will keep us safe or be what is best for us. It's when we don't know how to not people please. That's the problem.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yes. Okay, so this is actually, I'm thinking of so many examples where I've seen this with my clients and of course with myself. As is the case for I think anyone that has these people pleasing tendencies that are dialed up maybe a little bit higher on the notch. Kind of what I'm hearing you say is a little bit of an all or nothing. approach where we assume that if we're people pleasing, and if we want to create that connection, we're doing something out of love, maybe our connection for someone, it's healthy and normal. But then that comes at this cost of not knowing how to set a boundary or not knowing how to disappoint someone. And I think that that's actually one of the lies maybe that our brain has offered to us, which is if I disappoint this person, or if I set a boundary and say no, or if hold my values above what maybe somebody else might want me to do. That means I am being rude. That means that I am, I'm a bad person, or I'm not a good enough mom, or I'm not a good enough neighbor or a good enough friend. So how do you really think about allowing to these two things to be true at the same time where we can have the desire for connection and love and people, please, some of the people in our life. While holding the boundary because I can see a lot of people like, well, if I say no, I'm being rude or I'm, I'm not being a good friend or I'm not being a good mom or colleague.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: First of all, I just want to acknowledge like that programming is true. If I, if we had all your listeners in the room and we said, what are the good girl rules that we're supposed to obey? Every single one of them would know. You have to be nice. You have to be kind. You can't share opinions that are going to make other people uncomfortable. Don't rock the boat. Don't be a burden. Don't need help, right? We all know what they are. And so the fact that we are still grappling with how to violate those rules is a, is very real. But the way that you hold two things at once, meaning like, I need this. And you're telling me you need this and these two things are in conflict, one of us is not going to get what they want is to slow it down. One of the things that happens is when we are confronted in a situation with somebody who wants something from us, our time, our energy, our effort, our brain space, whatever, it is already habituated that we say yes. We already are programmed to self abandon. And so what we have to do is take a break where we can come back to ourselves. Let me give you an example. This is a couple of years ago now. My brother was going through a divorce. His soon to be ex wife had been very unkind to me in a number of family situations. And while I could understand her pain, it felt very unfair and very painful for me. I was posting Thanksgiving. He wanted to bring her to my house. And so he's on the phone with me and he just says, you know, so and so will be there. And my instinct was to feel this tension and this like, what in my body. And so before I just kind of let him get away with that, because that's another thing we do, we just don't speak up. We don't say anything. I said, you know what, I'm going to need to think that through and I'm going to need to call you back. So I took a pause. I recommend that everybody have a phrase in their back pocket that they have memorized to give themselves this pause like, Oh, hey, that's interesting. I'm going to need to circle back or thanks for the invitation. I'm going to need to check my calendar. Just a phrase that allows you to get out of the situation because in the moment, all of your programming is there. You feel the pressure to agree or say yes or give in. And you need a minute to come back to yourself. And by come back to yourself, I mean, remember what your values are. Remember what you want. Remember that you exist and you deserve a place in this interaction as well.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Oh, I love that so much. I think that that's such a good tool for anyone, especially you mentioned Thanksgiving. This is the start of like all of the festivities. We're recording this on Halloween. So, and Diwali, today's Diwali, you know, for me as I'm celebrating, it's one of those events where. kind of speaking to what we were saying at the start, we bring all these people together and friends and family. And there are going to be these moments where you want, maybe your knee jerk would be to say no, but you just stay quiet. I think that that's like a huge one where you just don't say anything. Or I, I, for me, it's like, maybe this will, magically go away. I have this wishful thinking, even if I don't speak up, maybe they'll just read my mind or read my face expressions or my tone, and they'll just understand to not bring them. And then I get mad if they still do it anyway. So totally speaking to the, to the kind of taking this further. So if we take that pause, we take that step back. And now you circle back to your brother, which is like, hey, I thought about this and I've decided I don't want to allow this person in my home. You're going to have an emotion, an emotion there. Absolutely. Yeah. So this is, I think, speaking a little bit to boundaries and how to hold your note, even if it feels really uncomfortable. What do you think is the hardest part about holding a boundary? Especially for women through the culture, like through these cultural festivities. And how can we feel a little bit more empowered to hold our no from a place that's not fear, that's not feeling terrible. We don't want anyone to be feeling terrible, but also like, how do we feel empowered in that process?

