Episode 139. When Making Others Happy Is Making You Miserable with Karen Ehman
Karen welcome back to the show. I'm so excited to have you today. Thanks so much for having me. It's my pleasure. I. Just, I love the stuff that you've been tackling in your last couple of books. And when I read the title of your newest message, that made me really excited because I think there are so many women.
Um, I know many of my listeners who this message is going to be so impactful to. So it's called when making others happy is making you miserable. So I see, almost see this theme, Karen, of like your last couple of books, like. Of this lane of really walking alongside women who are survivors, who are helpers, but there's some stuff that we can easily fall into, like people-pleasing, which we're going to talk about today, um, with that type of personality.
And so how do you think God kind of started leading you down this path of, of writing these messages? Well, it's kind of funny. Someone said to me the other day, it wasn't your last book called make their day. Like you're supposed to be doing stuff for other people. And now this one is like doing stuff for other people and making them happy.
It's making you miserable. So I do feel like I owe a little bit of an explanation. What it is honestly is it's a strength that gets carried to an extreme. And now it becomes, well, I'm not going to say weakness in our family. We say a non strength. So it becomes something that is non strength. So we are called to love and to serve and to help others.
But sometimes we take it a little too far and without any boundaries in place, all of a sudden we're running around trying to save the world and rescue everybody and help them and say yes, and sure. You know, I'll show up with a smile to help and really. We're guilty of over-serving we're no longer doing it.
Yeah. Because we feel God has called us to we're doing it because the other person expects us to. So that's why I really felt like I wanted to address this topic of people pleasing, because I think we, yeah, as women and as lovers and helpers and servers, we so often fall into the trap. Because we are doing it, not for the Lord, but we're doing it either to get a response from someone we want them to like us or to avoid a response from someone like we don't want to make them upset or angry or sad.
Yeah. That's really good. And I'm wondering how many of our listeners would say. Oh, but that, like, that's what I'm called to do. Like I'm called to serve people I'm called to, to help people. And so I wonder for you, Karen, have you seen even in your own life or in the lives of, you know, your readers as you walk alongside them, is there this sort of like sticking point where we go, okay, now I'm people pleasing.
Like how might that sort of present itself in our lives? Are there maybe a few things that you would want people to watch out for as they're, as they're thinking about this. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of a internal dialogue we have in our head when we're asked to take on a responsibility or a task, or, you know, even we're just asked our opinion about something in our head.
We're like, I really know what I want to say, but then we're also thinking. Yeah. Yeah. But I know what they want me to say, that person standing in front of me or that person at the other end of the cell phone line. Right. So we need to. Learn to train our brains to, to say, Lord, help me to speak. The truth helped me to be kind and loving when I do it, rather than thinking, you know, shoot up that prayer rather than thinking, oh, what do they want me to say?
What does this person want me to say? And then just kind of capitulating to that because you want to maintain your reputation of being competent or compassionate or whatever image you're trying to keep up rather than thinking, what do they want me to say? Think what does God want me to do? Yeah, that's really good.
And it makes me that you said it, but it makes me think of that scripture. That's like, it talks about speaking the truth in love. That means saying maybe the hard thing. Sometimes it means maybe, maybe saying a no. And those things that may be mindful might feel uncomfortable, but that is the reality that those very things sometimes are speaking truth and love.
And so I love that you point that out and I think another really important. Part of this conversation is the idea of margin. You talk about this in the book. And I love, I love this conversation because I love talking about time management and how we can maximize our time and all those things. And so what are some of your favorite ways to create margin or what does that look like in your life?
Well, I think it starts with realizing that we as women. We have something that we don't like to admit that we have, and that is limitations. You know, we just think that we can keep stretching and stretching and meeting all the needs, or we can keep piling and piling more things on our plate. We never think to remove something from our plate before we play something new on it, somebody's responsibility or task or ask, because we think that, you know, if we're just super clever and creative, somehow we can make it all fit.
But I think. Margin starts with realizing we have limitations. We have limitations, we can't do it all. We can't be God only God can help and save everyone. Right. We can't. And then I think we need to be very intentional to black and some margin before we put in some other things too, to think about those non-negotiables in our life.
Like time spent with God time spent with family. Even time spent for ourselves. And I don't mean that in like a narcissistic special, you have to have a spa day a week kind of way, even though I'm not against spa days. And I love spa days, my daughter treats me to them sometimes, but we need time to just be alone.
