From People-Pleasing to Holy Freedom (Part 3): Breaking Free From People Pleasing

From People-Pleasing to Holy Freedom: How to Stop Living For the Approval of Others and Start Living For God

Part 3: Breaking Free From People Pleasing

Welcome to the final episode of this 3-part series on breaking free from people-pleasing and learning to live for the approval of God instead of the approval of man.

Over the past two episodes, we've uncovered what people-pleasing is and explored its spiritual roots. Today, we're taking the next step: learning how to walk in the freedom Christ has for you.

In this episode, we'll talk about practical, faith-filled ways to renew your mind, root your identity in Christ, set healthy boundaries with love, and begin living with the peace that comes from seeking God's approval above all else.

In this episode, you'll learn:

🤍 Five practical steps to overcome people-pleasing

🤍 How to root your day in prayer and set you identity in Christ first

🤍 Why prayer, virtue, the sacraments, and Scripture are essential for lasting freedom

🤍 Simple ways to renew your mind with God's truth

My prayer is that this series reminds you that you were never created to live under the weight of everyone else's expectations.

You were created to know Christ, trust Him, and live the beautiful life He has prepared for you.

Connect with Carrie:
Follow Carrie on Instagram @livingwholeandholy

✨ If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to move from people-pleasing to holy freedom, I'd love to walk alongside you through Catholic life coaching. Schedule a Free 1:1 Catholic Coaching Clarity Call with Carrie

Transcript

Speaker 0:08

Welcome to the Living Whole and Holy podcast, where the Catholic faith and intentional living come together. I'm your host, Carrie Jain, a recent Catholic convert and Catholic coach, here to guide you toward a life that's rooted in Christ, centered in his love, and aligned with God's call. Whether you're a convert, revert, cradle Catholic, or simply exploring the faith, you're in the right place. Join me each week to hear inspiring conversations, including conversion and reversion stories. Timeless wisdom from the church and practical Catholic coaching tools. Cultivate Christ-centered habits and be transformed to the renewing of your mind. If you're ready to discover and align to the beauty and richness, beautifully integrated Catholic life, you've found your home. I'm so excited you're here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1 1:19

