Excerpt
Confidence Is an Inside Job
Chapter 1
Why Do We Care So Much? This is what the Lord says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.”
Jeremiah 6:16 (NIV)
It was the first day of kindergarten. I was in my favorite pink dress and the cutest white high-top tennis shoes, which I had to beg my mom for because they were white, and she absolutely knew they wouldn’t come home that way. (She was right.) My hair was pulled back into pigtails, my favorite style, because my grandma always told me how cute I looked when my hair was that way.
Precocious was the word most adults used to describe me, which just meant “loud and in charge.” I was a force to be reckoned with wherever I went. “Too much” is what my dad would say. “Ashley, remember when you get into class today, just don’t be too much. Tone it down. Don’t draw too much attention to yourself if you want the other kids to like you.” That was Dad, though, always telling me to take it down a notch. It’s safe to say my big personality was not his favorite thing about me.
But the second I entered the classroom, Dad’s advice went right out the window. I walked in on top of the world. Confidence was never a problem for me back then, and on this particular day, I felt especially pretty. I quickly sized up the other kids, making eye contact right away with girls and boys who seemed like best-friend material.
“Hi! I’m Ashley,” I’d say, a little too loudly and a little too close to their faces.
Later that morning, my teacher announced we were going to make a fun project for our first day of school by drawing a life-size picture of ourselves. She gave each of us a large piece of white butcher paper, and then she paired us with a partner who would draw our outline while we were lying on the floor.
The girl I was paired with rolled her eyes and whispered to her friend next to her. They both looked in my direction and giggled. I wondered what was so funny and hoped she’d tell me while we were working together.
I traced her outline first, taking extra-special care to get it just right. Then it was her turn. She traced me, giggling again as she tried to outline around my pigtails and the flare of my dress. She didn’t talk much, but her silence didn’t bother me. I could easily carry any conversation by myself.
Once we were finished with the tracings and added details, everyone laughed as they looked at their classmates’ drawings. My boys have each made one of these outlines on their first day of kindergarten, and I imagine you or your kiddos might have done one as well, so you know what they look like. The phrase “Picasso goes to kindergarten” comes to mind.
I looked at my finished drawing and felt such pride in my work. Did I look silly? Absolutely. We all did. But my tracing partner and her friend seemed to be especially interested in pointing out everything wrong with my picture, which was obviously a stand-in for my actual appearance. My pigtails were too babyish. My dress was too fancy. And who wears tennis shoes with a dress? (Can you tell this was the ’90s and not the 2020s?)
It was the first time I really remember caring what someone else thought about me. And I remember how it made me feel: panicky.
Heat flooded my cheeks. My breath came in spurts; my heart was beating out of my chest. My thoughts started spinning a million miles an hour, jumbling together as I tried to figure out how in the world I was going to make friends with these girls—and what I might have to change about myself to do it.
This was in kindergarten, y’all. My heart breaks for little five-year-old me.
When I (thankfully) got off the bus that afternoon, I ran straight into my mom’s arms and cried. “They don’t like me, and I don’t know why!” I moaned into her shoulder.
I don’t remember what she said to comfort me. I’m sure it was something moms say to comfort little hearts, but I’ve never forgotten that day—or the pain of those girls’ words.
So I vowed that from that day forward I would do whatever it took for those girls not to just like me but to love me.
People-Pleasing 101 The need to feel liked, accepted, included, starts when we’re young, doesn’t it?
In reality, searching for acceptance starts way before we head off to kindergarten, long before the influence of friends or social media. From our earliest ages, we begin to adjust our behaviors based on what we sense as pleasure and displeasure from others.
How do I know? I’ve seen it in my children from the time they were little.
Ever played the “throw it on the floor” game with a baby in a high chair? They throw something on the floor. You laugh, pick up what they tossed, set it back on the high chair, and what do they do? They throw it on the floor again, right? The more you laugh, the more they sense your approval, and they keep throwing the object on the floor. Of course, it’s not so funny when things escalate and they throw their bowl of oatmeal on the floor, but the whole interaction is based on the good feelings they get from pleasing you.
We are encouraged by the praise of others. That encouragement feeds us in a way that triggers all kinds of happy brain chemicals, and we start to chase praise when we’re very, very young. It’s not something we ever really outgrow. And there’s a reason for that. We were never intended to outgrow our desire to be accepted.
Because God made us that way.
From the moment God created Adam, he was pleased. Then when God saw that Adam needed companionship, he created Eve. And he was pleased with her too. In fact, the Bible tells us that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, NIV).
The Bible doesn’t talk a lot about what Adam and Eve were thinking in those early days in the garden. But since we still talk about the Garden of Eden today as a place of paradise, I’d like to think that, in this perfect place, Adam and Eve were happy and content. They were in relationship with God and with each other, and there were no outside forces compelling them to pull away from one another.
But that didn’t last forever, did it?
You know the story. The serpent convinced Eve to eat fruit from the one tree in the garden God told her not to eat from. Satan convinced her to eat that fruit by making her feel like something was missing in her life, something God didn’t want her to have. Once she’d eaten the fruit, she convinced Adam to eat it too. Perhaps without thinking of the consequences, Adam and Eve decided to separate themselves from God. And God decided to show this separation physically by banishing Adam and Eve from the perfect paradise he’d made.
Oh man, the lessons we can take away from one little (but oh-so-huge) story.
First, when I said that people-pleasing has been around for a while, I wasn’t kidding. This is the story of the very beginning of human history, and it’s about people-pleasing. So don’t feel bad if you struggle with trying to make everyone around you feel happy—because humans have been struggling with it literally since the dawn of time.
Adam cared a lot about pleasing Eve. And why wouldn’t he! She was his wife, his BFF. They were thick as thieves in the garden. But here’s the problem: When he decided to take that fruit from Eve, he cared more about pleasing his wife than he cared about pleasing God. And God doesn’t make his rules in a “because I said so” sort of way. He doesn’t need us to obey him for an ego boost. I mean, he’s God—he can do what he wants. He makes these rules because he knows what’s best for us. He created guidelines because he knew we’d need them, like instructions in a recipe.
Adam and Eve decided they didn’t really need the instructions and were going to start making decisions without God. And you know what? It isn’t hard to see that acting against our own best interests (like, you know, listening to what God has for us) to please someone else can quickly backfire. And backfire it did.
And that’s really the problem with people-pleasing. Making others happy feels good. Meeting the needs of others feels good. When others approve of us, we feel good. But honestly, working so hard to please other people is a bit shortsighted, because what feels good in the moment isn’t always good for us in the long run. When we believe that pleasing other people is the only way to contentment and the only way we’re worthy of love and belonging, that’s a big fat lie from Satan—a lie that’s easy to believe. Clearly.
But hold on, Ashley, you may be thinking. Am I just supposed to make people mad all the time? How am I going to have any friends if I’m just ticking people off? How are my loved ones going to continue talking to me if I don’t do anything that makes them happy?
