As a people pleaser, you’re likely kind, compassionate, and caring.
You like to put people at ease.
You often go along to get along
You likely avoid conflict at all cost.
You assume the best of others, even when they’ve shown you their worst.
And you often say yes, even when you should say no.
People pleasers are just overall ‘nice’ people. And 'nice' certainly sounds like a 'nice' way to be. But ‘nice’ means that you’re pleasant and agreeable, even the expense of your own values and identity.
Still sound ‘nice?’
If you see yourself as a people pleaser, I want to share with you 9 people-pleasing traits that are not as nice as you think and the 5 steps to stop people-pleasing and start God-pleasing.
I want you to imagine for a moment that you are a Jenga game. The goal of the Jenga game is to build a tower by removing pieces from the bottom and adding them to the top without the entire tower falling down.
Every time you put the needs of others above your own, you remove a piece of the tower.
Every time you:
· change yourself to keep others happy
· betray your values to fit in
· allow someone to trample your boundaries in order to be liked by them
· agree even when you disagree
· apologize for something you didn’t do wrong
· take the blame when it’s not yours
· or enable bad behavior in order to keep the peace,
it’s a bit like removing a small piece of yourself. You compromise the foundation of who you are.
Each individual compromise feels like no big deal. After all, it’s keeping the peace, right?
But here’s the problem: little by little you chip away at yourself and give little pieces of yourself away to someone else until there are so many gaps that you don’t even recognize who you are. Or worse, it all comes crumbling down.
So when it’s important that you show up in life as you, you don’t know how, because you don't know who you are anymore. You’re not sure who you are outside of the approval and validation of others. You’re not even sure what matters most to you because you’ve spent so much of your life putting others first, seeking their validation and ignoring your own needs.
That’s why you’re struggling to live a life of purpose—because you’ve put your purpose in other people’s hands.
And these people that you’re trying to please so much, don’t even find this quality attractive. All they see is a broken, fragile person they can likely take advantage of.
So, my question for you is this: Is this the dependent place you want to live from?
Before things come tumbling down completely, there is a way forward.
If you are willing to follow the 5 steps I’ve outlined below, God will begin to rebuild these fragmented pieces of your personality, one by one, until you are healed and whole.
Step 1: Recognize
Recognize people pleasing for what it truly is—a self-serving, idolatrous, even manipulative way of life. I realize this is painful to hear, but pretending that you’re doing this for others simply isn’t being honest. People pleasers strive to please others because they are trying to please themselves. You must acknowledge that underlying ‘give to get’ motive.
Step 2: Repent
It’s hard to imagine having to repent of being 'nice.' But remember that 'niceness' is driven by an internal motivation for approval and validation, OUTSIDE of God. Every time you say yes to others and no to God, you confirm your allegiance to meeting your need, and not leaving it to God.
Step 3: Resolve
Now is the time to decide whom you'll s