Living For an Audience of One (Part 1 of 2)

I set out as my goal to have people like me, to have people think I'm wonderful, miss wonderful, and I got disappointed all the time. But if my goal now is to walk so closely with the Lord, and I'm getting my marching orders from him, and I'm getting my approval from him, it really doesn't matter. That's Karen Eamon, and if you frequently find yourself taking on too much at work or at church, I hope you'll stay with us for an encouraging conversation. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller.

Thanks for joining us. John, one of the most challenging passages in the Bible is the Sermon on the Mount. That's found in the book of Matthew in chapter 5. And Jesus says it's not enough to look good on the outside like the Pharisees would do, right?

They judge people by their exterior. God cares about the heart, and he said it's about the heart. Colossians 3 23 says, whatever you do, work heartily for the Lord and not for men. Sometimes that's hard to figure out, right? Because the Lord wants us to show hospitality to people, bring people in, be kind to them, etc.

And that's all good. But the bottom line is motive matters. Are you working to please people or to please God? And maybe you felt guilty for saying no to a friend, maybe someone you want to keep a relationship with, so you agree to add just another task or two to an already really full schedule.

Maybe you're known as the mom who can juggle everything seamlessly, and one more thing isn't going to put you over the top, so they keep asking you. It can be so easy to fall into those patterns of people pleasing, and our guest today is going to equip you to handle that in a far healthier way. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to the conversation with Karen Eamon, who is a speaker with Proverbs 31 Ministries and a best-selling author. The foundation of our conversation today is a book that Karen has written called When Making Others Happy is Making You Miserable, How to Break the Pattern of People Pleasing and Confidently Live Your Life. We've got copies of that here at the ministry. Click the link in the program notes or give us a call.

800-A-FAMILY. Karen, welcome back to Focus. Thanks so much for having me back.

So good to have you. You call yourself a recovering people pleaser. When did you realize that people pleasing was causing you to be miserable? About four years ago in the summer, I had a real wake-up call that people pleasing was a prison, and I was locked tight inside, and I did not know who had the key. Wow.

How to get out. It was a lot of little yeses and little decisions and ways of behaving for decades that had really landed me in a spot where it was starting to affect me that the people pleasing ways in my life were starting to affect me physically. I was not being able to sleep well. I had a left eye that wouldn't stop twitching.

Wow. Yeah, I was pretty majorly stressed out, and I kind of hit a wall one day. How did you connect all those dots to people pleasing though? Well, it started with actually a phone call with my very best friend from college who asked me to do a pretty simple thing. She wanted her son who was going to be doing an internship to stay a couple nights at our house because it was up near our neck of the woods an hour and a half from where she lived, and sometimes during the week he would need to work really late and then open early the next morning, and she wanted to know if he could just crash at our house.

And without even thinking about it, because I'm a yes girl, I'm just like, oh yeah, sure, no problem. But everything within me was like, I don't think I can do this. My dad had just died. We'd just moved to a new town. I had a lot of things on my plate. My first child had just gotten married. I was learning the mother-in-law thing, just all of these things. And when I hung up that phone, I knew that I had said the wrong word, but I'm just so used to just meeting everybody's needs. And I went out to the back of our property.

I sat down in a chair and I just started to cry. And I thought, this is the tipping point. I've got to stop this.

I've got to stop it. So it led to what I call a season of necessary and no for that whole summer. I just decided that I was to do only what was necessary for my family, my home, and my job, my ministry, and just say no to everything else. Did people react to that? Were used to you saying yes? Were they like, oh, what's up with her? Some people took it well. I had been serving, over-serving, because we're supposed to serve, but I've been over-serving like in my church and community for decades. And some people were like, yeah, I kind of thought maybe you need a little break.

Some people did not take it well. Some people who were used to me putting out their fires and helping them get their stuff done. And I thought they were my friends, because they were my friends, but they were my friends because, hey, go to Karen. She loves to help people, and she loves to get stuff done.

It's a lethal combination for a people pleaser. But the people who were my true friends, my best friend from college, yes, that had sent me over the edge, they understood she was Jesus to me when I called her and said, you know what? I need to back out of what I just said I was going to do for the next three months. And I cried, and I told her, and she said, I care more about you and your mental health and your capacity.