And I'm excited to be here with you today for part three of the People Pleasing series, from People Pleasing to Holy Freedom. And today I'm going to be talking about the path to freedom from people pleasing and how to become a God pleaser instead of a people pleaser. So if you happen to have missed the first two episodes in this series, you can go ahead and listen to those. But today, I am really excited to be talking about, you know, tying this all together and what this means as Catholics and how to move forward in our lives free from the bondage of people pleasing. For the last two episodes, we, you know, we named what people pleasing is, what it isn't, how it shows up, the sins that are attached to it, some false identities that we can embody as a result of it, what scripture says about it. And I know that it's something real and painful because it is something that I have overcome and went through for most of my life. And even when I became Christian, it was still an issue. And thankfully, through Catholic coaching and just taking courageous and aligned action every day, it's been something that I've been able to overcome. And it's something that I've been able to help my beautiful clients with. And I just want you to know that you're not alone. There are so many people that struggle with this. And there's also freedom in our beautiful faith with Christ. So I know that it is a real and painful issue for a lot of people. It's a pattern that has really distorted our true identity. It's stolen our peace. It's made us feel exhausted. And it very quietly wounds the spiritual lives of people who are just simply trying to be quote unquote good people. And that's where we have real power and a treasure trove in our Catholic faith because there are so many beautiful tools that we have as Catholics. And there's beautiful tools that we have in Catholic coaching, like renewing our mind and doing those really courageous action steps that are not comfortable. But Christ promises freedom. And I wanted to open with a verse from Galatians 5:1. For freedom, Christ set us free. So stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. So people pleasing really keeps us in bondage and in slavery. But we are going to learn today how we can utilize our Catholic faith and just some tools that I've implemented in my own life and in the lives of my clients that have really helped me and us to break through and break free from this. So we're going to be talking about what freedom actually looks like, what it means to live as a beloved child of God as your first identity, grounded in his love, clear about what his will is for your life, and freedom from the exhausting and endless need to manage everyone else's opinion of you. So I am going to mention at the end five ways that we as Catholics can gain freedom and overcome people pleasing, but I really want to start out by talking about identity. And I've mentioned this in many of my other episodes. I'm really passionate about it because our society has identity in the wrong order. And most of us learn to base our identity in our accomplishments, in our performance, and getting approval. And this is the problem. And, you know, there's a really fundamental question we ask as humans, and it's who am I? And unfortunately, how we usually answer is something related to our job, what we do in the world, the people in our lives, our vocations, and all those things are important, but that's not really who we are. And when we answer that question based on other people's opinions of us, their approval, their reactions, what happens is our soul is really at the mercy of things that are unstable, unreliable, and ultimately incapable of satisfying that deepest human need and that question of who am I? And the gospel really answers that so beautifully for us in that who you are is a beloved daughter of God. Yes, I said beloved because we aren't just daughters and sons of God. We are beloved because he delights in us always. He doesn't just sometimes delight in us. He doesn't delight in us only when we've accomplished something, only when we do a good job. But he delights in us. Even when we make mistakes and we turn back to him in confession, he still loves us and delights in us. So I want to talk about who you are first before, you know, making suggestions of what we can do to overcome people pleasing, because until your identity is solidly rooted in Christ, it's going to be really hard to take action on anything and make any kind of transformation in your life. And I've loved being a student at Encounter School of Ministries because that is what the first quarter was all about. I just finished the first year going into my second year, and I really learned that my identity, so much of my life, was based on my performance and where I went to school and what job I had and what I was accomplishing. And God completely tore that down and helped me to root my identity in him first. So you are a beloved child of God. You're not a product of other people's opinions. And Romans 8, 15 through 16 says, you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption through which we cry, Abba Father. The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. So this is an identity that can't be