How to Live Authentically for Christ with Jinger & Jeremy Vuolo | Episode 282 - part 2

[00:00:03] Welcome back to Candid Conversations. I'm your host, Jonathan Youssef. In part one with Jeremy and Jinger Vuolo, we explored Jinger's journey of breaking free from people-pleasing tendencies. Today, we'll continue our conversation exploring the concept of trading down, how we often sacrifice real community for temporary approval. Let's jump back into our conversation with Jeremy and Jinger Vuolo.

[00:00:33] Let me just read one little section from the book. To be free from the desperate, agenda-filled, approval-seeking clause of unhealthy people-pleasing means that you are free to now care for and help your fellow human beings from a place that demands nothing of them. You serve for the joy of serving. And I think that's a really hard place for people to get to who struggle with this.

[00:01:01] And kind of like, relay to us, like, your own experience with getting to that position. Like, you know, how long did that take? And what was the, you know, was it a steep curve? Was it a lot of ups and downs? What was that? What did that kind of look like? Yeah, definitely. It wasn't easy because I think it was so ingrained in me to be a people-pleaser. And whenever I had a couple situations come up, I walked through a miscarriage.

[00:01:28] And I remember in that time, it was a very dark season. I was new to LA. I didn't have a ton of friends. And Jeremy encouraged me. Like, there was a girl who wanted to come hang out with me. Like, just come sit with me. Bring me a meal and a little gift. And she came and did that. And in that moment, I was kind of like embarrassed because I was like, I don't want her to see me like this. I was crying. It had been a hard time. And walking through that actually, like, deep into our relationship.

[00:01:58] And then another time when, like, another mom had texted me. She was a new friend and she texted me, hey, Jen, could I, like, stop in? I'm in the area. I would just love to swing by for a minute. And I looked around and I was like, dang, you pick the day when my house is a mess? Any day that somebody wants to come over, it's so clean. I mean, before they want to come over, it's clean. And then the second somebody texts me last minute, I'm like, oh, my, it's such a wreck. So I just said yes. I went ahead and said yes.

[00:02:25] She came in with her little kid who just started crawling, puts her little girl on the floor on her rug. And she crawls under our table and starts eating old Cheerios. And in that moment, I was, like, mortified because she's, like, picking them off of the ground. And I thought, oh, I shouldn't have invited her over. And she was like, oh, it's totally fine. Don't worry about it. She's all good. So she picks her up. And I was like, well, I'm going to go get the broom and I'll get her a bowl of fresh Cheerios. And so I did.

[00:02:54] And then that actually deepened our friendship, too, because then I realized, OK, I don't have to put on this performance of having it all together every day. I look great. I have my hair fixed, makeup done, house is clean. But it actually allowed me to have more real conversations with her. And she was like, yeah, it's tough to keep everything organized. And then she was like, hey, if you ever have any projects that you want to get done, we can just, like, take turns tackling projects.

[00:03:22] And so to this day, just about every month, I'll go to her house. We'll tackle a closet for an hour and then she'll come to my house and we'll work on the garage and like get rid of clutter junk, constantly organizing. And it's so fun. And she's one of my best friends now. And I think that in those moments, you're tempted to, like, trade down from what actually matters, true community relationships, because you want to keep up this facade of having it all together.

[00:03:52] And I think that it's a challenge and a struggle to, like, to even think rightly about that, because we're so conditioned to want to have it all look perfect for everyone.

[00:04:06] And so I think that in my own life, I just see it time and time again, that when you allow others into your life, you're not only doing that out of a place of like, OK, I'm going to, you know, hopefully have humility here, not try to keep up this facade. But also you're allowing them the opportunity to serve you and not doing anything from a place of what can I gain from you? What can I try to suck you dry of everything that I feel like I need? You're popular.

[00:04:36] You're famous. You have money. I want to be your friend. But you're looking at this person as Christ did. And you're saying, OK, how can I love and serve you and lay down my life for you? And like you said, I think I want to go back to that for a second, because the culture now is all about this self-help me time, all this stuff, which, yeah, there are times where you need to have time for yourself, your family, for sure. That can be an imbalance.

[00:05:06] But at the same time, the selfish side of it, I think that we always have to go back to the motivation of the why. So why am I saying no to this friend coming over? Or why am I saying yes in this situation? Is it to try to gain something from you? Because that's not going to be right. So I think that the culture is constantly screaming as well, you just need to do what feels good for you. And that's ultimately not going to be Christlike. And so we have to examine our motive, ask the Lord for wisdom in each and every situation.