We'll figure something out, but I'm going to be checking on you for the next couple of months. Yeah, and she totally understood. But so many people, they're used to you, you know, fixing their problems and bearing their burdens. I don't mean that in a good, we're supposed to bear each other's burden way, but you know, they take on too much and they want to shove some onto your plate and they know you'll say yes, so they just keep coming to you. Yeah, you said over-serving. Some people would say, well, it makes you a really good Christian if you're over-serving.

I mean, what do you, what's that definition? Are you, you know, you're closer to Jesus if you over-serve, because he served a lot of people. Well, it might look like we're closer to Jesus because we're over-serving, but we've got to kind of peel back the layers and say, why are we serving? Why are we signing up to do everything from teaching a Bible study to having the youth group over to making the toddler cookies for their class, whatever? Why are we doing it? Are we doing it because we have the capacity and we feel the Lord calling us to do it? Or is there a deeper motive? Are we doing it, you know, to win the approval of the pastor and the staff or to be the, you know, elected homecoming queen of all the church ladies?

Because boy, you know, she sure serves in everything. What is our motive? Are we, are we saying yes because we know that other person wants us to say yes, or because we really feel God's called us to serve in this area? Well, and that was Galatians 1 10, correct?

That's what caught your attention was what, what does that scripture say? It talks about, am I now trying to win the approval of God or of humans? Am I trying to please people? And if I'm trying to please people, I'm not a servant of God.

And that word please in the original Greek is very interesting to me. It means to perform an action in order to win the approval, affection, or attention of another person. So their approval, you want them to like you.

Their affection, you want them to love you or their attention, you just want them to notice you. And so if we're making decisions and saying yes to things, just because we want someone to like, love, or notice us, not because we're doing it as unto the Lord. And you mentioned Colossians 3 23, you know, work as though we're working for the Lord. If we're not doing it for the Lord, we're doing it to get a response from someone or to prevent a response. Like we don't want to tick them off. We're doing it for the wrong motive. How do you, I mean, sometimes you're blind to that. You're not even aware of what that motive is.

Is there a way you can go through a quick checklist? Why am I doing this? Why am I reacting this way? Why am I saying yes to this?

Is it for that person or for me to look good in front of that person versus I'm doing this for the Lord? How did you start sorting that out? It might sound silly, but my first step in kind of untangling all of this was to not answer right away. Because it's just a knee jerk, you know, blink response. Yes, sure, I'll do it.

Yes. Because we're so used to saying yes. So all the time now I say, I can't answer you today. Let me know what your request is, what it all entails. I'm going to think about it and pray about it. I'll get back to you within 24 hours.

And if you need the answer right now, the answer is no. Yeah, that's good. That's really good.

Early in ministry, you weren't happy unless you had 100% positive feedback. I guess five stars would be the way to see it now. You got your your five stars.

Why was that important? I think I get it. But asking the obvious question, is that an indicator of a people pleaser? You want that good response that five star rating? Yeah, we want we want to be known as confident and competent and capable, compassionate, whatever, we have these this image we're trying to keep up.

And if someone comes along and doesn't kind of agree with us that we're all of those things. I remember being at a conference once where they gave you feedback on your talk afterwards, the attendees filled out this little form. And there were 67 comments, 66 of them were positive, but there was one person. And who do you think I dwelled on that one person who thought no, there wasn't any really, you know, there weren't any really new and wonderful ideas in this.

It was like real idea, like homemaking based workshop. And she was like there, I didn't learn anything new. And the speaker was kind of boring. And then I thought I was terrible, boring speaker with no good ideas. And you are here to entertain me.

Yeah. Sorry, I missed the mark. But you concentrated on the one I did, because I just felt like everybody has to like me. Well, guess what, everybody's not gonna like me.

Yeah, everybody's not gonna like you. So how did you get to a place today where it's like, all right, I did my best. And if that's not good enough for you, so what? Again, it goes down to the motives when we switch our motives. And our motive is not to win the affection and attention and approval of everyone.