earned, it cannot be revoked, it doesn't fluctuate based on whether someone approves of us. And really, the people pleaser has been living as a spiritual orphan. So, you know, looking for scraps of approval or validation when in reality you are a beloved daughter of God. And we are created in God's image and likeness and the mago day. And that image confers the dignity of our personhood. And no opinions can diminish or enhance that. So this truth isn't something just to have as an intellectual belief. But when we live it, when we embody it, when it's your daily reality, this desperate need for human approval really begins to lose its grip. And that's really what changed it for me is being involved in encounter school of ministries and just knowing whose I am and who I am. So I encourage you to just remember who God created you to be. And you are created in his image and likeness. And then your baptism seals this identity. You are priest, prophet, and king through your baptism, and we are adopted. So the catechism 1265 says baptism not only purifies from sin, but it makes the person a new creation or an adopted child of God, a partaker in the divine nature, a member of Christ, a co-heir with him, and a temple of the Holy Spirit. So we are called to be priest, prophet, and king. And again, no amount of human approval or disapproval can change that. So we don't have to earn that love by performance. And Jesus is the perfect example of this because when he was baptized by John the Baptist, he heard the Father speak from heaven. This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. At that time, Jesus hadn't performed any miracles. He didn't start his healing ministry. He didn't preach. There was nothing for him to have done, quote unquote, other than just being God's beloved child. And that's where his approval came from, just in that identity. So the same is true for any baptized Christian. When your approval comes first from that, that's where your mission flows from. And your mission is going to be so much more free and fruitful if you're not constantly seeking the validation of other people. And that truth really dismantles the entire structure of people pleasing. Because when you have your identity in Christ first and your mission flows from that, you can really do anything with him because you're not seeking the approval of other people. And we are all called to holiness. There's a universal call to holiness, and Lumengensium 40 says, all the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity. So our goal as Christians is not to be well-liked or well received by others, it is to be holy, which means ordering God in every dimension of your personhood. So in your mind, in your will, in your emotions, in your relationships, in your vocation and your daily decisions. So that call to holiness requires us to die to the need of approval. And when we start stepping out in our faith, when we start saying, okay, God, you put this mission, you put this dream into my heart. I have no idea how I'm going to do this, but you're calling me to do this. You are going to have to die to the need of approval. The Catechism 2013 says, all Christians in any state or walk of life are called to the fullness of Christian life and to the perfection of charity. So when you've got a big mission, not everybody's gonna like it, not everybody's gonna approve of it. And holiness is not a destination just reserved for priests, nuns, and saints. It's the daily call of every baptized Catholic. And in our pursuit of holiness, a better question to ask than what the secular world offers of what do I want for my life would be what does God want for my life? And that question really changes everything because it's not about us and it's not about the opinions of other people, but if God is calling us to something, we are going to need to let go of the approval of other people in order to be whole and holy. So, what does this freedom from people pleasing look like? What are five things that you could do right now to break free from people pleasing? The first thing is saying no with charity. One of the most countercultural and most liberating truths of the Catholic faith is this saying no is not unchristian. It's not rude and mean to say no. And if you're used to saying yes when you want to say no for fear that you're gonna sound mean and rude, I want to assure you that when you say no with charity, it changes everything. It's not uncharitable to say no. It's not unloving, it's not a failure of service or generosity. In Matthew 5, 37, this verse has been so helpful to me in this. And he says, let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. I want to remind you, Jesus said no repeatedly, clearly, and without guilt. And the best example of this is when he was tempted by Satan in the desert. And he said no every single time, even though he was hungry, he had fasted for 40 days, he still said no. A yes that comes from fear is not generous, it's not charitable. It's rooted in self-protection and control and thinking that we are responsible for other people's emotions and feelings. We are only responsible for how we deliver a message and how we show up. A no, a genuine no that comes from time in prayer, clarity, discernment, and