I know I’ve talked a lot about pressure throughout these pages, but I want to park here and dive a little deeper for a second. I want to talk about it because I see so many girls like me living with this endless pressure to find the dreamy guy or land that perfect job or create a cool business. Oh, and it all needs to happen ASAP, right?
Then I sometimes see one of two things happen:
A gal gets that job, does a happy dance, packs up her car, and drives across the country while rocking out to Taylor Swift, convinced she’s made it in life. Then she starts that job, but within a few months it turns out not to be at all what she expected. Or the business she was so eager to start sucks up all her time and stresses her out beyond a level she signed up for. Or the guy she originally thought was Mr. Right turns out to be Mr. Wrong. Mega bummer.
She is so wrapped up in the pressure to strike gold on try number one that she misses the good stuff. She expects that first job out of college, her first go at trying a business, or the next guy she dates to be all she could ever want. She winds up feeling so paralyzed by perfectionism and unrealistic expectations that she doesn’t apply for the job or give the nice guy a chance. Or she believes she’s unqualified to try her hand at something new and as a result just sits on her booty. Or, worse, she doesn’t give herself grace if she misses the target on her first try.
Sound familiar?
Sister, hear me when I say this (because I’ve learned from personal experience): it won’t always be your first or your second or even your third try that you land on your thing.
Life comes in phases. You don’t have to have it all figured out, land your dream job, or find what you’ll do for the rest of your life in this decade of your life.
You will never, ever grow or learn the lessons each step of the journey is meant to teach you if you focus only on how that step could be a waste of time. You’ll never take a risk or say hello to a stranger if you’re always afraid there could be something or someone better out there. I mean, holy cow, just stop the madness!
Don’t mistake taking the pressure off as a free pass to abandon drive or intentionality. But please, for the sake of your own sanity, take off the pressure to strike gold on your first try. Every step molds you, shapes you, and makes you grow. Isn’t that what life is really all about anyway? Isn’t that growth the gold we’re looking for?
As I mentioned in the introduction, when I begin to feel the pressure to prove myself, I have to look deeper. I need to consider where that pressure is really coming from. If I’m honest, it’s usually coming from inside. That doesn’t mean external pressures don’t exist, but it does mean the choice to internalize those pressures and operate in response to them is on me.
With that in mind, I have to take responsibility and address the pressure I experience if I want to live my purpose. Up until this point, we’ve talked a lot about the problems living under pressure can create. However, I don’t want to leave you without explaining the strategies that have helped me tackle the pressure:
Remove or retreat from high-pressure influences.
Quit avoiding awkwardness and everyday opportunities.
Shift your perspective.
Dive into each of these with me.
I used to follow some people online that I thought were motivating me. To a degree, they were. However, I began to realize that by following their lives and listening to the constant message to be more, do more, and try harder, motivation began to be replaced by pressure—pressure to keep up and make myself as successful or fit or interesting as they are.
That is super exhausting and honestly not all that healthy.
If you feel pressure to prove that you’re a good wife or a good Christian or a successful student or career woman—just for the sake of proving that you are—please do me a favor: think about what you’re allowing into your mind. What messages are you filling your life with? What do you spend time doing, and what are you consumed with? Who are you listening to? Is it life giving and intentional? Or draining and exhausting?
It’s one thing to be equipped and inspired to grow, set goals, and make positive change. It’s another thing to be exhausted trying to keep up with what the culture dictates or other people’s expectations of who you should be or what you should do.
So if people you follow online make you feel all sorts of pressure, don’t blame them. Blame yourself for continuing to follow them when doing so makes you turn your life into a race to keep up. Solution? Just unfollow them. Remove those influences, even if only temporarily, until you are able to refocus on the reason you’re doing something rather than on the pressure to keep up with what everyone else seems to be doing.
Or if someone in your life pressures you to do things you don’t want to do—or makes you feel inadequate unless you do or achieve certain things—you have to either back away from that relationship or look for a lot more balance. For example, if that voice is a relative (such as a parent), I don’t suggest cutting this person out of your life; he or she likely has your best interests in mind. However, if you have one voice that puts a whole lot of pressure on you or just seems to be the loudest, please seek out some more uplifting and positive voices to balance that one out.
It is your responsibility to regulate the voices you listen to.
I’ve often observed that when I press in to be closer to people, I feel far less pressure to prove anything to them. Nearness has a beautiful way of nixing the need to prove ourselves.
I remember one time I learned this lesson so vividly and personally. I was sitting on a bus-stop bench in my college town one chilly evening when I noticed that the young woman sitting on the same bench looked sad and lonely. It’s always awkward, isn’t it, when it’s just you and one other person in a small space—sitting at a bus stop, standing in an elevator, or passing in a narrow hallway?
Five minutes elapsed, and neither of us had said a word. (How can we just coexist with people and pretend they’re not there?) The bus must have been delayed, because a few more minutes passed in silence.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I spoke up. I introduced myself, and she told me her name—her American name, anyway. In broken English, Nancy shared that she’d been in the United States for two years, working on her PhD.