Our motive is to please God, and to do what he's called me to do, and let the people react as they may. Let me ask you this. You had a friend who encountered some pushback when she was making the decision to do foster care, something we do here focus on the family. What happened in that context?

I think it was with her parents, but what happened? Yeah, we had friends who were considering doing foster care and hoping to do foster care to adopt. And they were super excited about it, felt the Lord had called them, he was opening doors, they knew it was the right call. But when they told it to some of their extended family members, they were met with an icy cold response. And a lot of well, have you thought about this?

And have you thought about that? And even this kind of, oh, those aren't going to be real grandchildren, like our other biological grandchildren. I mean, I mean, we'll be kind to them or whatever. But you know, you could just tell that they weren't going to be completely accepted if they did end up adopting them. And it crushed my friend, it crushed her. She was just devastated. And it made her and her husband almost rethink the decision, because it wasn't going to be, you know, met with this warm, happy, welcome to the family kind of response. But a few weeks later, when I had lunch with her again, her demeanor had completely changed. She seemed confident, they were moving forward. And she didn't care any longer what other people thought.

And I said, what changed for you? And she said, you know, one day, I just realized, I don't need those people, I don't need their permission to do God's will. If God is calling me to do this, I'm going to do it. Because the flip side of people pleasing it, one side of people pleasing is we say yes, and we do things in order to please people. But the other side of it is we don't say yes to God sometimes, because we're afraid of the response of other people. But we don't need other people's permission to do God's will. Boy, think of so many men and women over history that if they listen to people over what God was over what God was telling them, how much would have been lost in terms of the impact that God has made through people, right?

Because you'd shrink back, can't do it, don't want to do it, won't adopt, won't help a child come to Christ, because I don't want to get engaged as messy and my parents or my extended family don't want me to do that. Think of that. That's amazing. You've identified and this is really good. And I want to make sure we get into this today. You've identified several types of people who try to call the shots. First, pushers. I mean, we're not talking in a drug context, but you talk about these people as pushers. Who are the pushers around us that overextend us pushers, they're those strong, assertive, controlling, manipulative, almost people, pushers push, and they get their way by stomping their foot. And you just, you know, you want to go with the program and not make them mad at you. So you just give in and you go along and you do what they say. Yeah. And in that context, I mean, what are, what's some ways to defend against the pusher?

Well, it's hard. These are the ones I have the most trouble with sometimes, especially I was raised by a pusher. So this would be your Achilles heel when it comes to people pleasing the pusher.

Yeah. My dad was a pusher and he was in a good way. Like he pushed me in a good way.

But then other times it was like, boy, when he said jump, I said, how high? And I did it because, you know, I didn't want to get hit. He was abusive. Now the end of his life, he came back to the Lord was a wonderful grandpa to my children.

They know nothing else. But back when I was a child, you know, I was afraid I was going to make him mad. And so I did what he said, and he would push to get his way. And it's hard sometimes because we're afraid of the response when we do push back, you know, but we have to learn to stand up for ourselves with pushers.

Yeah, that's really good. And again, that's just a really super assertive person who demands things their way. And that could be that could be in the family or outside the family.

Co-workers can be like that. So two more types of controlling people are powders and guilt bombers. As I was talking to Jean about this, I think we saw these two is very closely related, the powder and the guilt bomber because the powder can load you up with guilt about how you're not meeting their need. It makes them pout. So distinguish the powder and the guilt bomber. So the pusher stomps their foot to get their way the powder doesn't stop their foot, they drop their smile. And you've disappointed and you've made them sad.

Oh, you're not going to have the extended Christmas at my house. Poor Aunt Tillie is saying to you, you know, I was really looking forward to that, you know, and so she did you don't want to make her sad so you give in. The guilt bombers they kind of sometimes they're they're tugging at your heartstrings. They're making you feel sad. Other times they make you feel like you owe them something like we're we got to be even here. You know, I've I've run carpool so many times it's your turn. And they know how to just kind of guilt you and make you feel like I don't know, you have more money than them. So you should pay for the meal. You know, it's not always the sadness.

tugging right strings. It can be that like a scorecard. Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah. I Yeah, I think Jean felt this is where she's vulnerable as a people pleaser is in that guilt bomber. And, you know, I think she feels vulnerable to that because sometimes for her it makes sense what they're saying isn't actually untrue. And therefore they hook her in. And she would make sure that I would say and want to make sure that I would say that she's well along in her overcoming her people pleaser situation.