[00:05:36] And he does give that. I loved how real your stories were in the book. I mean, it was you allowed the vulnerability of not just like telling a story of something that had happened to you, but actually giving the thought process of what was going through your mind. Like the Cheerios story of like mortified that there would be Cheerios on the ground. Please don't come over to my house because it's mostly just Cheerios on the floor.

[00:06:03] But that, I think, it allows people to kind of relax for a moment and to read that and to – kind of like I said earlier, for the people pleaser to read it and go, oh, my goodness. Like this is freeing just reading this and knowing that other people are human and can identify with the fact that they're trying to keep up an appearance.

[00:06:24] But for the non-people pleaser to use that as a loose category to say, oh, my goodness, I can't believe someone – like, for instance, I've been to y'all's home and we had a meal together. And I would never have known – now, maybe you had already dealt with all this by then. But I would never have known that you would have felt on edge. I think I talked to you beforehand and said, please understand I have children the same age. And I understand houses are messes.

[00:06:52] I'm not going to judge you at all as long as you don't judge me. But there's like – for the outside person who wouldn't necessarily know that. So your friend who came over wouldn't have known. She can't even pay attention to the conversation because this is like at the top of her mind of how I'm receiving it when it's not even entering her mindset. Yeah, and that's part of it, right? We think as people pleasers that everyone is always thinking about us, that we're always on everyone's mind.

[00:07:21] And it's a very arrogant thing to think. Which you wouldn't think, right? It's like that's counterintuitive, right? Oh, it is. And then at the same time, it's like, oh, my goodness, she probably wasn't even thinking that, right? Like that's – she wasn't even clued into what this thought process in my own mind. That's where the imaginary expectations comes from too is so much of what enslaves a people pleaser is made up in their mind.

[00:07:47] It's how they're perceiving people are perceiving them and people aren't actually thinking about you that much. Jeremy helped me think through that very clearly too because I think that the pressures that I put upon myself, I was my own worst critic. And he often brings it back to reality and says, okay, what are you thinking about? Where are your thoughts right now? And is it true? Because ultimately, we do have to take every thought captive.

[00:08:15] But how often does that happen when we start to spiral and start to think that everyone is thinking about us or they're viewing me this way or God is viewing me in a certain way because of lack of performance. And so it's just a good reminder to think that this is not the actual reality of how everyone's viewing us.

[00:08:39] There's a phrase that you use that I know is one of your chapter titles, which I love, which is this idea of trading down. Tell us a little bit about what you mean by that. Yeah, I think it's so easy to trade down in relationship. Like I said, when you're trying to isolate yourself or keep up this facade of having it all together, that's one way we can do that.

[00:09:00] And also not allowing other people to like not be able to serve us either, because that's also an opportunity where we can see, okay, I want to keep everyone out. I want to like do it all myself. And you're trading down true community and relationship when you do that, because you're not going to be able to invite them into the hard things.

[00:09:23] And like you said, we all feel like, especially in the church, it's so easy to carry on and act like everything's fine, not ask for prayer. And you're robbing that person of community. You're not bringing community to yourself. And so it's selfish and it's manipulative to do those things. And at the end of the day, when we realize, okay, it's so important for us to be vulnerable, to be honest with those who we trust in our core community. It doesn't mean everybody.

[00:09:52] There are times where we realize there's wisdom and who you share things with and who you let into your, the more intimate places of your life. But at the same time, it is a gift from God to have that ability to share and to pray for one another, encourage one another.

[00:10:09] Yeah, I think that whenever our priorities are in order, whenever we see the community of the church is a gift, then we will want to love and serve other people in that place of being able to like lay down our life and serve them and not to feel like we have to protect ourselves at every turn.

[00:10:31] And that was one of the earliest conversations we had about the book was this idea of Jacob and Esau when Esau decided to trade his birthright for a bowl of soup. What we recognized in people pleasing was so often it's trading long-term benefit, like Ginger just said, of genuine community for the immediate gratification of preserving your reputation.

[00:10:58] So I get that immediate dopamine hit of nobody thinks less of me because they don't see my mess. But then you're trading bringing someone into your life, which is going to reap long-term benefit. And so I was seeing in Ginger's life a rejection of friendships because she was afraid of what people would think about her. And I'm thinking, first of all, nobody's thinking about you that much.

[00:11:24] Second of all, the stuff that you feel is making you appear weak or broken is the human experience. Everyone's feeling that. And you're really going to push off having a genuine relationship with this person because you don't want them to see that you're a human. Well, she might reject and say, no, I'm not going to spend time with this person. And the immediate gratification is, whew, good, dodged a bullet. They won't see my weakness.

