The Approval Fix

How to Break Free From People-Pleasing

Joyce Meyer

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781444785654
• eBook ISBN: 9781444785661
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Religion

When we hear the word addiction, we tend to think of unbreakable habits involving drugs or alcohol. But many people struggle each day with a different kind of addiction: a deep need for the approval of others. Their unquenchable thirst for love and acceptance often causes people to suffer in relationships, give up on their dreams, and even forfeit their destinies. The key to breaking free from approval addiction, and the people-pleasing that goes along with it, is to understand and embrace the love of God and others and to be able to love yourself.In The Approval Fix, best-selling author Joyce Meyer offers the practical insights and lessons necessary to find freedom from the need for approval. Anyone who wants to enjoy life and build healthy relationships, but struggles to feel accepted, will benefit immensely from this book, which is full of proven principles from Meyer's years of experience helping people find freedom in many areas of their lives.

PART 1

Accepting Who You Are

CHAPTER 1

God Loves You

Carol was a miserable and frustrated young mother. She constantly compared herself to other people she knew and struggled to be like them. She wanted to be the cook her mother had been, the parent her friends were, and the wife her overly demanding husband expected her to be. She was a stay-at-home mom with three young children and had her hands full, but she often felt that perhaps she should also work a full-time job to help with the family finances. She was never relaxed, nor did she enjoy feeling confident.

She tried so hard to gain everyone’s approval that she was mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted most of the time. She feared the rejection of the people she loved, and she lived her life every day trying keep them happy, rather than following God and her own heart. She felt imprisoned by her fears, and she was in a trap she did not know how to break out of. Carol was also starting to feel bitter because she felt that other people’s demands were stealing her life, but what was really stealing her life was her unwillingness to trust God and be bold enough to be the person He wanted her to be.

She wanted other people to change and be less demanding, but God wanted her to change and be bold enough to stand up to them when she needed to. We must all learn to stand up for our right to be ourselves and not cave in to the pressure we frequently feel to be someone that we truly don’t know how to be.

Carol was searching for significance in all the wrong places. She kept trying to get from people what only God could give her, which was unconditional love and acceptance. The root of her problem was that she felt guilty and ashamed of herself due to some unresolved abuse in her childhood, and she needed emotional healing from God. No matter how many people she tried to please in her life, she would never feel whole and complete until she received Jesus as her Savior and learned to see herself through His eyes.

Do you relate to Carol? If so, I pray that you are ready to let Jesus set you free from the tyranny of being a people pleaser and an approval addict. Do you live under a burden of guilt or shame, feeling unworthy and insecure? Do you go through life feeling something is wrong with you but are unable to articulate what it is? Are you a people pleaser, always looking for the approval of others?

If so, those feelings affect every area of your life. They affect your personal relationships; since you are a Christian, they also adversely affect your prayer life, your ability to grow spiritually, and your pursuit of your God-given destiny. They certainly steal your joy, your peace, and your ability to look confidently toward your future—and that is not God’s will for you. God wants you to live with confidence in His love for you, and to boldly do and be all that He has planned for you.

God’s will is for you to enjoy your life and fulfill the purpose for which He created you. To live a life you enjoy, a life filled with purpose, you will need the confidence that comes from knowing you are right with God through Jesus, a healthy, positive self-image, and good relationships with others. These things cannot coexist with an approval addiction, so the addiction has to go.

The first step to understanding and breaking free from approval addiction is to understand fear, because fear of some sort is at the root of an unbalanced need for approval. People deal with an endless variety of fears, but one I discovered in my own life—and one you may also be dealing with—is the fear of not being pleasing to God. This is common among Christians who struggle with approval addiction.

If you have ever been hurt by someone who is difficult or impossible to please, you may think God is the same way. He isn’t! In fact, pleasing God is not nearly as hard as you may think. Simple, childlike faith pleases Him. He already knows we are not perfect and will not behave perfectly all the time. That is why He sent Jesus to pay for our failures and mistakes.

Believers Believe

For many years, I struggled in frustration trying to please God with good or even perfect behavior. At the same time, I was always afraid I was failing. No matter what I did right, I always seemed to find something I was doing wrong. I never felt good enough; regardless of how well I did certain things, I always felt I needed to do more. I thought God was displeased with me, and even though that was wrong, it was true for me because I believed it.

