People Pleasing-an unconventional take on the subject

Hi, I am Setsabile Mamba and I am a recovering people pleaser.

I’ve always thought that “people pleasing” was just that, pleasing people! That it involved you choosing the other person’s will over yours to make them either happy, maintain peace and/or seek their approval and acceptance.

Personally, I do not like confrontations, I have always seen them as an attack and if you ask me I’d say there’s no such thing as positive confrontation, which is why I would avoid them at all costs. Detrimentally in avoiding confrontations, I’d be a “yes man” because I would accept what the other person says regardless of the inconvenience it causes me.

But in doing so was I being true to myself? Did I even fully know myself as I would suppress my desires?  Well to my surprise, people pleasing extended far beyond than what met the eye, it all came down to wanting to portray a good girl image to people i.e saving face.

People pleasing is a road most travelled on that does more harm than good at a spiritual level too. Although outwardly you are choosing the other person’s will, but the driving force within yourself is for the sake of acceptance, showing yourself righteousness in their eyes and maintaining a good girl image in my case. Self-righteousness is not always loud like the obvious actions of showing superiority above others especially when they have a different opinion to yours. Sometimes its subtle, like taking the high road because you regard yourself as good and you want to show that to the next person, the disadvantage may come when the main source informing that behaviour is yourself and not God.  

Such behaviour may trickle down to other aspects of our lives where we seek strength from our selves to overcome demanding seasons in our lives. For example, when I have a bad thought I feel so bad and dwell in it while hitting myself for letting my mind go there rather than asking God to purify my thoughts/ tapping into God’s Grace.

In order to flee from self-righteousness we need to be true to ourselves and also accept that we have weaknesses, acknowledging that although we may be inherently a “nice person” but we can only operate from a place of love if it is God fully working in us and through us for He alone makes us righteous.

Lets not risk the chance of realising God’s power in our lives after milking every other option, its just not fair to ourselves because  God’s freedom has been available to us even before we were born. May God be our first and only resort.

How does God see self-righteousness:

We are all infected and impure with sin when we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags… Isaiah 64:6

These words suggest unpleasantness; they show just how much self-righteousness does not please the Lord. When we are self-righteous, we exalt ourselves above our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and the ultimate sacrifice He took for us.

There are many ways besides people pleasing that may lead us to a self-righteous path, I just wanted to highlight an unconventional way self-righteousness may creep into our lives. Dabbling with self-righteousness allows us to be consumed by dependence over ourselves and finding it hard to believe that God can actually play a greater part in our lives. Our ways of assuming self-righteousness can lead us into even darker paths like obsessing over being in-control of everything, harmfully leading to disorders such as anxiety and paranoia.

Lest we exalt ourselves over God and people may we be reminded that:

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God 2 Corinthians 5:21. 

Salvation is not a reward for good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it Ephesians 2:9.