Confessions of a People Pleaser: Trading Approval for Secure Trust

In this episode of 'Steps to Trusting,' host Erin Michelle discusses the struggles of people pleasing and the importance of shifting our trust from people to the Lord. She shares personal anecdotes and reflects on scripture, particularly Jeremiah 17, to illustrate the difference between seeking validation from others and finding true identity and value in God. Erin encourages listeners to let disappointments serve as invitations to deepen their trust in God and act out of love rather than a need for approval. The episode concludes with a prayer and a reminder to root our worth in God's truth.

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Connect with Erin Michele Smith at www.erinmichele.net

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00:00 Introduction and Purpose

00:11 The Struggles of People Pleasing

00:47 Personal Reflections and Expectations

04:32 Scriptural Insights from Jeremiah

06:43 Trusting in the Lord vs. Trusting in Man

08:44 Invitation to Trust in God

15:47 Concluding Thoughts and Prayer

16:56 Final Encouragement and Contact Information

Transcript

Confessions of a People Pleaser: Trading Approval for Secure Trust

[00:00:00] Erin Michele: Hi, welcome to Steps to Trusting. I'm Erin Michele, your host. At Steps to Trusting, it's my goal to meet you where you are in your faith journey and to encourage you to continue to take steps to trusting the Lord more fully. On this episode, people pleasers beware. We're going to be talking about people pleasing and some scripture. Well today's topic as often happens on the podcast here is I picked a topic that I Need growth in and so I want to know that as I share this with you. I am Also sharing in the need to apply it to my life. So I don't want you to feel like I'm just telling you what you need. I'm sharing the truth that I need and I'm hoping that you're able to apply it to the situations that you're going through.

[00:00:47] I wanted to start off with a situation, a situation that as moms, we're probably in often where we try to do all of the things that we need to do to help our family, right? Making dinner, going grocery shopping, dropping everybody off at all the places that they need to be and making sure that we pick them up as close to on time as possible.

[00:01:10] And and not always doing that perfectly and not also not always being seen in what we're doing, but, but being seen in what we're not doing. So what I mean by that is how sometimes we disappoint people. We disappoint them because we didn't show up on time or they don't like the dinner or because, they needed more help than we were able to give them. 

[00:01:34] And I think that this can be seen in its opposite as well, that we have expectations for how we want our family and our friends to treat us and to be. So we have expectations of our Our kids completing all their homework and handing stuff in on time and keeping the room clean and doing a chore and putting away the dishes that they just use all these expectations and we feel disappointed when we see they haven't completed what we're hoping to be done and we don't always see the things that they've been working at all day long.

[00:02:13] And so in both of these situations, I would say that we often disappoint each other, not on purpose, but we do, we let each other down because we're not capable of doing everything that everyone needs or desires us to do. This is a dilemma that I have seen over and over in my life and this place of discontent, whether it be discontent in how people feel about us.

[00:02:38] In a situation where we don't know how to feel when people are disappointed or not acknowledging what we think we've done all day. But also the disappointment in other people that they didn't meet the expectations that we had for them. And sometimes it's hard for me to see. The expectations I'm putting on others, but it's easy to see the places where people have let me down.

[00:03:06] And so first, I guess I just wanted to start with kind of acknowledging that, that, that just as people have expectations for us and the things that we, they want us to accomplish, we have expectations for others and the things that we desire for them to accomplish. And this conversation, I'm going to kind of start with talking about people pleasers for me.

[00:03:32] Personally, I, I fall into this category of wanting to please people. I want them to think highly of me. I want them to think I have it all together. I want them to be happy about, Me keeping my word or doing what I said I would do or providing a place for them or a meal for them that they like and enjoy.

[00:03:56] and I guess that's in my family, but also in friendships. I want people to approve of me. I want them to think that I'm fun to be with. I want them to think highly of me. And I'm sure there's more things that we desire from the people around us and more, I guess, even the reputation that we would like to have and how we'd like to be seen. This is on my mind for multiple reasons this morning. We live in community, and we live in a community where we desire to do things for each other, to love each other well, and we let each other down. And I was reading in my reading plan in Jeremiah today.

