Everyone Needs Me

Now, of course you don’t mean everyone on the planet, but you probably mean your husband, your kids, maybe something related to your job or your volunteer opportunities. Things you’ve signed up for. Everyone needs me. And this is one of those phrases that I think has that kind of dark glittery newness to it. Where part of us likes it.  

Part of us enjoys being needed, enjoys, feeling useful. And then part of us feels like we can’t ever live up to it. And we couldn’t possibly serve the needs of all of these people. And so we’re going to fail and that just really frightens us. Everyone needs me. So I want you to imagine when this thought comes up for you. It might be when you get a text message, right? Maybe your mom texts you and she says, hey, we should put a birthday party together for your sister; she’s turning 30.  

And, you know, the baby’s crying or your teenager wants to sign up for drama classes and your husband is saying, hey, you know, we need to clean out the mud room of all the Amazon boxes. Whatever it is, it has this feeling of people literally like pulling on us. It feels like people are pulling on your clothes. And that is a violent feeling by the way. If somebody were actually doing that, if we had 10 people around you and they all started polling at your clothes, hey, I need you over here. Hey, I need you over here. It would feel like violence. 

And the reason I want to explain it like this is because when you have this thought. Feels really scary to your brain. But most of us then go, oh, you’re overreacting or this isn’t that big of a deal. When we try to dismiss this feeling or this fear that we have. I want to explain it fully to you so that you can then help your brain see the truth, which is no one’s pulling at you in that way. Not everyone needs you. There may be a bunch of requests and some things that need to get done.  But we can just bring the pressure down from this idea: everyone needs me.  

So a thought in your brain creates a feeling in your body. And we always want to check in with these two things to see if they match. Somebody might be walking around thinking everyone needs me and it makes them feel needed or wanted or special or powerful. So this thought may not be a problem for you. But for a lot of the women that I coach, everyone needs me, feels like dread. It feels like failure. It’s so interesting. Just the thought that everyone needs me just immediately like your brain is like, well, we can’t do that. And then failures in feeling.  

It might be pressure, It might be panic, It might be trapped, It might be sadness. Might be sadness because you think I have to serve all of these people and my needs are not going to be met. So I want you to check in with your body about when you have this thought, everyone needs me. What is the feeling that it produces in your body? It will be one feeling. One thought creates one feeling. And then from this feeling. What do you do? How do you act? So if the feeling is panic, that’s going to be a fast frenzied feeling. 

And you might start snapping at the kids and hey, we got to go and we got to hustle here and I got to do this and you’re texting someone and you’re, you know, and you’re kind of driving quickly and, and you’re moving through the day really fast. And we know for sure that balls will be dropped that way. You’ll miss your turn off the freeway. You’ll leave your phone at home because you were in such a hurry. And if it creates the feeling of failure in your body, Well, you’re probably going to sit on the couch and scroll on your phone or eat some cookies.  

You’re not even going to start working on things, because you’re just going to fail ahead of time. If you know that you’re going to fail. If your brain goes, wow, we’re going to fail it just does it faster, so interesting. We generally from one of these negative emotions are not praying. We’re not slowing down and saying Lord, what do you need of me?  

We do not question whether these are in fact needs or sit down and prioritize what things need to happen. Sometimes I will feel the feeling of overwhelm and thinking, oh my goodness there’s so much to do. And it just, it feels like I’m holding up a mountain. And I’m going to be crushed by it.  

But a lot of times sitting down for 10 minutes and just making a list of everything that needs to be done and starting to bucket them out like, oh yeah, I really could do that in two days. And I can do that this evening. And I can do this while I’m sitting in the car while the girls are at Piano lessons. And then I just begin to see, oh, I really do have plenty of time to do these things, but when we stay in panic or overwhelm, we don’t solve problems. We don’t plan. 

So this thought everybody needs me. It is a peace stealing thought and I think it’s one that we have almost subconsciously. And this goes back a little bit to challenging social norms. Where we have to decide whether need is the right word. For example, if your mom wants to throw a birthday party for your sister, who’s turning 30, you can say I would love for you to throw that party and then tell her what you’re willing to do. Like I’d be willing to bring deviled eggs.  

But I’m not going to go buy decorations and decorate the house with you. And you may not even have to state what you’re not willing to do. You might just be able to say what you are willing to do. But just because someone wants you to do something doesn’t mean that you need to do it. My daughter, her violin teacher, just got married. So cute, she’s 19. She just got married and her and her new husband are going to college. And so she had her last violin lesson. And so my daughter comes to me and says, I want to get the violin teacher. Present like a going away present just to say goodbye. And my first thought was annoyance. 

I was like, oh my gosh, I’m so busy. And now I have to think, about a thoughtful gift for the violin teacher. Just so, you know, that was my first thought.  And I’ve got a lot going on and that was not on my radar. And I took a deep breath. And calmed down. Always step on you guys. And I just checked in with myself. I checked in with my body. Checked in with myself. I prayed like, do I want to go to the store and get a present for this teacher who I love. She’s great. But I knew I didn’t have to. I really did not have to get a present. 

She could have written her a card. Not everybody gets a present for someone who’s leaving. And it was really important that I sat with that and saw that it was optional. Because I could’ve just went okay now I need to do that too. And then what do you use that word mean again? I really didn’t need to do it. And I could’ve snapped at the child and been like, oh, stop asking me for extra things or why do you have to ask for extra things? Or this isn’t a good time. Can’t you see I’m busy? When we’re walking around. Drowning in our own life. That’s how we react to our children.  

