How to Stop the Never Ending Cycle of People Pleasing
Sign Number One:
Do you ever feel like no matter how hard you try, there is always someone upset or annoyed with you about something?
Okay, I’ll admit it, I am a people pleaser through my core. I don’t like to make waves, I want people to be happy with me, and I certainly don’t want to cause a ruckus in any space I find myself. What’s even worse though, I find myself scrambling time and time again to try and make everyone around me happy, only for my efforts to crash and burn.
It’s like I can’t win. Either my kids are screaming or crying because I didn’t put enough ice in their water or their pancakes were too hot, or I didn’t respond to a friend’s text message quickly enough, or I bought too much produce at the grocery and now we have to throw some of it out and my husband is annoyed.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand the desire for plenty of ice, but not too much and not too little. And I completely get wanting to eat the pancakes but can’t because they are too hot to touch. I don’t like to feel ignored either so I understand wanting to know my text was received. I also definitely thought for sure I would make that asparagus and eat those avocados this week, but they went bad before I had a chance to make it and it feels like a waste of money, and even more, there are starving humans in the world, and I just wasted good food.
All good reasons to be upset. But the constant problem is that I am on the receiving end of the upset person, and it feels like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t please them all.
But perhaps pleasing them all isn’t the right way to go about it. Perhaps we should consider why we want to please them all in the first place. This leads us into Sign Number Two.
Sign Number Two:
Do you try to shield your kids, loved ones, or friends from pain because you don’t like pain?
I think sometimes as a mom I get so caught up in trying to please everyone and make my children’s lives easy, that I forget that it is completely okay to have a struggle.
Since when did we become a society or world that shouldn’t experience struggle or pain? Let’s be honest, no one likes pain. But isn’t it in the pain and struggles where our character is put to the test and we grow as humans? Isn’t it in the struggles that we can look back and reflect on how awful it was and share our lessons learned with those around us in a form of ministry?
Pain produces character. Struggle produces growth. One of the leaders in the school district I work for talks frequently about the term “Failing Forward.” When we fail, we learn. When the Wright Brother’s failed to get the plane in the air the first time, they learned. They learned through several failed attempts what they needed to do next. Their first successful flight was actually less than a minute in the air, covering just under 300 yards, and only gaining an altitude of about 14 feet. To you, it might feel like a fail on their part, but to them, it was the epitome of what they had been trying to do, so it counted as a big win. And to this day, they are marked as having the first flight on record on December 17, 1903.
What if their mom had come outside after their first few attempts and tried to talk them out of trying again because she didn’t want them to struggle or feel the pain of failure, perhaps like she had at one point in her life?
Failing isn’t a loss. Losing shouldn’t be looked at as a negative. Perhaps instead of trying to keep people from experiencing unhappiness or struggles, instead we should learn how to just sit with them in their struggles.
Maybe for you that looks like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for your child after he got cut from the baseball team and you make one for yourself too and the two of you just sit on the front porch and eat it, perhaps even allowing the peanut butter to get stuck to the roof of your mouth a little.
Or maybe it looks a little like stopping to pause and look at someone and let them know you are here with them, perhaps even saying a prayer together, or just a simple hug to acknowledge them.
But if we shield them from their struggle or try to please them at all cost, we are honestly not loving them in a healthy way. It is okay to be uncomfortable sometimes. One of my most favorite teaching pastors, Megan Fate-Marshman said one time that “If something is making me uncomfortable, then it’s probably a good idea to sit in that discomfort for a while to figure out why.” The same is true for all of us, when we are forced to sit in a little bit of discomfort, we can experience personal growth as we unpack our feelings.
Our job isn’t to protect people from their own personal growth, we can sit with them in their growth and love them right in the midst of it.
After all, this is how Jesus loves you and me. He doesn’t just make everything in our lives easy, but instead, He is present with us as we go through hard stuff. Just having Him present, makes the struggle a little easier. Maybe you could be like Jesus in this way to the people around you. You don’t have to please them all, just be present with them in the hard stuff.
This leads to my third self monitoring indicator that you may be trying too hard to please people.
Sign Number Three
Do you ever refuse to ask for help because you want to prove to the world that you can handle it and you got it all together?
Growing up, T.V., Magazines, BillBoards, and pretty much everywhere you looked had advertisements for milk. They would have someone really strong, or beautiful, or smart looking asking the question, along with a milk mustache. The point was to indicate that the one thing you need to be stronger, smarter, or more beautiful was obviously milk. Very effective advertising. The milk industry went booming and every kid my age believed that if they drank a glass of milk a day they would be the next Michael Jordan or Serena Williams.
What those ads also did was instill a sense of “I’ve got this” mentality in me. I knew I had to prove to the world that I was just as strong as the next person because I knew that is what was expected of me. I didn’t have an option to not be great. I drank milk, so I had to handle it all.
This kind of mentality is great, if perhaps I was stranded on a deserted island and had no one there to help me. But this way of thinking is counter intuitive from how we were made to exist. We weren’t made to do it all by ourselves. Yet so often we revert back to our “I’ve got this on my own,” mentality and forget to ask each other for help.
The truth is, we need each other. We were made for community. I need you and your strengths as much as you need me. Where I can offer biblical encouragement, you may be able to offer me financial wisdom or health care tips. Together we can support each other with the strengths that have been given to each of us.
God didn’t make us to live in isolation. We were made to be in community and each do our part in supporting one another.
1 Corinthians 12: 12-31 talks about this at great length, but to summarize, essentially we all have our part in the body of Christ. Just like the ear does the hearing on our body and the eyes do the seeing, we each play a role in our communities.
We need each other to be whole, so rather than working in isolation we need to use the strengths of each other to function. When the ear hears a car horn, the eyes, legs, and brain move the body out of the way from getting hit. In the same way, when one of us needs help in watching the kids in several different places at once, the grandma, friend, and neighbor can be really amazing options, but only if we are willing to just ask for the help.
We don’t need to be super human. We were never required to be in the first place and the desire to be super human honestly just isolates you. No one wants to be around the person that has it all together and can manage it all perfectly anyway. It’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to need other people to help you be the best version of yourself.
It’s also okay to trust that this is exactly how God made His Kingdom to work in the first place. He gave you the people in your life on purpose, so use their strengths to help you where you need help.
Stopping the Cycle of People Pleasing
The bottom line is that no matter how hard you try you will never please everyone in the first place, so rather than beating your head against a brick wall, instead try to embrace the truth that it is okay for someone to not be happy. Remember, struggle produces growth, and growth produces character. It is completely okay for you to just be present with them and love them in their discomfort, just like Jesus does.
It is also okay to ask for help. You were given people, neighbors, friends, and family to help you in your life. You don’t have to do it all on your own, and you will kill yourself trying. The one thing you need isn’t milk, it is the ability to ask others to help you when you need it. God created us to support each other, so lean into it, embrace it, and stop beating your head against a brick wall once and for all.
Building Community:
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