[00:11:54] So enjoy your bowl of soup because you're going to lose your inheritance of having community. And early on, I think we realized that that framework kind of shaped how people pleasers operate. It's so easy for them to say no to certain things or just the other side is saying yes to certain things. So I'll just say yes so nobody's upset with me. Well, but they're constantly saying yes and they're overextending themselves or they're playing out of position.

[00:12:22] And they're not able to actually invest where they need to be invested. So you see this with fathers. I mean, I've thought about this a lot. Fathers will say yes to everything at work or everything with certain ministry relationships because they don't want to let those people down. And they're failing to invest in the long-term inheritance of their family. So their kids don't see them. Their wife doesn't see them.

[00:12:49] And they're trading a bowl of soup for an inheritance because of people pleasing. It's driving them to do that. So it's this trading down. And that's where Ginger was saying, no, I'm done. I'm done trading down the momentary gratification for the long-term benefit. Yeah, and I do love how you wove the Jacob and Esau story into that because that is true. It's that immediate gratification versus long-term.

[00:13:13] But if your brain's not trained to understand the long-term or if you're not – all you've known is the immediate gratification, then it's your default position. And you have to almost rewire your settings to say – kind of, Ginger, like what you were saying, asking the question. Like, what is this going to take away from? Because we've been given all the same 24 hours in a day. How are we utilizing that in all these ways? Now, we've talked about this a little bit.

[00:13:41] But, you know, Jeremy, obviously, you walked through all of this with Ginger. What did the journey look like for you from your perspective? Were there areas where you felt like you were growing? Because that's a new role. I mean, you're a husband. You're trying to love your wife. But you're kind of noticing issues, lack of the ability for – or desire for longer-term relationships. What did that kind of look like from your perspective? Yeah, I mean, it's been an enjoyable process because it's the process of marriage.

[00:14:11] It's just getting to know each other, getting to come alongside each other. I think that's one of the things I was most excited about in marriage was how we would shape and sharpen one another. And so I've just seen it as, yeah, just coming alongside Ginger and helping her grow in these ways. And as she grows, it's an encouragement. You know, as she's, yeah, just taking on challenges.

[00:14:34] I'll tell you, it's been incredible to see, even over these last couple of years, even in the book writing processes with Becoming Free Indeed, that unlocks something in Ginger. I think it unlocked a boldness. I think it unlocked a courage. I think it unlocked certain things that she doubted about herself, like she couldn't be the one to speak, or she couldn't stand on conviction, or she couldn't stand for truth by herself. And seeing her – you know, it's interesting.

[00:15:01] We're doing an interview right now with – you have a podcast. We're on video. We're doing this interview about a project she's done. And, well, I remember very distinctly the anxiety and the fear leading up to the very first interview she did for Becoming Free Indeed. And she was terrified. And actually, based on how she was reacting, I was thinking, oh, man, like maybe she won't be able to do this. Like in my head, I was thinking how she's perceiving herself and how she's talking. And I'm encouraging her, no, you got this.

[00:15:29] But then I'm thinking, wait, maybe she won't be able to do this. And it was with ABC News. And – That's not a minor. Yeah. And she was doing it. And I'm sitting there going, listening, like this is incredible. Yeah. And everyone was captivated in the interview. They're listening to her speak. And afterwards, I was like, what was all that about? Like you actually had me worried. Like what was all that about?

[00:15:58] And I think it unlocked something for her recognizing that, oh, no, I – like I don't have to be enslaved to fear. I don't have to allow these imaginary burdens and expectations that I place on myself to rule me. It's kind of like – and I always draw this parallel for her. You know, it's kind of like a player like a Tom Brady going, I don't think I can play football. And then he goes out there. He wins a Super Bowl, comes back.

[00:16:27] He's like, I don't think I can play football. And everybody's going, no, Tom, you're pretty good at this. Like you can do it again. And so I think seeing her grow into a space where she's recognizing that not independent of the Lord, but the Lord really does supply grace. And – I think you've helped me. The biggest thing is just helping you think correctly because – It all begins and ends. It does begin in your thoughts.

[00:16:57] And so I think that Jer's patience with me and support through everything, I definitely wouldn't have been able to speak out against those teachings because it's so emotionally taxing to do that when it's family relationships, friends, your community that you've grown up in. Your life. It was really hard. Yeah, it was really, really hard.