love of God is not selfish. It's actually integrity. It may not be easy to say that no, but if it's rooted in a decision that was made through discernment and prayer and wasn't made in haste and may have taken time to actually pray through, is in integrity. It's in your alignment. And living whole and holy means you're living in integrity with your values. So saying no is a practice and it does require taking that action that may not feel good in the moment. It may feel uncomfortable. You may think in your head that you're being mean and rude, but that's just Satan trying to get in your way. And if you are coming from a genuine place, it's impossible for you to not be charitable. So the second thing is rooting your day in prayer. This means starting your morning with a morning offering, which I do and I highly recommend. You're giving God your first fruits and you're handing your day over to God. And you can ask the Holy Spirit to infuse you with his gifts and virtues, which I'm going to talk about in a little bit, and ask him to make you a conduit to keep you strongly rooted in Christ as you interact with others during the day. Part of that rooting in prayer during the day is in the evening doing an examination of conscience. And typically, when we think of examination of conscience, we think of something we do before going to confession. And I highly recommend that. But this can be used to think about areas in our day where we may have chosen fear of man over fear of God. And there's just a few questions you can you can pray with that I wanted to invite you to ask at the end of the day. And they are the following Did I say yes today because it was genuinely good and God honoring, or because I was afraid of disappointing someone? Spoiler alert, you cannot disappoint anybody. Everybody is responsible for their own reactions. Again, it's how are you showing up? Did I withhold the truth today that someone needed to hear because I feared their reaction more than I feared God? When we have friendships with people or even our spouses, we are responsible in our relationships with them to get them to heaven as best as we can. And that might mean saying a truth and having a confronting conversation, where we may say something that may be a little bold and may not be something someone wants to hear. But when we again we present it with love and because we genuinely care about the soul of someone, it is important to share that information. And if you're not sure, that's where discernment comes in. And you can ask God if that information needs to be shared with someone. Did I make a decision today based on what God's will is or based on what would make me most acceptable to the people around me? Where did I act from love today? Where did I act from fear? And is there anything I need to bring to confession? So asking yourself these questions with the Lord really will give you a sense and start helping you see some patterns that might be showing up and where in your life people who use it might really be taking a hold on you. Number three is frequent the sacraments. And that may seem like such a simple thing to do, but I actually think after you're building your identity in Christ and reading your identity in Christ, frequenting the sacraments is so important because that really keeps us connected to God as often as possible. And we were just talking about confession in that last question of in the examination of conscience. Is there anything I need to bring to confession? So we talked in previous episodes about the vices and the sins that are the roots of people pleasing, and pride and fear are really underneath a lot of that. And what's beautiful about the sacrament of confession is we get to name the sins, we get to be absolved, and then we get to be healed by the mercy of God. And, you know, if if you have been in a cycle of people pleasing, it is really important to do an examination and really, really ask God how that's showing up and name those sins and name the pride, name the wrath, the anger, the gossip, everything that goes with, you know, the dishonesty and be healed by the beautiful sacrament of confession. And then sincerely ask that you sin no more. The Eucharist, especially in adoration, really is where your soul can be fed, the very body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ. And that really gives you strength against that pull of wanting human approval and the anxieties of rejection and sitting in adoration before the exposed blessed sacrament, it really recalibrates your soul and reminds you of what matters, who you're sitting in front of, and the opinion number one in front of you is the one that lasts and the one that's the most meaningful. And this can be a time where you lay all of this at the feet of Jesus and say, you know, I've been struggling with this for years, and I really want to be more whole and holy. And I know that if I'm stuck in a cycle of people pleasing, it's going to prevent me from being all that you are calling me to be. So, Lord, I put all of this at your feet. God promises that his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and he invites us to put all of it at his feet. And the more we sit in front of the Eucharist, the more we become holy.