  Sara Bybee Fisk: What I had to do, so when I got off the phone, I actually had to take some time and like, predict. If she's here, what am I going to be feeling? I'm going to be feeling resentful. I'm going to be feeling angry. I'm going to be feeling like I didn't stick up for myself. And now this holiday, when my kids are home with me, when I've tried to make it be something wonderful, I now have Like a fly in the soup or something, right? Just something that doesn't. So I had to acknowledge how I would be feeling with her there. And then I had to acknowledge, what is it going to be like to tell my brother? No, I'm going to be feeling nervous, anxious. I'm going to be feeling a little worried that he's going to be mad at me and he's not going to understand. And that is the kind of the bad news of people pleasing. People pleasing is hard and uncomfortable, not people pleasing. Is also very uncomfortable, but only one of those discomforts. moves you in the direction of being more free, more empowered, more sovereign. And sometimes we argue to people, please. And that's totally fine. But what I had to decide on purpose was I am willing to feel the not people pleasing discomfort, the fear, the anxiety, and the worry. Because that's what I pick for me that serves me in this moment. So what I actually did was I just practiced feeling I picked up your, you might laugh. It is funny. I picked up my phone and pretended to call him like, Hey, I've thought about it. It's not what I want. And I let all that emotion come up and I practiced feeling it beforehand so that when I did actually make the call and he said, and I quote, , I think you've taken this people pleasing thing too far. I was able to say, right, and this, and this is a brother I have a great relationship with, but we have people in our lives who benefit from our lack of boundaries, who benefit from the ways that we accommodate and pretend and kind of shape ourselves into whatever they want us to be. And We have contributed to that right by being the person who would do that in the past And so I was able to recognize and say to him like hey, I get it I understand why this is upsetting to you. It's new and in the past I would have just gone with it, but that's not what I'm gonna do this time , it makes sense that you are upset And I am not changing my mind on this.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. This is so good. This reminds me, so if you have children in the car or something, cover their ears for just a second. I remember I had a coach who said, and I often use this example with my clients, there's two flavors of shit sandwich. Sometimes they were choosing between two discomforts. One is just more familiar. So I think sometimes we kind of confuse ourselves into thinking, Oh no, this one feels better. And I'm like, Ooh, I don't think it actually feels better. It's more familiar. It doesn't actually feel so great when you make some of those like more habituated responses. And it's making me think of, I had a relationship with somebody that I had all, it was like an estranged relationship, but I didn't want it to be estranged anymore. I had not talked to them for years. Not once. For years and years, and I remember thinking, I'm going to pick up the phone, I'm going to call them. And my heart, when I tell you, racing, my face felt flushed. They're thousands of miles away, but it was like there was a lion in the room with me and I want to make repair. I want to make amends in this relationship. And I did exactly what you're talking about. Like I pretend like, what am I going to even talk about? I haven't talked to them for years and picking up the phone and having a hand on my heart, like reminding myself in my mind, Priyanka, you're safe. You're okay. It's okay. You're okay. And just like having the conversation, and then proving to myself at the end, you didn't die. You know, it's like after you get off the conversation with your brother, it's like, Oh, look, we were able to hold this boundary and we didn't die. Proving safety. It's one more layer, which I just think is so beautiful.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: It's so beautiful. And it, it is absolutely true. When I do this work with my clients, I actually take it a step further and I have them create the movie. In their mind of them, not people pleasing and play that movie over and over and over again because mental rehearsal is so powerful. So if you can imagine yourself sitting at the Thanksgiving table and not eating the food that you know you're going to feel bad about bloated and heavy and gassy and gross. Why did I eat that food? The next day that mental rehearsal actually prepares you to feel the negative emotion that actually is going to benefit you in the long term.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Right. This is so good. So I mean, speaking of Thanksgiving dinners, this is a conversation I've been having so much with my clients. One is this idea that we want other people to make sure that they're not giving us the treats. I remember I had a client that was saying, and this is, I had so many clients say, I wish they just wouldn't bake the treats. I'm on a health journey. Like my parents should know my family should just know, and they should just not have the treats. And we were like, What the burden kind of on the other party. And then the other one that I find is like, Oh, but my aunt made this really special thing and she went out of her way and she spent all day long making this food. I might not even like the food, but I feel obligated to have it or to try it or to accept it. So I think kind of this is such a great kind of segue into thinking about Thanksgiving or any cultural festivity or religious holiday coming up for you when you're at the dinner table, when you're at the holiday event, how do you recommend kind of coming in. Knowing what your plan is, what feels aligned for you, for your body, and for your goals, and holding that even though somebody's put in a lot of effort into this dinner. Like they've, and people share like love, you know, you know, love languages, like food is my love language. I'm like, that's not a thing. But apparently it's a thing for some people. I don't subscribe to that, but people do subscribe to that. So they're like, Oh, you're rejecting my love. You said no, you're rejecting my love. What do you think about that?