Many people, maybe even you, have believed lies that have kept them in bondage. They have been unable to break free and move into the great life God has for them simply because of wrong belief systems. If you have believed lies in the past, you can let them go, begin to believe truth, and enjoy the awesome future God has planned for you.

Christians are called believers. God accepts us because of our faith, not our good works. If our job were to achieve, we would be called achievers, not believers. We often want to emphasize what we do, but our focus should be on what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. We have a choice: we can concentrate on our sin and be miserable, or we can concentrate on God’s forgiveness and mercy and be happy.

Once we see this truth, we can enjoy our relationship with God. We don’t have to feel pressured to behave perfectly and then be afraid we have failed when our performance is less than perfect. If we want to please God with all our hearts, all we need to do is believe in His Son Jesus Christ and believe what He says in His Word.

It’s a Trap!

Believing we must perform perfectly to be accepted is a snare of the enemy; it is not from God. I lived in the performance-acceptance trap for many years because I was addicted to approval. I felt if I performed well, then God and others would accept me and approve of me. I did not feel good about myself, nor did I accept myself unless my performance was admirable. When I did not perform well, I automatically assumed God rejected me, because experience had taught me to expect such behavior from the people around me and I believed God was just like they were. God does not reject us when we make mistakes, but if we think He does, if we fear He does, that lie becomes truth to us, because we believe it.

I once had an employee who had experienced much rejection from her father when she did not do well in school or perform perfectly in other areas. When she came to work for our ministry and her job performance was anything less than perfect, I sensed her withdrawing from me, and I felt she was rejecting me. Not only did she withdraw, she also went into a frenzy trying to get more work done. If I asked about the status of her work, she only seemed calm and happy if she could tell me everything was done, and done exactly right.

I did not understand my employee’s behavior at the time, but through prayer and sharing openly we finally discovered that she was extremely afraid of being rejected if she did not perform perfectly. Thankfully, she eventually learned to believe I loved and accepted her even though her performance was not always perfect. This enabled us to work together in joy for many years.

Just as I had learned in my own life, my employee had to learn to believe what I said rather than what she felt. We must choose to do likewise in our relationship with God. We must learn to trust His Word more than our own feelings. We often bow down to our feelings without realizing how fickle and unreliable they are. God loves us and accepts us unconditionally. His love is not based on our performance; He does not “grade” us. Ephesians 1:6 says we are made acceptable in the Beloved (NKJV). Our faith in Jesus, not our performance, is what makes us acceptable to God and pleases Him.

Relax. God Is Pleased.

Anyone who loves God wants to please Him. The fact that we desire to please Him pleases Him. We want God’s approval, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, a desire to please God is necessary because it motivates us to seek His will in all things. People who have a deep desire to please God may not perform perfectly all the time, but they keep pressing forward and continually want to improve. Their attitudes and motives are right before God, and that pleases Him.

Second Chronicles 16:9 says God is searching for someone in whom He can show Himself strong, someone whose heart is perfect toward Him. This verse does not say He is looking for someone with a perfect performance but for someone with a perfect heart—a heart that desires to please Him, a heart that grieves over sin and evil, a heart that believes in Him and in His willingness and ability to forgive and restore. God knows we cannot achieve perfection. If we could, we would be perfect in our performance; we would not need a Savior, and Jesus would have come in vain.

God is a God of hearts. He sees and cares about our attitudes of heart more than our performance.

You can relax and take comfort in the fact that God approves of you completely and is pleased with you. His approval and pleasure do not depend on you; they rest completely on the fact that you are in Christ and on everything Jesus has done for us. God is not surprised by your inabilities, your imperfections, or your faults. He has always known everything about you, things you are just now finding out, and He chose you on purpose for Himself. Jesus presents you blameless and faultless before God if you place your trust in Him (see 1 Corinthians 1:7–8). He loves you and values you more than you know!

CHAPTER 2

You Are Valuable

I come from an abusive background. My past left me suffering from insecurities even after I became a Christian because I was not seeing myself through the eyes of Scripture. I didn’t like myself and rejected myself because I did not see myself as God saw me. I did not know who I was in Christ; I was not rooted and grounded in His love, and I did not know I could find my approval in Him. Even though Scripture told me I had been re-created in Christ (see Ephesians 2:10), made new, and given a fresh start and a great future, I still saw myself as a failure, someone unlovable and unacceptable.