And I could have very calmly said, you know, that’s such a sweet idea. I don’t think I’m going to make the time to do that, but I would love it if you made her a card. All right, so we can very calmly and with love, say no. Because it wasn’t a need. And in the end I realized that gifts is my love language. And I have modeled that for the kids, because I, I love receiving gifts. I love giving gifts. And I thought it was so sweet that she wanted to do that.  

And so we were at a drugstore. We have an amazing drug store here, which is just like also a really beautiful retail store with games and kids things and incredible decor. I don’t know, It’s like a magical pharmacy. And so we just picked her up a coffee cup. Like a very simple, not that expensive coffee cup. I didn’t even wrap it. And then I did have my daughter write a card and we gave her this card in the coffee cup.  But I didn’t allow it to create stress for me. I mean, first of all, initially it did. 

I want you to know that initially the feeling of annoyance and stress shows up. And that’s why we have to coach our brain and coach your brain means recognize that you’re having a series of thoughts in your brain. That is leading to the feelings of stress or overwhelm or failure, panic, whatever the feelings are and that they’re optional and you can think different things.  

So I just chose to think this isn’t a problem. I do have time. I do want to do this. I know it’s not necessary, but I’d like to do it. It’s a gift to my daughter. It’s a gift to this lovely girl. That’s what coaching yourself means. That’s what self coaching is. It’s talking to yourself in your mind to create different feelings in your body. So when we see this, this thought everyone needs me. For most of you it is going to create a negative emotion in your body. And then that emotion is going to drive your actions and you’re not going to love them.  

You can coach yourself into thinking other things. You can think my children want some things right now. My husband wants some things. My coworkers, my, you know, parish mom’s group. There are some things that people want. Very few of them are needs.  

Like your baby needs to eat when it cries, that’s a need.  But even children saying they’re hungry does not mean you need to stop everything and feed them right. Then you can feed them in half an hour. They can be hungry for half an hour. Now they do need to eat every day. You do have to feed them every day. But, even then just declaring I’m hungry does not mean that you need to stop and feed them at that moment. You may want to. 

That’s happened to me where somebody kind of interrupted me and said, oh, I’m hungry. And again, my first thought is, this is annoying. It’s annoying when they say it. Now we say it kind of in a voice that I don’t like. But then sometimes I look at the clock and I think, yeah, it is a good time. Let’s do lunch. Because I want to. The child didn’t make me do anything. Them declaring that they’re hungry does not mean I need to stop what I am doing and feed them at that moment. I like the word vocation for motherhood. This kind of lifelong job, this calling. But it does not specify you need to feed your children at eight and noon and five. Whatever the times are that we feed the children. It is under our discretion and hopefully through the prayerful guidance of the Lord to make sure that the kids know who God is.  

And are educated enough to be functional people in society. To have food and shelter. You are meeting their needs. And then lots of us children, husbands, and ourselves have a long list of wants. We have a long list of wants. And I love that. I love that my children want things. I tell them it is so great that you want things. But we talk a lot about timing. About being flexible. And about processing disappointment when they don’t receive what they want. So it is very common for moms to have this thought: everybody means me. And maybe your initial reaction to that thought is going to be negative and that’s completely fine. But if you want to have more peace in your life, not the feeling of, you know, floating on the river piece, but I mean, being at peace with your life, not being stressed. Then you get to use your brain to decide, am I doing this thing or not? And if you decide to do it, we just be at peace with that. I was at peace driving to the drug store to get this coffee cup. I choose to do this.  

And it added time into my day and it was hot outside. And I don’t like driving around when it’s hot, outside all these things, but I was at peace with it. I chose it. You can be at peace with difficult things and uncomfortable things and painful things and annoying things. It can be at peace with them. Okay, let’s do this. And this is the work of my life. It was answering questions in a workbook. And one of them was about the purpose of your life.  

And I really felt like the purpose of my life. And I never thought about it this way before is to help women change the way that they speak to themselves in their mind. And that will, of course be true for my children as well. Changing the way that they speak to themselves in their mind. So that that voice is loving and kind and like the Lord would speak to us. Even when the Lord convicts us and says, hey, that’s sinful. We should do something else. It still feels loving. That is the way that we can speak to ourselves.  

And that is what I want for you. I want you to enjoy this life that you have. And it seems almost like a small thought: Everybody needs me. But it’s actually a violent thought for a lot of us.  Where it feels like people are pulling it on us. And then we were suddenly unhappy doing the things that we need to do because it’s coming from this feeling of either panic or failure, defensiveness, something.  

But instead, you could just view it as oh, there’s that thought? Remember that thought’s not true. We are meeting the needs of the people around us. There might be a lot of ones that people have and that’s okay. What did they want? And do I want to do it right now or not? Because God will give you enough strength to do everything he wants you to do. It will not be outside of that.  

All right, my friends, pay attention to this thought it will come up for you. And then stay tuned next week, I am announcing what we’re doing in the fall and it’s something we’d never done before. I’m pretty excited about it and I’ve been telling the members about it so they know it’s coming and they’re pretty excited about it too. So I can’t wait to share it with you. I will tell you next week.  

I am praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.