Hi. I'm a people pleaser. To a fault.
If you're not a people pleaser, chances are I envy you. I envy your ability to stick up for yourself, not caring what others think. I envy your ability to say no without losing sleep over the thought of maybe, possibly, in some miniscule way, letting someone down. I envy your ability to know someone doesn't like you and not be bothered by it so much that you do whatever you can to change it.
The majority of my life has consisted of second-guessing every word and every action out of fear of displeasing those around me. I have pushed myself as an individual to the back of everything out of fear of disappointing and letting down those around me. In my mind at least, once you've upset someone, you've given them reason to dislike you. And that's the worst.
Then I learned something:
"They don't have to like you and you don't have to care."
At some point in life, we're all going to meet people who don't like us and that HAS TO BE okay. We can't realistically expect every single person we come in contact with to like us, no matter how great that sounds. I had let the lie that I could be in control of making everyone like me if I just did everything perfectly right, bully me into living out of fear rather than in the freedom of Jesus Christ.
Here's the thing: People are radically different from one another. We all have different passions and gifts. We all have different interests, moral codes and beliefs. We all have different Meyers-Briggs personality types, favorite foods, music preferences, ranges of abilities and cultural backgrounds. We can't possibly be expected to get along with every human being with whom we come in contact. In a perfect world, pre-fall, sure. Maybe if that were still the atmosphere in which we lived, we would all live in perfect harmony and all like each other; however, we don't live in that world. We live in one which is fallen and broken.
We all have people who push our buttons. We all have people we just don't like and can't quite explain why. What I've come to realize is that for me, personally, I would tend to explain that away. "I don't have to like them as long as I love them. And I do love them and try to love them well to the best of my ability." Yet, when it came to someone not liking me, that all went out the window. I would freak out because one person didn't like me and it felt like it was the end of the world as I knew it.
So, it was okay for me to not like someone, but not okay for anybody to dislike me? How did that make sense? It didn't and it doesn't. It's just another way the enemy perverts how we view the world in order to deter us from loving people the way God intended.
Because, guess what? We won't always be able to control whether or not someone likes us. Sometimes, people just won't like us. They won't be able to explain why; they just won't be a fan. We have to be able to accept that. We can't live our whole lives bending over backwards, trying to make every acquaintance into a best friend. We have to know our limits. We have to know when its out of our control and becoming an unhealthy obsession.
Really. It's okay to not be liked every once in a while. I'm not saying to go out and do everything you can to make people dislike you, but go out and be unapologetically yourself. Don't change who you are just to please someone else or make them change their opinion of you. Be who God created you to be. As long as you are living in the path He has for you, He will provide you with the people you need: nothing more and nothing less. Don't doubt His provisions and love for His children.
"They don't have to like you and you don't have to care."