She's grown up since her teenage years and 20 somethings. You worked with someone for years you called a maximizer. And so what what's the maximizer? It sounds positive.

So a me first maximizer, actually, that's what I call them is a me first maximizer. They are these strategic people that on the surface, they seem like they're they're getting along and they're, they're helpful, and they're friendly. But whenever there's a situation where somebody's gonna get the shorter end of the stick, they always make sure that's not them. It's not them. And even if the exact same situation plays out three weeks later, and they're in a different spot, we're okay. Now, if that was fair back then on that, they should be getting the shorter end of the stick. No, no, no, somehow they can give an example of that because I want people to make sure they understand.

Okay, so I'll give you a really simple example. Back in the day when there was call waiting, I have a person in my life who's a big me first maximizer. And one day, they called me. And I was talking to them chatting away. And another call came in, I said, hang on a second, I've got to see who this is, and take this call. And so I clicked over and took the call for just a second hop back on. And that person just let me have it and said, I cannot believe that you just put me on hold to take another call. That is so rude.

How rude of you. And I said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I thought I'm never gonna do that again. Fast forward two weeks later, I was on the phone with my father when this person called in. And I ignored the call, right? Because it's rude to switch over and take the call. Well, when I was done with my father, I called that person back. And they let me have it the same person, that same person, they said, why didn't you pick up? And so I was on the phone with my dad. Well, you could have picked up and at least told me you were. I said, wait a minute, two weeks ago, you said that that was rude, you know. So everything changes depending on where they are.

How did they respond to that, though? Oh, you're wet. I never said that.

You're all wet. I never said that. But they did. But so they just wherever they are in the situation, things go down their way. But if the situation changes, they don't think that first one was was fair, because no, no, no, wait a minute. Now that they're over here, they're going to rework things to always go down their way.

Sounds like a politician. There you go. Well, this is Focus on the Family. And we're talking about relationships today with Karen Eamon.

And we're so glad you're listening in or watching. Get a copy of Karen's book, When Making Others Happy is Making You Miserable, How to Break the Pattern of People Pleasing and Confidently Live Your Life. Get your copy of that book from us here.

We've got the link in the program notes or call 1-800 the letter A and the word family. Karen, you were struck by something your pastor pointed out about people pleasing. It's good that he was talking about it, actually, because this can be a really unhealthy thing. Yes, even in churches, maybe especially in churches, because we're expected to behave a certain way. And if you say no to something that could be frowned upon, what did he teach you about people pleasing? Well, it was in the middle of a sermon, I was rather enjoying. When all of a sudden, he kind of wandered on this little tangent. And he just made this simple statement. He said, people pleasers often lie.

And I remember feeling like the spotlights that are affixed to the ceiling and normally pointing toward the stage had all drop swiveling. And I felt like, that's me. Like I'm a fabulous fibber. I have a lot of reasons that sometimes I shade the truth a little bit because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings or I don't want to anger them or disappoint them. But I had to face the music that day that he was right that people pleasers often lying is part of what we're doing.

Again, give us an example of that. I think you had something to do with Girl Scout cookies. How could you lie about Girl Scout cookies? I lied to a Girl Scout.

Okay, let me have okay. So one day, the sweet little Girl Scouts came to my door and rang my doorbell. And I didn't want any cookies. I was trying to stay away from sugar. I didn't need any cookies. And I didn't want to tell him I don't want your cookies.

So what I said, was kind of a half truth. I said, Oh, well, I have some nieces. They're they're big into Girl Scouts.

And we always buy our cookies from them. But thanks so much. Have a great day.

I hope you sell us cookies. So you do have nieces at that time. I that one word was wrong. I have nieces had nieces. They are now in their teens and 20s. That I didn't. I said that they're they're they're big into Girl Scouts. Well, they were big into Girl Scouts. And we did always buy our cookies from them. It was past tense though. Okay, like 10 years ago. Girl Scouts anymore.