To be alone with God, to be alone with our families. And sometimes just to be alone, to do nothing, to do something we enjoy that will fill us back up and, and rejuvenate us. And, um, I even has gone so far. I don't, I wish I could remember where I heard it, but I was listening to a podcast as I was walking, as I often do.
And somebody had a guest on that was talking about our brains and how our brains are wired. And they said that everybody needs at least 17 minutes a day of doing that. Doing nothing thinking nothing. Just 17 minutes of silence. So I started this about a year and a half ago. I, to. Just either, if it's, if it's in the winter, I sit in my living room in front of the fire and I just, I just watch the fireplace.
I try not to think about anything. I'm pretty good at about doing nothing. Cause I'm tired and I want to sit still. It's a treat for me to sit still. Cause I rarely do, but it's hard for me to shut my brain off, but I'll do that in the winter or, or in the summer or the fall or the spring. I'll take a launch here and go out to our.
Part of our property, where we have woods and the squirrels running around and the birds are singing. And I will try my very hardest not to be cleaning grocery menu or not to be thinking about, you know, that conversation. And I need to have that person, but I just try to look around at nature and think nothing.
And it does something, it like resets our brains and just building that little minute, you know, 17 minutes. Of silence into our day and giving us that little bit of cushion, that little bit of margin for me, it's just been revolutionary. Yeah, that's so good. I did a lot more of that in quarantine when I was stuck in the house.
I remember last spring, I remember looking at my husband and saying, I feel like I'm watching. The seasons change for the first time in my life, I'm actually noticing the changes in our trees and in our flowers. And I'm watching our grass grow like wow, for the first time, because I, I mean, to be honest, I had the time, right.
Like I had the bandwidth to do that, but it challenged me as well. Has, you know, become whatever it's going to be now, you know, to, to carve out that time, to sit on our back porch and breathe fresh air at the end of the day and things like that. That's so important. Not also. Well, as we're talking about all this, it makes me think of something that's been really impactful to my husband and I.
So my husband's a lead pastor. I'm a podcast or a writer. So, you know, you're, you're creating content all the time, right? There's this, this phrase that I heard a couple of years ago, that was really powerful to me. It said, if you work with your mind Sabbath with your hands, and if you work with your hands Sabbath with your mind, and I've found for my husband and I.
Over the last couple of years that it feels so restful to create something with my hands, like to garden, to pull weeds, to make clay jewelry, to crochet, like to do something creative that, um, I can start and finish in a, in a setting that feels so restful. To me and to my mind, because a lot of what I do, um, the finish line is a, is a long runway, right?
Like writing a book, doing podcasts, things like that. And so sometimes it just feels nice to create something that has nothing to do with your job, you know? And that's true in your life. Oh yeah. It's so funny. My high school pastor, he said that in a sermon once, and I've never forgotten it. He didn't say Sabbath, but he said.
If you work with your hands, have a hobby that uses your mind. And if you work with your mind, you need to have a hobby that uses your hands. And I remember thinking, wow, that's gonna interesting. I tucked it away. When I was older and an adult and had a job and it's so true, it is so true. There's something for me about just doing something mindless, but where I'm fidgeting with my hands.
You know, even if it's snapping green beans to make the dinner, you know, that it does, it gives your brain a break. It really does. I love that. Well, back to kind of the people pleasing topic, you, I pulled a quote from the book you say, we cannot fulfill our divine purpose. If we're too busy, living everyone else's and that was.
That was such a sobering reminder to me. And I wonder, have there been times in your life care and where you have felt, you know, okay. I have to put some boundaries up, um, to really be able to fulfill my own purpose. Like, what does that look like in your own life? Yeah, I think for all of us, we can think of someone in our life that has an agenda for us, what they want us to do, how they want us to dress, how they want us to behave, how they want us to raise our kids.
And, and sometimes we are too busy living everyone. Else's. And we're not really living God's agenda for us. And so first I just had to black out the noise. I had to realize that I don't need those, those, uh, or permission from those people to do God's will, if God's calling me to do something, I don't need their permission.
So I've got to just, you know, do away with it with that people-pleasing aspect that. Everyone to like my decisions and wants everybody to approve of what I'm doing. I just have to do a way with it. And two, I just had to actually give up some things in my life to free up time for me to be a writer and a speaker.
I mean, I remember early on when I first began, uh, kids were very small. And a lot of the moms, you know, were running around to, you know, lunch dates and play dates and doing all sorts of stuff. And even just having like favorite television shows, they'd get together and talk about their television shows and, and we'd be maybe sitting on the sidelines of a tee-ball game or something.
