Who Are You Trying to Please?

People-pleasers are everywhere. They can parade as successful pastors or as top-of-the-corporate-ladder executives. The most easily identified are the passive, co-dependent types.

All pleasers are out to prove they are valuable people—trying to quiet the voice within that says they aren’t. People-pleasers play a tape that says, “People will love and accept me if I please them.” Their myth says, “You are somebody when you please others.”

Pleasers believe that a failure to please will result in rejection and the false assumption that they are not valuable. As a result, they go about trying to make everybody but themselves happy.

This frequently requires pleasers to keep their own thoughts, desires and needs locked away in their inner selves. They believe their mission on Earth is to drive themselves into an emotional breakdown, if necessary, to make sure others approve of them. When they fail to please someone, they feel guilty or believe (probably unconsciously) that their world is going to end.

The paradoxical dynamic that takes place is that the very individuals to whom people-pleasers try to prove their worth very often use and abuse them. Instead of gaining respect as a pleaser, you often lose it. So trying to please everyone to feel you are “somebody” is a dead-end street. You will eventually find yourself exhausted, disillusioned and feeling less like somebody than ever.

Instead, resolve with God’s help to redirect your life and energy toward becoming a whole and healthy person who does not require the acceptance and affirmation of others to say, “I am valuable.”

Are You a People-Pleaser?

The first step toward freedom from “people pleasing” is to determine if you are a people-pleaser. You can do this by honestly answering the following questions:

* Do you accept responsibility for the happiness of others?

* Do you believe you can make others happy?

* Do you feel guilty when you think of yourself instead of others?

* Do you feel guilty when you tell someone no?

* Do you believe it is un-Christian to think of yourself and your own health and emotional well-being?

* Do you feel better about yourself when you give in to the desires of others rather than pleasing yourself?

* Are you able to set boundaries when it comes to your own health and emotional well-being?

* Do you understand what it means to set boundaries?

A people-pleaser would answer “yes” to the first six questions and “no” to the last two. If you conclude that you are a people-pleaser, then what are you to do?

If you are a people-pleaser, you need to redirect your need to please. Your focus needs to change from horizontal to vertical. In other words, you need to become more concerned with what pleases God than with what pleases others. They are not the same thing, as many people believe.