Like, you know, 510 years ago. But I made it sound like I was very strategic and made it sound like I was still buying cookies from them. Yes. But I wasn't and it was a half truth. Yeah. But as we've told our kids often a half truth is still a whole lie.

Yeah, no, that's really good. They should come to our door because we'll buy like 20 boxes of Thin Mints or whatever it is. We'll post your address online. Let's not do that. And I thought, Why didn't I just tell the twin and I say, Oh, you guys, I'm really trying to stay away from sugar.

You guys are so cute. You remind me my nieces back in the day, but I just really don't need any cookies. But here's a $5 donation. Why didn't I do that? Why didn't I just be honest?

That's true. But I just got caught in the Oh, and then I just told a half truth. You know that it does kind of go back to that pleasing God pleasing man thing that prevarication, which means just kind of sliding a half truth, right? So it's not the full truth, but it's close enough to the truth that you can accept it.

But that's what you're saying. Just tell them. Yeah, I really don't want your cookies. You're great. I love you.

You're a wonderful little girl, but I don't want your cookies. It's hard to do. It is. And it takes a little explaining. Like we just need to really say out loud what we're thinking. Like, you all are adorable. I hope you sell a ton of cookies, but I just don't need cookies today. So I'm sorry.

I wish I did, but I don't. What are those go to statements that we can be more honest and direct with? I think we need to just have some things in our mind ready in an arsenal to kind of start the sentence, and then maybe we can finish it. It'll get us on the way to telling the truth. Like, hey, you know, I really kind of fear telling the truth to you right now because I love you. You're my friend. I don't want to disappoint you, but I know I need to be honest.

So start with that. Yeah, that's good. If I were in your shoes, I would want you to tell me the truth. So I'm going to just have to say no to your request or to say things like, you're not going to want me to say yes to that request because, you know, I'm going to say yes just to kind of make you happy.

But really, I don't have the bandwidth right now in my life to do what you're asking me to do. So in the end, you're going to be sad that I said yes. So I'm going to just, out of the shoots from the get go, just tell you the answer is no, even though I don't want to tell you no because I know you want me to say yes. Just be honest. Those things that are running through your mind, just say them out loud.

Always preface it with, I love you and I care about our relationships. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to say no, but I'm going to. And then just announce it. Don't over explain it. I'm the queen of over explaining. You don't owe everybody an excuse and all the background.

Just say, you know, I've really thought and prayed about it. The answer is no. When you give a lot of detail, then there might be a pushback. Well, we can take care of that hurdle. Yes.

There are salespeople out there, and I mean that in a kind way in relationships who, yeah, but Karen, I can help you with that. So if we get rid of that hurdle and that hurdle, so you're saying just keep it simple. Yeah.

When you over explain, you're giving them targets to shoot at. This just happened to me the other day. Somebody wanted me to endorse their book. I don't know this person.

I've never heard of this person and I should have just said a polite no. But instead I said, oh, I'm just really busy and I see you're sending it digitally. I would need a hard copy and I see you need it in two weeks. I don't have time. So what did they do?

They said, we'll send you a hard copy. We'll give you extra time and they shot it all down. I over explained. I should have just said, I'm so sorry.

My heart wishes I could say yes, but I'm going to have to say no. Karen, before we get out today, I want to make sure that people have some appropriate healthy weapons to combat the personality types that you talked about. I think just being able to categorize those is really helpful back to the pusher, et cetera. So if you can identify where that weakness is for you as a, you know, as a somewhat people pleaser, the other thing is so funny with people pleasers and I can tend to be one too.

We get very offended being called a people pleaser that really strikes us in a way that, you know, wow, no, I'm not that, but we really can be, everybody has the potential to be a people pleaser and not all of it is bad. Correct. Right.