And I remember thinking, wow, I have cut out some of these things in my life. I mean, I still go out to lunch with friends, but. As frequently as I used to, and I didn't have a favorite television show that I, and I never missed. And I remember one time sitting on the sidelines and someone said to me, I just, this was when I very first started.
I maybe had one or two books. And, um, I just started a blog. Blog was blogging, was just kind of getting to be a thing. And they're like, I just don't know how you do it all. I don't know how you have a blog. There has to just be so much work. And I said, oh, probably only takes me like, maybe. One or two hours a week.
I mean, I was only blogging a couple of days a week and they're like, well, I just don't know where I'd fit it in. And I said, well, let me ask you this. What's your favorite television show? And, um, they said dancing with the stars and they said, it's on two nights, you watch one night for an hour. Maybe it was even two hours.
And then you see the results show the next day for an hour. And I'm like, okay. So that's like three hours of day. You're watching that show. Do you do anything else while you're watching it or are you also like multitasking, folding laundry and stuff and then, oh no, no, no, no. I wouldn't want to miss a minute.
I said, well, there's my, there's my blog time. I don't watch TV show three hours a year. So we all have to realize that we've all been given 24 hours in a day and we can do with that. What we would like, you know, with limitations. I mean, if we have a job we have to work, we have to work. We have to care for kids care for our homes, but with our discretionary time, I often find when people say I don't have time for that it's that they don't want to make time, make time for it.
So I know for me, I had to kind of give up some things, which I don't miss at all in order to just start those very first baby steps of speaking and writing. And now it's been over 20 years and I'm so glad that I put those boundaries in place and I was intensive. To fill my time with what my dream was and what I felt God calling me to do.
Yeah. Karen, that feels very close to my vest right now. I am in that I don't have children yet, but I am in that very season that you're describing as really having to cut out a lot of the kind of discretionary stuff. I am writing my first book, but the reality of that is. I'm doing it and like the nooks and crannies of my days.
Right. And, and it's, and it's happening though? I mean, I'm about three chapters in, it's not doodle March. I'm so I'm so excited. But, um, I have, I watched a lot of TV lately. Nope. Have I just been on Instagram to scroll Instagram for the sake of knowing what people are up to? Not really, like, I, I haven't found the, the bandwidth for that, but I'm okay with I'm okay.
With that. I've just had to find. You know, kind of that balance of setting aside time to go on a date night and, and, you know, finding those things that I can, you know, rest with my hands and do on the weekends to kind of get away from work. And, um, it's all a balance that we strike and, and it's all a kind of a matter of priorities, which.
Brings me to another part of the book that I really enjoy. And I want people to go grab the book to really unpack this well, but you talk about creating a strategy for knowing how to say yes and how to say no. Like what does that don't give away all your, all your secrets, but like, what would you encourage listeners today to do, to maybe take steps towards knowing how to do that?
Well, it may sound like a Sunday school answer, but first of all, I think it starts with prayer, you know, to ask ourselves, have we really been deliberate to pray about our decision-making when it comes to saying yes to saying no to, to others. And if we haven't prayed about it, how are we going to expect God to answer?
You know, when the time comes for us to say yes or to say no. So I think making it a matter of prayer, asking the Lord each day, Lord, tap me on. When something is for me when I'm to meet that need or I'm to say yes to that ask or that commitment. And when it's not, my call helped me to say no, helped me to realize that every need is not my call.
I also think it can be very helpful to lay out an old fashioned pro and con list, you know, get out a legal pad and a pen or pencil and something cool to drinking and just sit down and write it, write it down and ask yourself if I say yes, what are the points? What are the cons? And if I say no same thing, what are the pros?
What are the cons? And also just one other one that I'll mention is I think we really need to be careful to ask ourselves. If we grant this request, if we say yes to something, what is it going to do to both the other commitments we have and to our family and our home, we often don't do that. We often just think, you know, is this something I like to do?
And will, I think it's fun. Do I like the person who's asking me? And I want to keep them happy? Yeah, sure. But we don't think, Ooh, what are the ramifications of this? You know, because every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else, right. So what am I going to have to say no to in my family or my home, you know, or even my fun time, my hobby time, my time with friends, whatever, really think of the impact that saying yes to something is going to have, um, the rest of your life that's already going on, but it's already been put in place.