  Sara Bybee Fisk: I actually do think it's a thing because I know that my mom, her love language is providing food and we didn't get a lot of other like I'm so proud of you and I love you. We got here. I made you a sandwich right or here. I, I made this for you. And especially if you grow up with any kind of food scarcity or any type of, you know, when your family is of more limited resources to bake or make or provide food can be a really big deal. So it has been my experience that that is true, including living in a third world country for a little while as. a missionary for a church that I no longer attend, but yes, I was there. And having people in total poverty provide treats for us as guests in their home that they would not give their own children, right? So I understand. And the mistake that people pleasers make is they think that whatever anyone else's effort is, is more important than how I feel in my body. And that is the lie. Because I remember having food served to me even in this Third world country where people were very, very poor that I knew was going to make me sick. I knew it because I'd eaten it before out of guilt and obligation, and I could say to the person providing this food. Thank you so much. And if I eat this. It's gonna make me sick. And they would say, oh, oh, oh, well, I don't want you to eat it then. Let's have something else. And so I think it's the same approach that I took with my brother, saying I understand that this is going to be upsetting for you. I get that. I really feel and I see why that's the case, truly and genuinely. And if I eat this, I will not feel good. And that's just something that I'm not willing to do. Yeah.

  Priyanka Venugopal: I think that, you know, this is, this can kind of turn into, it's like more of a nuanced conversation because we can start towing a line. I still remember I had, I've had a couple of clients and they felt this need to give an excuse. for why they want to say no, like, Oh, I have a gluten allergy, or I have this reason, this medical diagnosis that is preventing me from eating, you know, this amazing food that you have made. So I think that goes back a little bit to thinking about whether you feel the need to give a justification or a reason, and maybe you want to, and that's totally okay. But if you find yourself constantly thinking about, like, how am I going to, you know, Say no. What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? How am I going to justify it? It's coming from worry and fear of them pushing you away or having a negative response to it. That's something worth thinking about because we have a long life ahead of us to go to all these events. We could keep having the reason, the justification, the gluten free allergy that you have or we could just practice being honest. And I think that again, this is going back to two things being true. We can be honest and still receive their love. I think as I went to India, this is just cultural, but definitely in India at my, you know, in my family's homes, all of my cousins, my aunts and uncles, when we go, when I tell you the spread, is next level. It's like the appetizers and then the main food and then there's something afterwards. And then if you go to the next aunt or uncle's house, it's again, so it's not like we're just lunch and dinner. It's lunch one and then lunch two and then lunch three. And if you say no, you can see in their face, there's a little bit of an offense. There's a little bit of this, like, you're not eating anything? Like, how could you not? So there is a cultural piece to this, but also what I had to, and this was my best teacher, I had to really practice saying it's not going to feel good for me. So it's almost like it is a reason, but it's not this made up lie that I didn't feel good about. And I had to practice and it was really, it's some flavor of shit sandwich. It was, it was hard to say no and to hold it. But imagine going on a trip and coming back weight neutral, this is how you would do it.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: Here's a couple things that come to mind, like number one, if we know that we are going into this situation. We can let people know beforehand that there is a different dynamic. If I show up to my mom's and she makes a bunch of pies, I could tell her, Mom, I just want to let you know beforehand you put so much effort into these pies because of how it makes me feel I'm not going to be having any this year. I can prepare her ahead of time for what is going to be different. That's one thing. Number two, I've always been a little bit stymied by people who say like, no is a complete sentence, because sometimes it is technically, and in some cases that's completely appropriate. But when this is a relationship that is important to us that we want to keep, I think we do need to have a little bit more sensitivity to the fact that relationships are reciprocal and responsive to each other. Okay. And so to bear a little bit more of our soul, our tenderness of like, I am really trying to feel better in my body. And this food is going to be the opposite of that for me. I really appreciate your love. But what I want you to know is that I receive your love, no matter what food you serve me. I know you love me, and I love you, separate and apart from food. And so, while no is a complete sentence, and if that feels good, use it, I think where we get hung up is because we care about these people. We want to have relationships with them, and so, instead of an excuse, which I understand, and I say, if that's what you need, go for it, we can also be vulnerable and say, what we're trying to do here in loving each other doesn't have anything to do with food.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. And it's honest connection. I think, you know, when you think back on what we were saying at the beginning, what we are wanting is connection and love. And it feels tender, but that does happen through vulnerability and honesty. And I know that there's so many, and we've had this conversation on the podcast before, like, Oh, what will they think? They'll think I'm on another diet. Like they might, yes, they might. And also it's allowing conversation and connection, which is so important. the whole point, I think, of what we're actually wanting. We just use food, I think, kind of as a shared experience, but we can just have conversation vulnerability as another way. It's harder. It's a flavor of sandwich that we're picking up, but I think it's one that can really create so much empowerment over the holiday season. So, yeah. , I loved it. I feel like we could have just gone on and on, but I wanted to hear if you have any tips for somebody walking away today on their next meal, the next thing that they're going into, what can they walk away with and then how can they find you?

