"Living for Others": What Is It? And Why Does It Happen to Most of Us?
According to psychotherapist Erika Myers (Oregon, USA), "living for others" also known as people-pleasing occurs when a person constantly changes their words and behaviors for the feelings and benefits of others, to the point of ignoring what they themselves truly want and need.
The danger is: it doesn't look wrong. It even looks very good you are a pleasant, caring person who doesn't cause trouble for anyone. You are praised as being "mature," "grown-up," and "reasonable."
But inside, something is growing quieter day by day.
Here are the 3 most specific and honest signs to recognize whether you are living someone else's life.
Sign 1: You Cannot Remember the Last Time You Did Something Just Because You Liked It
Try to recall: last week, what did you do for yourself not because someone asked, not out of obligation, not to post on social media but simply because you liked it?
If the answer doesn't come immediately, or if you have to search through your memory for quite a while that is the first sign.
People who are living for others often no longer recognize their own interests. Not because they don't have any but because they haven't used them for so long, they gradually fade away. Free time (if any) is filled with meeting the needs of others, or scrolling through phones as a way to avoid being alone with oneself.
Therapist Sharon Martin (San Jose, California) calls this "disconnecting from oneself": when we constantly suppress our emotions and needs to avoid conflict, we gradually lose the thread connecting us to ourselves and to those around us.
Do you recognize yourself here?
Sign 2: You Always Choose "Safe" Even When Your Heart Desires Something Else
You want to study design, but choose economics because it is "more stable." You want to decline an extra project, but nod in agreement for fear of being labeled "unwilling to try." You want to truly rest, but instead plan a "useful" trip so you don't feel like you are wasting time.
If you always choose the safe option, you may avoid momentary pain and disappointment but you will also fail to achieve true joy and meaningful results. And more importantly: you will never grow if you always refuse to take risks.
What is more frightening than failure is reaching the end of life, looking back, and realizing that you never truly tried what you wanted. That you lived very carefully but did not live for yourself.
Philosophy calls this bad faith (self-deception) when we pretend we have no choice, while in reality, we are just afraid of the consequences of choosing what we truly want.
Sign 3: You Feel Tired Even When You Did Nothing Wrong
This is the hardest sign to recognize, as it has no clear reason.
You are not sick. Nothing major has happened. Work is fine. Relationships are fine. But waking up in the morning, you still feel heavy. And you don't know why.
People who live for others too much often easily become more irritable and cranky, prone to physical signs of stress such as aches and insomnia even when no obvious incident has occurred.
This is the exhaustion of someone who constantly has to be the version others expect not their true self. You are playing a role that no one hired you to play, and no one even knows you are acting.
Psychology calls this state identity diffusion when the boundary between "what I want" and "what others want from me" becomes so blurred that they can no longer be distinguished.
So What Should Be Done? Not Changing Immediately, But Stopping First
Most articles on this topic will suggest: "set boundaries," "learn to say no," "prioritize yourself."
True, but not enough. Because before doing all those things, you need to do something more fundamental:
You need to stop long enough to hear your own voice again.
And that is exactly what urban life constantly prevents you from doing.
Why a Trip Can Do What Months of Telling Yourself Cannot
Healing tourism is built on researched psychological theories, including mindfulness, meditation, and positive psychology. After just 4 days of practicing mindfulness meditation, research in Thailand showed a significant decrease in blood cortisol levels the stress hormone.
But it doesn't take 4 days. It doesn't require a long meditation retreat. Sometimes it just takes one day in the right place.
Why? Because the environment affects the mind more powerfully than we think. When you remain in the same room, looking at the same screen, hearing the same noise the brain finds it very hard to escape the old loop. But when you completely change your space especially to a natural, tranquil space with depth a void appears. And within that void, your true voice has a chance to be heard again.
Exposure to beautiful natural landscapes, quiet and fresh spaces helps reduce stress, enhance positive mental states, and improve overall mood.
Ngoa Van A Place Where You Can Meet Yourself Again
Not just any trip can do this.
A trip for taking check-in photos will not help you hear yourself because you are still acting. A luxury resort will not help you reconnect with yourself because you are still consuming, not being with.
What you need is a place quiet enough so that you have nowhere to hide from yourself. Where nature, history, and spiritual space combine to create a rare condition: quality silence.