Yeah, that's really good. I had a conversation with one of our college students a couple of days ago. I don't think she would mind me sharing this, but she had rushed, you know, done the whole sorority thing, right. The beginning of the school year and was really struggling with whether or not she wanted to, to pledge and, and join a sorority.
And, um, The sticking point for her was just the time commitment because the reality of college life in the middle of a not quite yet post pandemic world is there's not a lot of ways to meet friends. And so there was a very real need for her to make friends at this new school. And that would maybe be a way to way to do that.
Right. And she, she knew that I, I didn't do a sorority in college and I mean, it just, it's so expensive and I just never, um, my mom's theory was always, you've been making friends for 18 years. Why would I start paying for you to make friends now? Um, which I always thought was really funny. And, and so she just came to me of like, you know, I know you didn't do a sorority.
So like help me walk through, you know, the decision. And she actually did make a pros and cons list. So when you said that, it reminded me of her, I said, You know, I think the couple of things that I would consider is, um, you know, can you still get involved in a local church? Like, are you going to have the capacity for that on top of school, on top of work, on top of sorority to really get plugged into community, like things that you, you truly know that you need, um, in this new season, You know, are you going to have time for that?
If you say yes. And so she came back to me about a day later and she said, you'll love this care. And she said, I made a pros and cons list. I had two pros and I had 10 cons. And then I realized that the pros were really cons. So I said, no, Oh, how funny. So I love that even at her age, she was, she, it was very methodical the way she made the decision.
But, um, I think that can be so powerful when a decision kind of feels weighty, right? Like most of the things that we're talking about, these aren't easy yeses or nos that we're talking about, they're things that would add value to our lives, or would maybe bring us joy or bring somebody else joy, but are they the right thing for our season and for our family and all of those things.
I love that method. So good. So as you are launching this book into the world, and you think about your reader, what's your hope for them as they walk away from this message? What are you praying for that they will just learn to play. The will of God above the desires of others. And I don't want to say that in like a real mysterious, like, Ooh, I have to figure out the will of God.
But if we are really, I had someone say to me, once when I was first a Christian in high school, that God's will, and his word are synonymous. So if we are careful to be. All about doing what God says in his word we are to do. Uh, we will realize God's word says we are not to place the fear of humans above the fear of God.
We're not to please people above pleasing God. Yes, we are called to love and to serve. We can't do it all. We can't just think about even Jesus didn't heal everyone on earth. You know, even Jesus, when you look at his life, he knew when to pour into people and when to pull back and go be alone, he knew when to spend time with the crowds and when to spend time with just his 12 best friends or sometimes just his three best friends that he was doing ministry with, we need to.
Realize we can't do it all. So we need to be going to God's word for our marching orders and that to other people and living our lives according to their agenda. And I think the biggest thing I would really want to leave people with is probably the greatest revelation that I've had in walking this journey of, of learning to stop, trying to, to just make everyone else happy is that you can still say yes to a friendship.
But say no to a request from a friend. And I think I used to get that wrong. I used to think, oh, I have to. I have to always say yes when they, you know, when my kids were littler and people say, can you watch my kids? You know, Friday night? I'm like, uh, and I would sometimes cancel plans. I had to just watch their kids.
Cause I felt like I always had to say yes to my friends or it was going to ruin our friendship or make it awkward or, you know, somehow just cause some tension in our relationship. But you can see. Say yes to a friendship by saying no to a friend. If someone is truly your friend, they're going to care about you and your margin and your bandwidth and your limitations and your mental health.
And if you just are honest and saying, you know, I would so love to say yes, my, I mean, my everything in me, my heart wants to say yes, but the reality of the bandwidth of my life right now means I have to say no, and they don't want to be your friend anymore. Then they weren't really your friend in the first place.
You're your true friends will understand that you need to go. Guard your time. Yeah. Yeah, that matters so much. And that has been a hard, a hard lesson for me as well. So I think that's so powerful for listeners and I'm just, I'm so excited about this book. It was one that needs to be written. Um, so I'm going to say the name of it again for people who didn't catch it at the beginning, it's called when making others happy is making you miserable.
And carrot. I'm just so excited for you and excited to share this with our listeners. So make sure you go grab a copy of it. Wherever books are sold, it'll be out in the world by the time people listen to this and we are going to get to know Karen A. Little bit better over on our Patrion page now, but for this part of the conversation, Karen, I just want to say a big thank you for joining us again.
Well, thanks so much for having me.