unknown 20:40

St.

Speaker 1 20:41

Carlo Acudis would say: if you want to get a tan, go in the sun. If you want to become holy, sit in front of the blessed sacrament. He's always waiting for us there. And it's a really beautiful way to cleanse our soul and just be in his presence and imitate him. Number four, practice courageous and aligned actions daily. So right now I am in a group coaching program, and for the month of July, we are practicing daily courageous and aligned actions. And I was thinking this really applies to our faith. So I would encourage you every day do something that feels scary, something that is anti-people pleasing. So if you're someone who's shy to pray in public, I invite you to pray in public without apologizing for it. Make that sign of the cross. Pray when you're at a restaurant. Maybe you can even pray for somebody who you know needs prayer. Offer that up. We have such a beautiful opportunity to bless others and give people words of encouragement. So if that is something that speaks to you, I would encourage you to do that. I would encourage you, maybe it's declining an invitation. Maybe there's something someone has asked you to do, and you know that. You cannot do it. And this is where you can practice making your yes mean yes and your no mean no. And I would encourage you to not over-explain or over-apologize. No is a complete sentence. The more we feel like we need to explain or apologize, the more we get into people pleasing. So if you can't make something, if you can't make an event, you can just simply say, I can't make it. Thanks for inviting me. No need to apologize, no need to explain. And you're gonna feel a lot more freedom in that. And sharing your faith when it arises naturally instead of deflecting it. So, you know, there are opportunities in our days to share our faith. Or maybe somebody might ask what you're doing over the weekend, and you can share, oh, I went to Mass or I had this Bible study, rather than just deflecting it or skipping that part of what you did over the weekend. Each courageous and aligned action you take rewires your heart and your soul away from fear of man toward trust in God. So I want to remind you the saints were not naturally fearless. They practiced being courageous until it was their nature. And every time you up-level, every time that you move to a next level of who God is calling you to be, you're gonna have to keep being courageous. You're not gonna get to a point where things aren't gonna feel scary. Actually, if you're not feeling shaky and you're doing something, you might be doing something wrong. So the shakes are good. And number five, be transformed by the renewing of your mind and start learning to put on the mind of Christ. So this is your invitation to get curious about the thoughts, patterns, triggers, and wounds that may be feeding people pleasing. And you might start to recognize this through the examination of conscience. But you don't have to do this alone. And Catholic coaching is something that really truly helped me to overcome this. It's helped my clients and it offers really a non-judgmental safe space to help you explore what are the roots of this. How do I process the emotions around it? And then how do I move forward in freedom with Christ by my side? Once we start to become aware and process those feelings, then from there and rooting our identity in Christ, then we can make the necessary changes we need to make in order to experience that freedom. So now that we've talked about some things that you can do, I wanted to just talk about what it actually looks like, what whole unholiness in being transformed and being a God pleaser, what that actually looks like tangibly. So when someone is genuinely freed from people pleasing through grace, through truth, through intentional formation, that transformation is visible. You can see it, you can feel it. There's a deep beauty to it, to someone who's walking in that. It's not an arrogance, it's not a false humility. It's just someone, again, who knows who they are and whose they are. Their relationships become more authentic because they aren't trying to perform. They're not trying to get approval. And in their relationships, they don't really mind if they don't get a lot of applause. If they do, it's it's a nice blessing, but they don't thrive on that. They thrive more on the approval of God. Their decisions become more peaceful because they aren't driven by fear and anxiety and what someone might think. They really take time to discern and pray with God and spend time with him in silence before making a decision. And the decisions are just rooted in peace. Their face becomes more bold because the fear of man no longer silences the voice of truth. So they're able to hear what God is calling them to do and they're not afraid to step out in that boldness. Their vocation becomes more clear. When we have the noise of everyone else's expectations, we don't hear the voice of God. And so those voices no longer drown out the voice of God, and we're able to hear God much more clearly. It's almost like the soul begins to breathe for the first time. And wholeness in the Catholic sense is not about self-sufficiency, emotional independence, or quote unquote having it all together. It really is about moving from self-reliance to God reliance and him increasing, us decreasing. It's integration. It's all those fragments of the soul being brought together and rightly ordered. So we have our identity in Christ first, we have authentic charity for neighbor, and then we have a healthy, truthful, dignified relationship with ourselves where we're meek and humble of heart. And these people call on the Holy Spirit to bestow his gifts as well as virtues. And the virtue of fortitude is a cardinal virtue and it's also a gift of the Holy Spirit. And fortitude really is courage, it's the virtue that ensures firmness and difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of good and strengthens the resolve to resist temptations and to overcome obstacles in the moral life. Fortitude is the courage to speak the truth when silence would be easier. It's the strength to say no when yes would be more popular. It's the firmness to hold convictions when everyone else is walking away. I think about the bread of life discourses when Jesus says, This really is my body and blood. