You can’t. It’s impossible to please everyone in this life. I don’t think God ever intended us to live in a way that pleases everyone else. We start to learn it as we are growing up in a family. Siblings are difficult to please as are parents and teachers. Sometimes you get great people who say – I will be most pleased when I know you are doing the best you can do. Isn’t that a blessing!
Now – the challenge is – sometimes there are people who help you to do the best you can, and there are those who accept mediocrity and there are those who are perfectionists and nothing is good enough. In life, your best is really understood most clearly when it’s between you and God; but don’t forget that God uses His people, people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, to help us in becoming and doing our best. Then we also have to understand that even our best will not please everyone.
When I was a young mother was when I learned the impossibility of pleasing everyone. Prepare a meal for 4 children – they won’t all like it. Select an activity to please 4 children at one time. Isn’t going to happen. Plan a vacation to please everyone – takes months and months – it takes so much listening and research and scheduling and even then – it won’t please everyone.
Clothes shopping – oh my gosh! Birthday party planning . . . and then you get into the larger things in life with your children . . . and you get involved with more things at work and in your community and the larger and more extended your family and outreach become you find out more and more that you cannot please everyone. And so you eventually have to decide who you want to please . . .
Make your life pleasing to God first, then yourself and other people. This isn’t to say you should neglect other people, but God loves a cheerful giver and so do other people. And remember, sometimes what is most pleasing are not the largest gifts and efforts, it’s the little things – the thank you’s, the unnoticed nice thing you might do for someone, cooking three meals a day, being present when someone is in need of company, sending a note, making a call, saying a prayer.