Ngoa Van Zen Village, located at the foot of Bao Dai Mountain, An Sinh Ward, Quang Ninh Province about over a 2-hour drive from Hanoi is one of the rare places in Northern Vietnam that converges all those elements.
Why is Ngoa Van Different?
This is not simply a beautiful mountain or an ancient pagoda. This is the land where over 700 years ago, Buddhist Emperor Tran Nhan Tong the king who twice defeated the Mongol invaders proactively left the throne to ascend the mountain and practice asceticism. Not to escape the world. But to return to himself after all the burdens of power and responsibility.
In May 1307, He established Ngoa Van Hermitage "lying in the clouds" on Bao Dai Mountain. He entered Nirvana here. And left behind the Truc Lam Zen Sect an engaged Zen lineage that does not detach from life, but brings mindfulness into every living moment as a spiritual heritage for posterity.
That spirit is exactly what Ngoa Van breathes out every day, seeping into the air, the clouds, the babbling stream, and into everyone who sets foot here with an open heart.
How Does A Day at Ngoa Van Call Your True Self Back?
Morning: Sitting in the Clouds and Letting the Mind Empty Out
The 52-cabin cable car takes you to an altitude of 500 - 700m in the morning mist. The cabin glides through white clouds and for those 15 minutes, there is nothing to do. No screens. No notifications. Just you and the sky.
Many people say that this is the first time in months they truly sit still without feeling guilty.
Arriving at Ngoa Van Hermitage where the bronze statue of the Buddhist Emperor in Nirvana posture is placed, where white clouds drift leisurely around the thousand-year-old hermitage roof you will understand why people say there are places that force you to stop, even if you don't intend to.
Noon: Tea Meditation The Art of Paying Attention to Yourself
At the Truc Lam Zen Hall of the Zen Village, the tea meditation experience does not require you to know anything about meditation.
Just: sit down. Raise the teacup with both hands. Inhale the tea aroma. Drink each sip slowly.
Notice the warm sensation spreading through your palms. Notice the tea aroma. Notice your breath.
This is one of the simplest mindfulness practices and also the first way to start hearing yourself again. Because when you truly pay attention to a cup of tea, you are training your brain to do something it hasn't done in a long time: being in this moment, instead of running to another.
Afternoon: Doing Nothing and Discovering What Is Important
Ngoa Van Zen Village has no mandatory afternoon itinerary. This is unusual in the world of tourism today and is also the most important thing.
You can bathe in the stream amidst the ancient forest. Sit by the stream and listen to the sound of water. Or simply lie down and do nothing.
During that time when there are no tasks, no goals, nothing to accomplish a strange thing often happens: you begin to think about the things you truly want. Thoughts that in normal life are drowned out by noise.
That is not an escape. That is a return.
Those Who Have Returned from Ngoa Van and What They Rediscovered
MC Phan Dang, after his first visit to Ngoa Van, shared: he felt positive energies to "live a kinder life, believe more in beauty, and believe in the ability to master one's mind in the face of all situational changes."
Designer Cao Minh Tien said: "This is certainly a wonderful place for young and busy people who need body-mind balance, need to heal their souls to have more positive energy for life."
Meritorious Artist Chieu Xuan shared more simply: "I feel my heart drawn to goodness and strangely peaceful."
Three different people. Three different circumstances. But all rediscovering the same thing the feeling of being themselves.
The Buddhist Emperor and the Lesson of Returning to Oneself
The most interesting thing about Buddhist Emperor Tran Nhan Tong is not that He renounced the throne. But that even when ascending the mountain to practice asceticism He did not detach from the world at all.
Meritorious Artist Tran Quang Khai, who played the Buddhist Emperor in the Cai luong play The Buddha King, recounted the scene that haunted him the most: when the Buddhist Emperor said to his son Tran Anh Tong amidst the lush green mountains: "I did not come up here to shun the world, but even up here, my heart remains directed toward the heart of the nation."
This is exactly the spirit of the Truc Lam Zen Sect: not escaping the world, but returning to oneself in order to live more mindfully and responsibly in life.
"The treasure is already in the house, stop searching outside, Facing the world with an unattached mind, ask not about Zen."
Buddhist Emperor Tran Nhan Tong
These poetic lines, over 700 years later, remain the answer to the question we are asking: peace, the truth about oneself, one's own life they are not far away. They have always been within you. You just need to be silent enough to hear.