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you. This was a really hard teaching for a lot of people. A lot of people walked away, and Jesus' disciples did not walk away. They had fortitude. They were not more concerned about pleasing the people around them. They trusted in God and what Jesus was saying, even though it was a hard teaching. So fortitude really is that virtue that directly and powerfully counters people pleasing. Other gifts of the Holy Spirit are counsel and helping you hear God's voice, wisdom to help properly order relationships to people versus God, and fear of the Lord, which is the gift that helps give the desire not to offend God, and value and prioritize his opinion over that of man. And it gives us the grace to keep from offending God. So we are invited to ask the Holy Spirit to fill us with prudence to know and to act, with purity of intention, so that you can do everything for God's glory and not human applause and magnanimity. That one's hard to say, so that you can dream and act at the scale God is calling you to. And with humility to know exactly who you are before God without elevating or shrinking yourself. I mentioned before St. Joan of Arg, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Teresa of Avala are some of the most amazing anti-people pleasing saints that we can call on for their intercession. They weren't people who mastered a communication framework or learned a boundary setting technique, although that is important. These people were so rooted in their identity before God, so surrendered to his will and so convinced of his love that the opinion of the world just lost its power over them. That's why I say the identity has to flow first, and then it is so much easier to set the boundaries, to say no with love and to take those courageous action steps. So I wanted to return to a verse that has anchored this entire series, and that is Proverbs 29-25. Fear of others becomes a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. So the antidote to fear of man is not self-confidence, assertiveness, training, or setting better boundaries. It really is trust in God, deep, settled, unshakable trust in the God who created you, redeemed you, calls you by name, and holds you in his hands, regardless of what anyone else thinks of you. So in the end, I just want to paint a picture of what it looks like to be a person who is a God pleaser and not a people pleaser. So imagine waking up tomorrow, and the first decision that you make of your day is based entirely on what God is asking of you. Not what people expect, not what family members might assume, but simply what God is calling you to do. Imagine having conversations where you speak the truth in love without rehearsing the conversation multiple times and without lying awake at night afterwards, replaying it and wishing you would have said something differently. Imagine saying no to something that is not yours to carry and feeling peace instead of guilt, like true peace, clarity instead of anxiety, freedom instead of knots in your stomach. Imagine building a vocation, a marriage, a family, a career, a life, not on the unstable approval of other people, but on the unshakable, solid rock foundation of God's will for you. This is not some dream. This is not some fantasy. This is not something that's inaccessible to you. This is the life God designed for you. It's a life that the Catholic faith makes possible. And this is exactly what living whole and holy is all about. God does not call his children to be liked, he calls them to be whole and holy. He doesn't call us to manage everyone's emotions. It's exhausting and it's just not something we can do. He calls us to speak the truth in love, in charity, in kindness, he does not call us to be nice. He doesn't call us to say yes to every request that we get. He calls us to say yes to him and to let every yes or no flow from our identity in him. So if this series named something real in your life, if you recognize yourself in any of the false identities, if you see patterns that have been leading you to sin and you say, Oh, I need to go to confession, or I need to really see where I'm at in this season of my life. How much can I take on? What can I say yes to? What can I say no to? I want you to know that you don't have to figure out the path to freedom alone. Catholic life coaching exists for that reason. We are not meant to do it alone, and sometimes we can't see our own blind spots. I want you to know I am here to support you, to walk alongside you as you discover who God truly made you to be, to help you identify what is keeping you from living that identity fully and freely, and to help you build a life rooted in God's will rather than everyone else's approval. And that begins with one decision, one thought, one relationship, one conversation at a time. Our faith truly gives us everything that we need. We have the sacraments, we have scripture, we have the model of the saints. It's all there. And Catholic coaching really helps you just to apply all the things that you're starting to become aware of in a way that can be tangible and allow you to feel and experience that freedom. If you are interested in something sparked in this series, the need for support and help. I would love to walk alongside you and you can schedule a free Catholic Clarity coaching call in the description. I wanted to close with a quote from a beautiful saint. And I just think that this sums everything up. This is from St. John Viani, and he says, You cannot please both God and the world at the same time. They are utterly opposed to each other in their thoughts, their desires, and their actions. So I am wishing you all a beautiful week. Reach out. I would love to support you. Come say hi to me on Instagram, and I will be bringing you some amazing interviews in the next couple episodes. I cannot wait. Until then, I'll see you next time and God bless. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Living Whole and Holy podcast. If you're ready to dive deeper into life coaching from a Catholic perspective, I have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching. This is an amazing opportunity for you to work with someone who will empower you and support you to dream again with God, find more alignment, peace, and confidence in your life, and be the greatest version of who God is calling you to be.

Speaker 35:37

I would be so honored to support you on this journey. Send me a DM on Instagram at Living Whole and Holy for a free one-on-one call to learn more. If this episode blessed you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend.

Speaker 1 35:50

And remember, instead of doing what makes you happy, do what makes you holy. Until next time, God bless. Thanks so much for tuning in to the Living Whole and Holy podcast. If you're ready to dive deeper into life coaching from a Catholic perspective, I have a few spots available for one-on-one coaching. This is an amazing opportunity for you to work with someone who will empower you and support you to dream again with God, find more alignment, peace, and confidence in your life, and be the greatest version of who God is calling you to be.

Speaker 36:19

I would be so honored to support you on this journey. Send me a DM on Instagram at Living Whole and Holy for a free one on one call to learn more. If this episode blessed you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend. And remember, instead of doing what makes you happy, do what makes you holy.

Speaker 1 36:35

Until next time, God bless.