Intrigued, I asked about her experience. She was shy, but I kept asking questions, and somewhere along the line she mumbled, “I spend a lot of time alone.”
I stopped in my tracks.
“Wait. Haven’t you made any friends here?” I asked, just to verify what she’d said.
“Not really, other than my roommate. No one really talks to me.”
How was that possible? She’d been in the States two years, and no one had reached out to her?
I asked for her phone number and whether she’d like to get lunch sometime.
Her eyes widened, and she barely got her words out. “You? And me? You want to go to lunch with me?”
“Yes! Of course!”
Over the next several months, I spent many afternoons visiting with Nancy, learning about her culture, hearing stories about her childhood, and listening to all the dreams bottled up in her heart—most of which had little to do with her PhD.
I loved it. It was life giving, and I always looked forward to our time together. As we shared meals and worked through English vocabulary to communicate better, I taught her about American history and traditions. Through many conversations over hot tea, I could tell she had been storing up her stories for years, just waiting for someone willing to listen.
I found so much purpose and joy in those not-so-ordinary hours with her.
One day at a little corner bakery, I had a passing thought: What if world-changing purpose was profoundly simple? What if simply seeing and serving people—showing up and listening—is the secret ingredient to purpose? What if friendship is what is needed to break down barriers and open doors to what we’ve been made for?
The more I got to know Nancy, the more I saw so much of myself in her despite our different upbringings. We all just want to be seen. We’re all just longing to be loved. Isn’t that why we want to find our purpose? Why we crave meaning, significance, and affirmation?
The hard reality, though, is that we might not always be seen. We might sit on a bus-stop bench alone, night after night, awkwardly ignoring the opportunity to step into purpose because we hope someone else will speak first. I fear we’ve become so afraid of feeling awkward that we avoid opening the door to opportunity and stepping outside our comfort zones.
Since then, our journeys have taken Nancy and me in different directions. Yet those months we spent getting to know each other taught me something huge about life and purpose: it comes down to being willing to be uncomfortable, get outside ourselves, meet others where they are, and make room.
There’s something marvelous in that. It doesn’t require big performances or perfect report cards. We simply need willing hearts and open doors. Yet we’re so quick to build up our lives and our résumés and, inevitably, our walls. Maybe our challenge, then, is to build backward. When we learn to break down walls and open doors, making room for strangers and outsiders, the connections we build topple the barriers we don’t even know are holding us back.
I recently read a quote by a writer named Claire Gibson that resonated with me:
Is it possible that there is no such thing as a stranger? Is it possible that all the borders we draw are invisible? Is it possible that the lines of language and skin color and difference are passing away?…I’m struck by how much harder it is for me to welcome in those “close” strangers who are a regular part of my life. The sister-in-law who doesn’t quite fit in. The mother who doesn’t live up to my needs or expectations. Sometimes emotional boundary lines are harder to cross than oceans.12
You know what that tells me? It tells me that pressure is replaced by purpose when we make room for those who are completely different from us. People who don’t think like us, talk like us, or look like us. I mean, that’s what Jesus did, right?
What if we did that too? Purpose isn’t in pressure but in pressing in. Awesome things can come from being willing to push past a little awkwardness. Try it sometime.
A friend recently put it to me in a question: “What are you doing to bring heaven to earth today?”
Well, wow. That makes it simple, doesn’t it? We don’t need a lot of money or an impressive résumé to make that happen. We just need willing hearts—not even to make the entire world a better place but simply to help make one person’s world a better place.
Living a life of purpose starts with standing up and starting small. I have to trust God and step toward people, not away from them. True purpose is more about understanding than being understood. Friendship is more about seeing than being seen. It is more about serving than being served.
It’s really very simple. When we show up to do what we think we can’t do and reach out to those we don’t understand, everything changes. This may look like volunteering, trying something new, taking a meal to a friend, calling and apologizing when you’d rather not, inviting someone you normally wouldn’t, or donating more than you think you can afford.
So the question we ought to be asking isn’t What is my purpose? but How can I bring heaven to earth, right here today?
This doesn’t have to be so complicated. A woman breaks through the pressure to prove when she gets outside herself and just loves people. She brings heaven to earth when she chooses to love the mess out of people instead of wallowing in her mess. Yes, a girl driven by her purpose has to take care of herself and chase her dreams, but she doesn’t stop there. She invites in the outcasts and difficult ones—even before her own dreams come true.
Do you see how uncomplicated this can be? A life that is free of pressure is possible only when we choose to show up right where we are—not after we fool ourselves into thinking we’ve got life figured out. When we shed our expectations and instead open our eyes to what’s right in front of us, make room for those around us, and get over the awkwardness inside us, the pressure fades and purpose comes into play.
If you take nothing else away from this chapter, please remember this: the more you press into serving others and building meaningful relationships, the less you’ll feel the pressure to prove yourself to people whose opinions don’t really matter.