I wish everybody was as nice as I am.

Be nice to people – all people – even when you don't have to be. Everybody is important.

I lost myself when I learned how to please.

I think everybody should be nice to everybody.

One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren’t making enough progress.

And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.

I always tried to live my life being very good to the people around me, and when I needed that very same quality it was nowhere in sight.

I also assumed that everyone is nice and although there are genuine people, not everyone is what you think they are. Meaning, I had to learn to work with different people the best way I know how, without losing who I am

I used to spend so much time reacting and responding to everyone else that my life had no direction. Other people's lives, problems, and wants set the course for my life. Once I realized it was okay for me to think about and identify what I wanted, remarkable things began to take place in my life.

[I learned] how to love myself first. And not just in a relationship, just my everyday life,” she admits. “I give myself so much, I let people pull at me in every direction, and I want everybody to be happy. Eventually I would be in my bathroom sobbing right before I go onstage. And then I’d just put myself onstage and I’d want to be there for those people. I never took a moment to just go, go away and be myself and figure it out. I kept pushing myself and I think the biggest thing I learned is, it’s okay. I’m going to stop when I need to stop, I’m going to feel when I need to feel, and I don’t care what comes with that or what people want to say. It’s normal. I’m suppose to keep going and that’s all I want to do.

I knew I had a problem, and I couldn't admit it.

This is the biggest mistake I could think would save me. I wanted to give up the idea that I had any control. Shake things up. To be saved by chaos. To see if I could cope, I wanted to force myself to grow again. To explode my comfort zone.

Time after time it was the “nice” people, the ones who compulsively put other’s expectations and needs ahead of their own and who repressed their so-called negative emotions, who showed up with chronic illness in my family practice, or who came under my care at the hospital palliative ward I directed.

He liked to be liked by the world, which made his abuse even harder to deal with. Because if you think someone is a monster and the whole world says he’s a saint, you begin to think that you’re the bad person