[00:04:36] I'm in Jeremiah 17. And the verse just really, really hit me. I'm going to start with the easier verses to read, and then we're going to circle back to the beginning of the chapter. So here we go. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out his roots by the stream and does not fear when he comes for his leaves remain green. And it is not anxious in the year of drought for it does not cease to bear fruit. So when we look at this verse and we think about trusting in the Lord, it gives me pause when I think about Those situations that I laid out where we want to trust in ourselves or other people, do you see it, do you see it when we, and I guess the question is, what are we trusting those people for when we have expectations for other people.

[00:05:37] And they have expectations for us. What are we trusting them for? I think that that's probably something that you need to personally answer. But I know that for me, in different times of my life, I have been trusting people for my identity and for my value. So when someone lets me know that I have disappointed them, I often feel like I need to trust myself to do better, like I need to change who I am or my investment so that I can change their opinion of me.

[00:06:13] So I'm trusting them for a reputation or a name or an identity or a value. And that's been a struggle for me. It's something I've been growing in over the last couple of years, but it's still a struggle for me. And so, I just wanted to share that with you. And I want you to think about what are you trusting?

[00:06:33] What are you trusting people for?

[00:06:36] Now I'm going to go back to the beginning of the chapter. And I didn't start here because it really is a hard verse. But it's really important. I think that if we jump to blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord, we should look at its opposite and it's here in Jeremiah 17, verse five says, thus says the Lord.

[00:06:59] Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. It sets this up as a opposite, or a dichotomy, where we can put our trust in man, or we can put our trust in the Lord. And it says, Cursed is the man who trusts in man. 

[00:07:22] And I have lived much of my life trying to trust myself and trying to trust other people to tell me that I have value. Let me continue reading the next verse. He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness in an unhabited salt land. And that is when it jumps in to say, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord. I've shared with you guys in past seasons, but I have struggled very much to not try and earn an identity, but trust God for an identity. And at first glance, when I look at this, it feels like it's unfair. It feels like we'll be stuck in this bad place forever. But the reality is, we are invited the Lord says, come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest. And so this is a curse. This is what happens to people who are trusting in, in man. And we are invited to not stay in that place. We are all invited to come under the category that says, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.

[00:08:35] He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. We're invited to come into that position. And I have found for me personally, that's an invitation that I need to repeatedly take. Repeatedly turn from trusting in man and trusting in myself to trusting in the Lord, to trusting in God, that he is able, that he is able to give me what I need, right?

[00:09:07] I need an identity. I need to know that I'm valued and loved. This is something that was placed in us when God created us in his image. These are things that we desire and that we need, and there is secure identity in who Jesus says we are, in who God says we are, and we are invited. And so I, I really wanted to look at what that invitation looks like because when I think about being a people pleaser, sometimes when people are disappointed in me, the disappointment looks like an invitation to do more. And to, to step up into the place that they've asked.

[00:09:47] That place where people are disappointed with us. It's an invitation to look at our actions, to see why they're disappointed, to see if the thing that they're disappointed about is something that we can give them with grace and love, or if what the thing that they are disappointed about is because we're limited people.

[00:10:10] Right now, I'm not going to be talking about Our failures and our sins. I want to talk just about our limits we are limited people. We are people who have just a 24 hour period and we have abilities that are limited. And we have energy that's limited. So I want to look at that right now. When people are disappointed because of those limits that you have, we're presented with an invitation and actually we're invited to multiple things. I often have taken the invitation to do more and to step into the expectation, to be able to complete it. Even when I don't. I feel like I have the resources or I feel overwhelmed that I don't have, have the resources.