Right. And in that context, what can you do to build a healthy, appropriate wall? If I could say it that way to protect you and your family, even from the pusher mentality, I think having some go-to statements that you're going to say when they ask you something that number one, and we just talked about that, having some accountability in your life of people that are going to cheer you on and encourage you to stand up to that person and then say, how are you doing? That has been helpful for me too, because I know sometimes with a couple different people in my life, I kind of shake in my boots and think, Oh, I got to do what they ask. Cause they're such a pusher, but I have other friends that are like, no, you can do it.

You can, and we're going to be checking up on you. So I think that accountability helps too. And then I've actually found that pushers, they respect you when you push back. Yeah. They do.

We're just so afraid that they're going to steam roll over us. And sometimes they're like, okay, well, thanks for shooting straight with me. Yeah. So the answer's no.

Okay. And so don't be afraid to push back. With that person, how honest, I mean, I would think it might be good to sit down and talk to them about their pushy attitude.

Does that work or does that not work? I have one person in my life where that didn't work and kind of backfired. And then I have another person that actually I thought it was going to backfire, but they came back to me later and said, you know what? You were right. I was kind of offended when you were in essence kind of calling me bossy and pushy, but you're right. You're a different personality than me. You're easy to take advantage of.

I kind of know that. And that's why I've been coming to you and kind of being a little bit bully-ish and I'm going to try not to do that anymore. But will you, she said to me, but will you also be a little more forthright? Like, just tell me the truth. Quit saying yes to me all the time if you don't want to do it.

That's not good either. I can handle the no's. So it's good to get that dialogue to the surface so that you can have a mutual understanding. And I think in that context, that's a lot of personality type. I mean, pushers are just strong-minded people and they're able to get their stuff out right on the table and tell you exactly what they think most of the time. And another key I found too is for me, when for me, when I'm thinking back about it right now, the pushers I've tried to stand up with that I didn't have a good relationship with or a family relationship with, they're the ones that didn't take it very well. But those people I do have a relationship with, they're in my family. They love me, even though we're very different personalities or they're a coworker.

We do have a good mutual understanding and love for each other. They just do things differently than me. Those, when you bring these things up and you have this dialogue with them, I feel like that relationship string, it tethers you together. Even though things get a little wobbly, as you're talking about being pushy and being passive, those tended to get better with the dialogue. The other ones that I didn't really have a relationship with, they're just going to go push somebody else. They're just kind of let me out of their life.

No, that's really good. And the maximizers are the same way. You just need healthy boundary there because it's just overwhelming.

Can I say one thing that's helpful with a maximizer? Yeah. This is my go-to. When the situations change and two weeks ago, they were person A, now they're person B, and then they want to reconfigure the whole thing, I'll say, help me to understand.

That's my go-to with them. Help me to understand how two weeks ago it was rude for me to switch over and take a call, but now it's not. How can that be both things? Help me to understand that.

And now they've got to explain themselves. And that's really helpful. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm smiling because that's actually sounds like fun. Is that bad?

Does that make me a bad person? Well, listen, Karen, this has been so helpful and there's so much more to cover. I do want to come back and do another day on this. So let's come back tomorrow and cover more of this great content in your book when making others happy is making you miserable. And I think at least half the population needs this book. So if you can, make a gift of any amount to the ministry and we'll send a copy of Karen's book as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. It's a very easy way to do that. If you can make a monthly gift, that's great.

A one-time gift is good too. So just help us and we'll help others. If you can't afford it, we'll get it to you and we'll trust others.

We'll cover the expense of that. But the bottom line is we're here to help you. So get in touch with us. I was shocked when she gave me the divorce papers. I was so done.

I had reached my breaking point. I was desperate for a shred of hope. So I called the Hope Restored team at Focus on the Family. They listened to me and they asked about what was happening in my marriage. They encouraged me and my wife to attend one of their marriage intensives for couples in crisis. And they prayed with us. They helped me believe that my marriage could be saved. I agreed to go, but was very skeptical that anything could help us.

But the whole environment was so safe and non-judgmental. I felt my heart start to open up as we worked with the counselors. Both of us still have work to do in our marriage, but for the first time in a long time, we have hope again. Focus on the Family's Hope Restored marriage intensive program has helped thousands of couples who thought that their marriage was over. Find out which program is right for you at Hope Restored dot com.