To do or To be?

Are you a people pleaser?  Do you know one?
What do you feel you have to do to make someone proud of you?
How did we learn to feel that way?  I think we are conditioned by society to think that we have to DO something to be worth something.

Consider this passage from Mark Chapter 1, where Jesus had gone to John the Baptist to be baptized in the Jordan river.  As he came up out of the water, he heard a voice saying, "You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."  In Bible class a guy commented, "What had Jesus been doing that God was pleased with him?  I mean, we haven't heard anything about him for 18 years."

We all kind of chuckled because we had a shared understanding that if someone is pleased with us, it MUST be because we did something.

But...

What if our understanding is wrong?  In some cases, we don't (or shouldn't) have to do anything to be pleasing to someone else.

A client shared, "I wake up every morning and my sole purpose is to put a smile on that woman's face", pointing to his estranged wife on the couch next to him.  I asked, "You feel like it is your responsibility to make her happy?"  He agreed.  I followed up, "Is there anyone else you have worked to make sure they are proud of you?"  Without missing a beat, he responded, "Yes, my father."  Intrigued, I asked, "Did you have any success?  Did he ever tell you he was proud of you?  That you made him happy?"  The client shared, "He came to visit my ranch one time, after I'd quit working for him and had my own spread.  We had ridden out to inspect the property and I remember him telling me he was proud of what I'd done."

Did you catch that?  His dad was proud of what he'd done.  Not "proud of him" but "proud of what he had accomplished".  I think this is a great example of the thinking in the world today.  Our value is found in what we do and not in who we are.  Because that is how we perceive thing to be toward us, we have difficulty believing that we belong or that we are accepted by others.  It is this sense of "not enough-ness" that torpedoes our self esteem.

Author Brene Brown wrote, "Most of us use the terms fitting in and belonging interchangeably, and like many of you, I'm really good at fitting in.  We know exactly how to hustle for approval and acceptance.  we know what to wear, what to talk about, how to make people happy, what not to mention - we know how to chameleon our way through the day.  One of the biggest surprises in this research was learning that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing, and, in fact, fitting in gets in the way of belonging.  Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted.  Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are." (Gifts of Imperfection p.25)

What if we no longer felt like we had to DO something to be acceptable to others?  What if we understood how powerful it is to be certain that we are worth something no matter what we do?  What if God is pleased with us because he chooses to be and not because we did anything in particular?  What if we quit expecting others to do or behave in ways that we want them to and just accept them as they are?  Can we change the world?  Maybe, even if it is one person at time.

May you learn to accept yourself.  May you learn to accept others.  And in doing so, may we all get out from under the tyranny of not being "enough".

-Jeff