[00:10:58] So I feel like I feel down on myself and I feel like I'm not enough. The other invitation that we receive is, I think, what's kind of put what we see in this dichotomy in these verses, blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. I am invited. You are invited. We all are. We're invited to trust the Lord. We're invited to face our limits and to say, I'm I never had to be enough to meet that expectation.

[00:11:33] I wish I was enough for me personally. I've had to grieve the places that I was not enough. I've had to say, I wish I could be enough and surrender it to God, and actually in by way of repentance, repenting that I wanted to be more than God made me to be. Instead of trusting him with the resources that I have, the time that I have, the ability that I have. What will I let the invitation of my limits and others limits. Lead me to, will I see that invitation to, to trust myself or will I let that invitation be to trust the Lord, to trust in the Lord. I've had to think about what is people, what does people pleasing really mean in my life is trying to please people, turning to man and trusting them to be a source of identity for me, a source of value because they tell me what I did is enough or great. And so I challenge you, if you find yourself desiring to please people to look, where is your trust? Is your trust in that person or is your trust in the Lord, letting him, letting him work in you and let what you offer people being in overflow from him. We can look at people pleasing and in multiple ways. If our trust is in people and we're trying to please them for something that's different from if we want to do something for them out of an overflow of love. After looking at. This idea of being enough in people's lives for several years now, I realized that I still have something to offer and give to people, but when my life is ordered rightly, when my trust is in the Lord, what I offer is not for their approval or for identity that they offer me. As an overflow of what God has offered me with him as my source, I want to look at the second portion of Jeremiah 17, one more time, where it says he is like a tree planted. By water that sends out roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain, and it is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit. I like that piece of bearing fruit we'll still have something to offer and something to offer people, but we won't be the source, nor will they. The source is when our trust is in the Lord. God is our source. He's the source that allows fruit to grow in our lives. And he's the source that allows things that we have to offer others to be given in love because of what God has done in our lives, because of the approval and value that we already have, not because we don't have So that we earn approval and value the two main takeaways. I would love for you guys to be thinking about we are invited to let God be our source. And that when we're disappointed, that can be an invitation showing that we may need to change our source.

[00:14:58] And then as we still continue to desire, to serve people, to love them, to offer what we have, that we do it not for their approval, but Not because of what they'll offer us, but because God is Bearing fruit in our lives because we are rooted in him.

[00:15:17] I hope that this encourages you to let your trust be transferred over and over and over. We will slip into trusting ourselves. We will slip into trusting others. But we will be invited even by our disappointment to trust in the Lord because he is the one who is able to make us like a tree that is planted by his waters and a tree that bears fruit with him as our source.

[00:15:47] Thank you so much for joining  me

[00:15:48] I want to close this on prayer, dear God. I thank you. I thank you that we can trust you, that you are trustworthy, Lord, that we don't trust you for what you offer us, but that we can trust in you. And so Lord, I pray that our trust would be in you, that you would be the source that we look to for our needs, Lord.

[00:16:10] And as I think of the things that we need and desire, Lord, I often think it boils down to this identity and value of being loved. And Lord, I thank you that you know us and you love us Lord, help us to turn our hearts to you, to let you see us that we would not turn to ourselves to make an identity.

[00:16:33] And here we're valued from others, Lord, but that we would turn to you knowing that we can trust you. And that you love us. You loved us so much that you sent your son to die for us. Lord. I thank you. And I praise you. I thank you for who you are and for the many blessings that you offer us.

[00:16:52] Lord help us to trust you. It's in Jesus name that I pray. Amen. Thank you so much for joining me today. If this podcast was an encouragement to you, would you please share it with a friend? It's one of my hopes that this podcast, that each of its episodes would be conversation starters before, between friends, that we can be sharing what's going on in our lives the challenges we're having, the growth we've seen and the growth that we know that we would desire and to share that with someone who can walk beside you. If you want to reach out to me, you can find me on Instagram at steps to trusting. I hope to see you back here next time, but until then, I wanted to leave you with this reminder from Ephesians 2 10 for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Friends. I'm praying for you as you keep on stepping,