[00:17:20] But with that, I think Jer was – he was looking at it very objectively and that was helpful for me to see. And then from there, it allowed me to push aside that people-pleasing and say, oh, wow, yeah, I really have felt compelled to speak. I wanted to, but I have remained silent because of this people-pleasing. And now I'm ready.

[00:17:47] I didn't feel ready, but God gave me help to go ahead and start to speak up. And when you do – like Jer said, there is a certain level of confidence that that boosts in you too as a people-pleaser. You realize, okay, I don't have to be bound by this. I don't have to – this is not going to be my identity forever as someone who can't stand up for the vulnerable, who can't speak up.

[00:18:14] And I think that as you do, then other little situations don't seem to feel as hard because you see that you can look back and say, okay, these have been tiny little steps in my mind. But it's a huge jump from where I was eight years ago when we first got married. And so that's the beautiful journey of even a marriage like with his support and help, helping me think through it.

[00:18:40] But then now seeing that God has allowed me to be able to just share my story in the raw, vulnerable, not-so-pretty-at-times ways that he has led me through this and is giving me help every single day to just continue to fight against it.

[00:18:58] Well, obviously the hope is that others would tap into that same trust in the Lord, that they too can be vulnerable and be honest with who they are and the way that he's uniquely gifted them and to see the benefit of community. That community is not necessarily something to push away but to actually welcome in. Just out of my own curiosity, what's kind of been the response to all of the above? The Becoming Free Indeed, that's obviously taken off, become a bestseller.

[00:19:27] People Pleaser has only been out for a couple of months, I think. What's kind of the response been? Because, again, that's like for you. I know you've gotten over a lot of those barriers, but there's still a lot of like putting that vulnerable, here's my life and all of its laundry out there in front of everyone. And then people respond to it. I mean, you kind of open yourself up to people being able to respond to it. So what does that look like?

[00:19:51] It's been really encouraging to see the response because I was certain that it would probably be half negative, half positive coming back, all the feedback I would receive. But God has been so kind in that because, yes, I did have quite a bit of negative and hurtful things said.

[00:20:11] And at the same time, the overwhelming response has been one of people being able to relate to it who've grown up in the same exact setting as me with Bill Gothard's teaching or others in the church who have been under a teacher who is claiming to speak for God but didn't. And that, in my mind, that's been something that I said.

[00:20:35] Looking back over this span of time, looking back over where I started and how God's brought us to this place today, it's been encouraging. Because I think for anyone who's afraid to speak up, who is afraid to share their stories out of fear, I think that they could find encouragement from this too. You don't have to have a big platform. It could be the person sitting next to you who's walking through a challenge.

[00:21:00] And maybe you're afraid of what they're going to think about you because you actually struggle too. And when we open up and share, it actually gives that joy and that freedom. And you realize, okay, God's allowed me to walk through all this for a reason. And I don't want to remain silent because that's not loving. And it's not like that fulfillment that I found in speaking up and sharing that story. It's been one of the best things that I've ever done. And so the overwhelming response has been good.

[00:21:28] And like I said too earlier, I think when it comes to like critics and all, it's so easy for us to say, okay, if somebody is going to say something negative, I'm just never going to talk about it because I don't want to face that. But when we realize, okay, I don't want my identity to come from what this critic says, positive or negative. Like if there's someone in my life who is going to say something great about me one day, and that's going to be my boost of confidence.

[00:21:57] I'm going to hang on their every word and say that this is going to be my identity because this person thought I was great. Well, the next day they could bring a rebuke or think that you're not so great. So if we're finding our identity in what those people say, then it's not going to ultimately satisfy us. So going back to what does God think about me? Who am I in Christ? And how can I love the people around me? How can I speak up for the vulnerable? So that's ultimately what's going to carry us through, and that is where a confidence lies is in Christ and who we are in Him.

[00:22:28] Excellent. Well, I cannot recommend the book enough. The book is People Pleaser, Breaking Free from the Burden of Imaginary Expectations. Jeremy and Ginger Vuolo, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on Candid Conversations. Thanks so much for having us, John. Thanks for having us. Of course.

[00:22:48] And that concludes our two-part conversation with Jeremy and Ginger Vuolo about breaking free from people-pleasing and finding true freedom in Christ. I want to thank Ginger for her vulnerability and Jeremy for his perspective on supporting a spouse through this journey. Their insights remind us that we are meant to live in authentic community where we can be fully known.

[00:23:16] Ginger's book, People Pleaser, Breaking Free from the Bondage of Imaginary Expectations, is available now. Thank you for joining us on Candid Conversations. If you've been encouraged by this discussion, please share it with a friend who might need to hear it. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Youssef. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.