Sure. You are not alone. You're in great company. I'm sure you can figure out how I know about that.
A couple of thoughts...:
1) You can start listening to your internal conversations - you DO have wants that get thrown aside. If you train yourself to hear your self-talk, you'll hear the wants before they get thrown aside..
2) Start with anything. Evaluate your response. If you like it, do more. If you don't, put that on your 'probably won't do this again' list. An example: get yourself out to hear live music or a play or an exhibit in a museum. Figure out what you liked and disliked and increase the stuff in your life you like while decreasing the stuff you don't. Shit always happens, but changing the proportions change your life.
3) Be kind to yourself. You WILL make mistakes. You'll fall back into people pleasing. That's no reason to beat yourself up - instead, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start in again to be authentic.
Also, when you DO find things you like, accept that it will take you time to learn the ropes, and give yourself all the time you want to take. You can go to a concert and sit next to a top critic. The critic knows a lot about what you're hearing; you don't. The differences between you simply don't matter. The critic does the critic. You do you. There's room for all of us here on earth, at least so far.
*****
There's a paradox here: if you're a people pleaser, you doom yourself to a life o displeasing yourself and, probably, others, too. Being authentic and asking for what one wants increases the likelihood of pleasing oneself and others, too
I hated my W's attempts to figure out what I wanted. She was wrong so damned often!
I think human beings are much happier when they're authentic. My W pleases me when she asks me what I want and asks for what she wants. Sometimes our wants conflict; most of the time they don't. When the 2 of us are aware of our wants, even if they conflict, we can usually find something that pleases us both - but we can do that only when we're up front about our desires.
*****
I used to be very self-conscious about dancing because I've almost always been overweight, and I never knew many steps. My 1st real date with W2b was a dance, and she had a hard time getting me onto the dance floor. The way she danced with me told me at a gut level that I'd get what I wanted if I became more authentic. So dancing means a lot to me.
It took me years to realize that the way to minimize the possibility of being picked out for lousy dancing by spectators was to get into the middle of the dancers, so the ones outside obscured the view of those inside.
[This message edited by SI Staff at 7:58 PM, Wednesday, July 5th]