How to Stop Pleasing People and Love Them Better

That ache inside to be seen true and valued highly, I’ve felt it too. I’ve also tried to better myself in other’s eyes, gain approval, and secure friendships as if to prove to myself that I matter. Isn’t that what we want to be reassured of—what’s beneath our people pleasing tendencies—that we matter?

Perhaps, like me, at a young age you began comparing yourself to others. To the one always surrounded with friends, or the one with all the right words to say at the right time, or the one who was kinder or prettier or smarter. And when we compared ourselves and found ourselves lacking, we learned to compensate—to stretch ourselves to be all the things, to be more likable than we feared we are.

But it’s a wearying and unfruitful endeavor, is it not, to try to please all the people at the same time? Even when we gain the approval, we’re not satisfied. We worry it won’t last or that we will fall short the next time around. People pleasing affords only hallow success.

The life never meant for us

But here, where we are shallowly liked and significant only until we are not, is not where we live our best life. Here is not where we thrive.

To live full and alive, to love deep and far and high, to truly impact our world and communities and neighborhoods for good, we need to backtrack. Where we set our gaze, our footsteps are sure to follow. If the approval of people is what we seek, we will find ourselves shortchanged—again and over again.

However, if our focus shifts, the trajectory of our lives too readjusts.

When we fill our vision with Christ, we will see in increasing measure that we don’t have to earn what has already been given. We are already chosen. Already adopted. Already beloved. It has nothing to do with us and everything to do with God.

We will always fail ourselves and others in our lives will inevitably let us down. The approval afforded by us by people is a shaky foundation. Not so with God. He is unchanging, perfect, brilliant in holiness, without the slightest fault to be found. And His promises are rock-solid ground beneath our feet.

It is here—near Him so we can hear how our significance is because of Him—where our hearts are truly alive. It is here we live our best life, able to extend to others the love we know we too receive from Him.

Pleasing people versus loving people

On the surface people pleasing looks selfless. We listen for what others need and do our more-than-best to satisfy. We serve, we give, we dismiss our preferences. Yet when we examine the deep-beneath motivations, we find at the root of people pleasing a focus directed at self, not others.

When we try to love like Christ but do not stand on the foundation He provides, we constantly struggle. We love with tainted motives. We say yes for selfish reasons. We expend our energy self-protecting and it narrows our focus, preventing us from noticing fully those around us.

When our focus is on pleasing people, we love small.

Contrarily, when we know that we are adored, that our worship is a sweet and pleasing fragrance to Christ, that our identity doesn’t change because He doesn’t change, we love better. Deeper. Fuller.

I have so much still to learn from the Apostle Paul, who loved genuinely and lived a missional life undeniably worth imitating. Though he lived selflessly and served people at great cost to himself, Paul reveals that the directing principle of his life was pleasing God, not people.

This is what he says in Galatians 1:10,  

I’m obviously not trying to flatter you or water down my message to be popular with men, but my supreme passion is to please God. For if all I attempt to do is please people, I would not be the true servant of the Messiah.

(TPT)

People pleasing, I’m learning, is a misdirected focus on people that actually inhibits me from loving both God and people. To love the people around me well, I must seek to please God, not people. Then His love will fill me and overflow from me.

A heart-level issue

1 Thessalonians 2:4 likewise redirects our focus from people-pleasing to God-pleasing. The verse reads as follows: “So our motivation to preach is not pleasing people but pleasing God, who thoroughly examines our hearts” (TPT). God is primarily concerned with the condition of my heart, not in the mere appearance of serving, loving, and living like Jesus did.

Colossians 3:23 reminds me to “put [my] heart and soul into every activity [I] do, as though [I am] doing it for the Lord himself and not merely for others” (TPT). And this is the heart of missional living: living for an audience of one in the presence of others.

The condition of my heart matters.

I love the people around me better when I am less concerned about finding significance in their eyes than I am consumed with the One whose love for me is the foundation of my identity.

When I find I’m living for people, serving to receive something, or letting my search for significance lead me in the wrong direction, the best way to pivot is to steal away for a heart-to-heart with God. He knows the posture of my heart: soft and surrendered or stiff and stubborn. And even when my heart is not in the right place, still He loves me tenderly.

A heart-to-heart with God means that I am being honest with Him. I share my struggle and my need, even when my words aren’t pretty. My honesty shows that I trust Him to tend my heart with gentleness.

Another component of a heart-to-heart with God is listening. “I have loved you with an everlasting love,” He assures me, “therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.” (Jeremiah 31:3 NKJV). “Fear not,” He tells me,” for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine” (Isaiah 43:1 NKJV). His words bring healing, but I miss them if I don’t stop to listen.

If you too are weary of trying to do all the things to please all the people, I hope you will find some time to meet with God for your own-heart-to-heart. The pivot from pleasing people to loving people comes when we begin to find our significance in Christ. We choose to listen, to surrender, to welcome His gaze deep into our hearts—and then we begin to see how we are loved with a love so large our minds cannot grasp it, and that we can neither earn or lose His love.

A prayer for recovering people pleasers

As we close today, I invite all my fellow recovering people pleasers to join me in this prayer:

God, I know that you are here. But sometimes You feel so far away. Would You show me how near You are?

God, I long to know that I am significant—that I matter. Would You reach deep into the fissures in my heart, let Your truth heal even deeper?

I surrender. I surrender my desire to better myself in others eyes. I surrender my efforts to earn what You’ve already given. I surrender my pride and I give You full access to the inside of my heart.

Help me to live as if only Your eyes are on me so I can love others unhindered and with pure motives.

In Your precious and holy name, Lord, I pray. Amen.

P.S. Did you know The Uncommon Normal is also a podcast? Tune in on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, or Spotify.

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