My life was extremely difficult during that time. I was continually frustrated and had no real peace or joy, because I had a poor self-image and felt nobody liked me. Those feelings caused me to act as though I did not need anyone or care about how others thought or felt about me. Yet deep inside, I really did care, and I tried very hard to be what others expected me to be.

But as I studied the Word of God, I learned I am valuable in who I am in Christ, not in what I do or in other people’s opinions of me. I realized I did not have to stay insecure because when God looked at me, He saw the righteousness of His Son Jesus (see 2 Corinthians 5:21), not everything that was wrong with me or everything I had done wrong. That truth set me free, and it will do the same for you. For the first time in my life, I learned how important it was for me to fill my mind with the Word of God, and I felt secure.

It’s All in Your Mind

Breaking an addiction begins in the mind, with getting established in the truth of God’s Word. Whether people are addicted to something physical, such as drugs, alcohol, or gambling, or to something emotional, such as approval, they will never break its grip until they start thinking differently. A certain way of thinking got them into the addiction and keeps them there, so it makes sense that new thought patterns—such as focusing on their righteousness, not their “wrongness”—will help set them free from it. I encourage you to form a habit of being “righteousness conscious” rather than “sin conscious.” Focus on Jesus and His love, forgiveness, and mercy toward you rather than on everything you have done wrong.

We can begin to change our thinking, which Scripture calls “renewing our minds,” through studying God’s Word (see Romans 12:2). As we think differently, we will behave differently because, as I like to say, “where the mind goes the man follows,” meaning that our thoughts guide our actions (see Proverbs 23:7). Years ago, my thinking changed when I saw in God’s Word that He was actually pleased with me and accepted me even though I did not behave perfectly. I purposefully started expecting people to like me. And sure enough, they did. I even began to confess aloud that God gave me favor and that people liked me. I learned to say what God says about me instead of what the enemy wants me to believe, and that is critical for anyone who wants to break free from any kind of bondage.

God tries to tell us in His Word how much He loves us and He accepts us, and that even though He already knows every mistake we will ever make, He still chose us for Himself. Ephesians 1:4 says:

Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.

We read this truth, but we have difficulty receiving it. We let our feelings about ourselves steal the blessings of God’s acceptance and approval. We allow other people’s opinions to determine our worth and value rather than relying on God’s Word. If we will not only read the words of Scripture but also believe and embrace them, we will do ourselves a huge favor.

I encourage you to say aloud several times a day: “God loves me unconditionally, and He is pleased with me.” The mind rejects such statements; after all, how could God, who is perfect, be pleased with us in our imperfections? The point is that God separates who we are from what we do. Let me explain.

My children are Meyers. They don’t always act right, but they never stop being Meyers; they never stop being my children. Knowing their hearts are right goes a long way with me. They make mistakes, but as long as they admit them and their hearts are pure, I am always willing to work with them.

God feels the same about you. As a believer in Jesus Christ, you are His child. You may not always act the way He wants you to, but you never stop being His child. I will never give up on my children, and God will never give up on us!

God Is Not Surprised

We often act as though God is shocked to discover that we fail or make mistakes. The truth is: God has a big eraser, and He uses it to keep our records clean and clear. He already knows the thoughts that have not even crossed our minds yet and the words that have not crossed our lips. Even with all His foreknowledge of our weaknesses and mistakes, He still chose us on purpose and brought us into relationship with Himself through Christ.

If we never make mistakes, then we are probably not making many decisions. Our mistakes have value; we can learn from them. But we are often embarrassed about our mistakes or ashamed of our failures. We want to look good so others will think highly of us.

I am reminded of an anecdote I’ve heard several times. A well-known speaker started his seminar by holding up a $50 bill. He asked his audience, “Who would like this fifty-dollar bill?” Hands started going up.

He said, “I am going to give it to one of you, but first let me do this.”

He proceeded to crumple the bill and then asked, “Who still wants it?”

The hands went back up.

“Well,” he replied, “what if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe. He picked it up, creased, crumpled, and dirty.

“Now who still wants it?” he asked the crowd. Hands remained in the air.

“My friends, you have all learned a valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth fifty ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Also by Joyce Meyer
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Accepting Who You Are
• Part 2: Breaking Approval Addiction
• Part 3: Putting an End to People Pleasing
• Part 4: Finding Freedom from Comparison, Rejection, and Control
• Part 5: Moving into a Great Future
• Conclusion
• About the Author