When You Can't Please Everyone...

There's nothing louder than the voice of your critics.

Once, when she was little, my daughter Annie innocently asked a question I definitely wasn’t expecting from a six year-old.

Mommy, do you have any enemies?

I explained that “enemy” was a pretty strong word, and while I wouldn’t consider anyone my enemy, that there were certainly people out there who didn’t like me very much.

I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but it only brought more questions.

Why don’t people like you, Mommy?

Do they know you have a blog?

Do they read it?

I then had to explain that just because I share things that some people like, doesn’t mean that everyone always likes what I have to say. That sometimes, even when you’re doing your best, there will be people who criticize you, or get mad because whatever you did or say didn’t meet their expectations.

And yet we still weren’t done.

But doesn’t it make you sad that some people don’t like you?

Oof.

Out of the mouths of babes, right?

Because what do you say to that? The honest answer was yes — of course it makes me sad.

But what I told her in that moment was something like, well honey, you can never really please everyone, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is your best, and do what you know is right, even when some people don’t like it.

That little girl is now 17. But I’ve never really forgotten that conversation.

Because like most of us, I’ve spent a significant portion of my life trying not to disappoint people. Trying to keep the peace, soften the edges, manage the optics. (Honestly, it’s exhausting just typing that.)

But here’s what I’ve had to learn—the hard way, more than once—as an entrepreneur, and maybe just as a fully grown adult: disappointing people is inevitable.

Not because you’re doing something wrong. Sometimes because you’re doing something right.

A few months ago, after 16 years of running multiple businesses, I made the decision to simplify — to step back from everything that wasn’t working and go all in on just one thing.

It wasn’t a quick decision. I avoided it for years, actually. And then when I couldn’t avoid it anymore, I agonized over it for months before I finally had the courage to say it out loud.

I was terrified. Scared people would be angry, or disappointed, or think I was giving up. Afraid I’d lose credibility, or that the internet would decide I was a failure.

But after a lot of thinking and praying and seeking counsel from people I trust, I finally stopped running from what my heart had been telling me. I made the call. I said the thing.

And while there is a real part of me that feels at peace with it — a deep, settled kind of peace that I’ve learned to recognize as confirmation — there’s also a part of me that is still reeling.

Because the critics are loud.

Some people have been genuinely kind and supportive, and I am so grateful for that. But others haven’t. And the criticism stings in a way I didn’t quite prepare myself for, even knowing it was coming.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to, though.

There is no version of this where I make everyone happy. There never was.

And the longer I waited—trying to thread the needle, trying to protect everyone’s feelings including my own—the more I was delaying the inevitable and sacrificing something true for something safe.

Abraham Lincoln famously noted that “You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” More recently, Brene Brown put it a different way when she noted that, “daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”

In other words? You cannot lead your own life if you’re too afraid to disappoint people.

That’s not a comfortable truth. But it’s the one I keep needing to remind myself of.

Maybe you needed that reminder too.

And so my challenge to you this week is to ask yourself whether there’s a decision you’ve been avoiding, not because you don’t know the right answer, but because you’re afraid of what someone else will think? If so, name it. Write it down.

And then ask yourself honestly: whose life are you actually living?

Because at the end of the day, the person who actually has to live with your choices is you.

Live with purpose, friend, and have a wonderful week!

xoxo, Ruth

P.S. I’m hosting a brand new live workshop this week that I’m very excited about, based on some research I’ve been doing recently about the science of happiness. It’s called How to Be Happier Everyday, and I’d love to have you join me. The workshop is free, but you do have to register, which you can do HERE.

Photo by Unseen Studio on Unsplash