Three reasons you really aren’t a people-pleaser {Fear Series}

As a kid, I ate Oscar Mayer bacon cooked in our electric skillet as a Saturday morning treat. In the spirit of full disclosure, I hated the wavy fattiness of it.

Fast forward several years when Ryan and I ate at a restaurant of a celebrity chef. Dotting the edge of my plate were these tall towers of ooey-gooey goodness. I couldn’t quite place the taste so I asked Ryan if he could identify this mystery.

“Bacon,” he replied.

“Bacon?” I asked as my brain remembered the Oscar Meyer strips of my youth. “Wow! Do people know about bacon?”

Ryan just looked at me.

Sometimes, we don’t understand what something really is until someone else shows us a different way.

Until that chef prepared incredible bacon, I thought the only bacon out there was the wavy, fatty kind. Until today, maybe you thought people-pleasing was your issue when your struggle is much deeper.

Today we’re going to turn how we think of people-pleasing on its head.

At first glance, we think people-pleasing is our issue.

“Yes, I’m a people-pleaser,” we ashamedly admit to others. And there’s lots of evidence pointing us this direction:

We have 1,000 people not to disappoint.

We don’t want to disappoint anybody: our kids, our husband, our boss, our friends, our mother-in-law, our everyone. The number of people we feel okay disappointing? Zero.

And we have 1,001 reasons for not wanting to let people down.

• We don’t want to be seen as flaky.
• We don’t want to feel like a failure.
• We don’t want to be judged.
• We want people to like us so much that they ask us to do stuff with them.
• We want to be loved and approved.

But there’s more going on here. Just like trying bacon in a new way, what if we looked at people-pleasing from a different perspective?

At second look, our people-pleasing issue is actually a much deeper one.

We don’t actually suffer from people-pleasing. We suffer from misplacing our identity, worth, and source of love. Here are the three reasons you’re really not a people-pleaser:

1. We’re really not people-pleasers. We’re struggling with insecurity.

Because we’re pretty sure that we aren’t “good enough,” we constantly look for external affirmation to confirm that we are good enough. We hope that others will give us the approval we crave as we do, help, and never disappoint them.

Our insecurity drives us to look for someone to fill us up, give us an encouraging word, and validate who we are. This anxiety leads us into dangerous territory because not one person on this planet can do this for us.

Let’s remember that our identity is in Christ.

Our identity is one of being fully known and fully loved by God. We are already validated because God has loved us since before time.

But I’m guessing you already know this and could write your own blog post about “who we are in Christ.”

So why is this truth not trickling from our heads to our hearts? Here’s what won’t help: beating yourself up about why you can’t grasp this concept. Here’s what might help: Talking to God.

Ask Him to show you who you are. Ask Him to show you how much He values you, what He loves about you, and how He sees you. God can’t wait to tell you, and is so thrilled you asked.

2. We’re really not people-pleasers. We’re struggling with accepting our humanity.

Because pleasing everyone requires us to take on God-like qualities like tirelessness, limitlessness, and infinite capacity, we don’t accept that we’re human. Being human means that we can’t do All The Things, which is a reality we don’t like because it feels like laziness.

We wonder why we can’t just “be better,” get more organized, or have better time management skills. But these aren’t the issues. Our issue is that we’re uncomfortable with our own humanity.

Let’s get comfortable with how God wired us.

God wired us to be human: to need food and sleep, community and quiet, structure and silliness. He also wired us with specific gifts and talents so that we’re not responsible for doing All The Things. He placed us where He’s placed us, with the gifts He’s given us, at this point in history for such a time as this.

Don’t waste your gifts and time and emotional energy and capacity on trying to never disappoint “everyone.” Harness your gifts to give glory to the God who made you and to love on the people He gave you.

3. We’re really not people-pleasers. We’re struggling with equating lovability with doing and helping.

Because people-pleasing causes us to believe that we’ll be loved for what we do for others, we place our value in what we’re doing. We wonder who we are if we’re not helping, producing, or in other ways contributing.

We give sacrifically and easily, but sometimes all our helping and keeping others happy leads us to feel worn out, and, can I just say it, bitter?

Let’s rest in God’s love for us.

God loves us with a never-running-out, always-pursuing, wholly-complete, forever-patient kind of love. His love is for you.

He loves Amy. He loves Heather. He loves Erin.

Will you take a moment, sweet friend, and insert your name in this sentence?

Jesus loves ______.

He loves you no matter your past. He loves you no matter whether you yelled at your kids today. He loves you when you struggle with people-pleasing.

Would you take a minute to rest in the truth of these statements? Live today from the foudnation that no matter what, Jesus loves you.

Let’s understand that people-pleasing isn’t our real issue.

Just like I didn’t realize that bacon could be so amazing until someone served me really good bacon, we often don’t realize that disappointing others isn’t our actual problem. Our issue is one of the heart: insecurity, an inability to accept our humanity, and equating love with doing.

Today, sweet friend, go in grace and peace knowing that you are 100% secure, 100% human, and 100% loved.