  Sara Bybee Fisk: First of all, your best compass is how you feel inside. And so taking a minute before you go into any holiday scenario, whether it's a meal, a party, and just giving yourself a moment with you to be like, Hey, what do we want? How do we want to feel when this is over? What are some sacrifices that we're willing to make? How are we willing to not feel the really familiar discomfort of people pleasing? What is one little thing we might do to not abandon ourselves, to hang on to what it is that we really want and not get lost in all of this. And just do one little thing. The journey to connect to yourself as your true, like, inner compass is, is a marathon. And we accomplish it one mile, one choice at a time. And I really feel like when women are given the chance to connect to themselves and to feel how wonderful it is to hang on to and not abandon that beautiful self, that is a really rich source of motivation to keep going and keep doing that.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Yeah. I think about, you know, when you've done that first mile and you can look back and look, I just did that.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: I just did that.

  Priyanka Venugopal: I just did that. I have actually as a wallpaper on my phone, look at you go. And it's a reminder to me to not always be focused so much on the goal, but like the process, you know, every time I've done something, I'm like, look at you look, Look at what you just, you just said no to something that you might have always said yes to. Look at that mile you just ran and that, that pride that we get to feel, it is kind of a source of that empowerment and that freedom that I think so many women are craving. We're wanting more of it. I think, and again, it doesn't have to be zero to a hundred. It can just start with one step at a time. Which I just love . Thank you. How can people hear more about you, your podcast, which is amazing, all the things.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: I am the host of The Ex-Good Girl Podcast. You can find it wherever you find podcasts. And I have a free Facebook group called stop people pleasing. And I spend a lot of time in there every week sharing free resources, resources that I use inside of my paid group coaching program. Um, because what I really want is women everywhere to feel. This like sovereign empowered choice fullness in their lives.

  Priyanka Venugopal: I love it, . We're going to put all the links in the show notes today, and I hope you guys have an amazing, amazing week, thanks for being here.

  Sara Bybee Fisk: You're so welcome.

  Priyanka Venugopal: Bye. I hope you all enjoyed today's conversation with my friend, . Truly. I adore these types of conversations where we can bring in experts and guests to share their perspective on a lot of what we are talking about on the podcast here. If you loved this podcast episode, I would love to hear from you over on Instagram. I am @burnstressloseweight tag me if you really enjoyed this episode and share it with a friend. I think this is one of those episodes that everyone could benefit from, especially if you're walking into a busy holiday season with a lot of festivities, because I know we just want to feel joy, connection and love with our loved ones. And I think this is really creating a roadmap for how you can navigate the season without resentment and without sabotaging a lot of your goals. I hope you guys have an amazing week and I'll see you at the next one. Bye. Thanks for spending this time with me on the Burn Stress Lose Weight podcast today. I hope that you are leaving today's podcast episode feeling a little lighter and more inspired than when we started. It turns out, that you don't need to have a stress free life to hit your goals on and off the scale. But when you feel more empowered to respond to your real life stresses with true strategy, we will game change how we show up and how we hit our goals. If you want to take what you're learning here on the podcast and put it into real life implementation, it might be time for us to work together in the Burn Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable group coaching program. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com and you can learn all about it. All of the details, the nuts, the bolts, when the next group is starting, and exactly how you can join. Okay friend, I'll see you next time.