Micki Fine - The Need to Please: Mindfulness Skills to Gain Freedom from People Pleasing and Approval Seeking

Micki Fine, MEd, LPC, is the founder of Mindful Living in Houston, TX and a certified mindfulness teacher. She was awarded this credential from the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, where Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the renowned Center for Mindfulness. She holds a masters degree in counseling psychology and is licensed as a professional counselor. She has been in private psychotherapy practice since 1990, and currently teaches mindfulness in her private practice, The Jung Center, and Rice University. To find out more about Fine, visit livingmindfully.org.

Foreword writer Diana Winston is coauthor of Fully Present. Heralded by the Los Angeles Times as one of the nations best-known mindfulness teachers, she has been teaching since 1993 in a variety of settings, including hospitals, universities, corporations, non-profits, and schools.

Our deepest disappointment is not living true to ourselves. Drawing from both western psychology and mindfulness teachings, Micki Fine shines a clear light on our habits of seeking approval, and offers meditations that free us to live from our own natural compassion and intelligence.

Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge

The Need to Please is an important book. It reveals the pain of leaving yourself and looking for love in all the wrong places. You will discover that all youve been longing for is within youthat it was never outside of you. May this wise book with its practices of mindfulness and compassion guide you into your heart.

Bob Stahl, PhD, coauthor of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Living with Your Heart Wide Open, and Calming the Rush of Panic

This impressive book describes how the practice of mindfulness can bring new awareness to moments of acquiescence that are driven by fear, self-doubt, or rejection. Written with kindness and sensitivity, it provides an experientially grounded road map for recovering elements of true worth and inner strength that can inform a more authentic approach to interpersonal encounters.

Zindel V. Segal, author of The Mindful Way through Depression and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto

With clarity and skill, Micki Fines book deepens understanding by illuminating the root causes of the struggle and anxiety associated with needing to please, and step-by-step, engages the reader in a path of discovery and freedom through the practice of mindfulness and kindness.

Florence Meleo-Meyer, MS, MA, director at the Oasis Institute for Professional Training and Education at the Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School

This wonderful and practical book will help you release your dependence on others approval and find the self-acceptance and kindness you actually need.

Kristin Neff, author of Self-Compassion

The Need to Please is a step-by-step guide that shows how to progress at your own pace, toward your own specific goals, in ways that are most comfortable and useful to you. Readers will develop a deeper love for themselves and others, as well as a more peaceful and fulfilled life experience. Give it a tryyou wont be disappointed!

Linda Bell, PhD, professor of communication and family health, Indiana University, and a mindfulness-based family systems therapist and supervisor

The beautiful book is truly precious for all of us who have been caught in the trance of unworthiness and felt that we needed to become pleasing in order to be loved or even tolerable. Fine offers us a way to dispel this trance and discover peace, love, and happiness in our lives just as we are.

Steve Flowers, MFT, author of The Mindful Path through Shyness and coauthor of Living with Your Heart Wide Open

Why The Need to Please? Because we assume life begins someplace other than where we are right now. And weve swallowed the notion that we, in this moment, are not enough. Fine gives us the permission to pause and be mindful and gentle with ourselves and embrace the ordinary and extraordinary richesbeauty, compassion, generosity, creativity, and meaninginside each one us. Its a gift to read. Its a gift to give.

Terry Hershey, author of The Power of Pause and Soul Gardening

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2013 by Micki Fine

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Excerpts from FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Copyright 1990 by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Used by permission of Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House, Inc. for permission.

Exploring Unacknowledged Emotions adapted from THE MINDFULNESS SOLUTION by Ron Siegel. Copyright 2010 Ronald D. Siegel. Used with permission of The Guilford Press.

Values list within Touching our Inner Wisdom and Intentions adapted from NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION COMPANION WORKBOOK: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR INDIVIDUAL, GROUP, OR CLASSROOM STUDY, by Lucy Leu. Copyright 2003 Center for Nonviolent Communication. Used with permission of Puddle Dancer Press.

Relationship questions within D = Discern adapted from CULTIVATING LASTING HAPPINESS: A 7-STEP GUIDE TO MINDFULNESS by Terry Fralish. Copyright 2007 Terry Fralish. Used with permission of Premier Publishing and Media, Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Portions of Peace Treaties adapted from TEACHINGS ON LOVE (1998, 2007 rev.ed.) by Thich Nhat Hanh. Used with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California.

Cover design by Sara Christian; Text design by Michele Waters-Kermes;

Acquired by Jess OBrien; Edited by Jasmine Star

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fine, Micki.

The need to please : mindfulness skills to gain freedom from people pleasing and approval seeking / Micki Fine ; [foreword by] Diana Winston.

pages cm

Summary: In The Need to Please, a leading mindfulness expert and psychotherapist provides compassionate, mindfulness-based techniques that will help chronic people-pleasers address and overcome their fears of failure, inappropriate self-sacrificing, loss of personal identity, and voracious need of approval-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-60882-608-7 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-609-4 (pdf e-book) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-610-0 (epub) 1. Self-perception. 2. Interpersonal relations. 3. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. I. Title.

BF697.5.S43F56 2013

158.2--dc23

2013024303

To John Thomas Pavlicek,

dearest husband and love of my life