You can’t be everything to everybody. In fact, you can’t be everything to any one single person. It’s just not going to happen… simply because you’re only human.

Do you ever feel like you’re in the middle of a figurative human tug-of-war where you’re the rope and you’re being pulled like a rag doll back and forth, in every direction? Intentions are good from all sides, but no one else has the capability of understanding the extent of what is happening in your life and what is currently sitting on your plate.

The result is you end up feeling like ‘less than’ to everyone in your life and yet go on unfulfilled and living to make it by, rather than living with purpose. You strive to be everything for everybody and lose yourself somewhere along the way. You might even get caught up in being too worried about how others might receive a ‘no’ or an ‘I just can’t right now.’ Because you’re too worried about how others might receive this, you end up finding a way to just cram it all in anyway and before long you’re doing way too many things, and doing none of them well. You find yourself surviving rather than thriving.

Expectations can take you down like the Titanic. Sometimes other people have unrealistic expectations they put on the people in their lives and demand them to be met with total disregard to how those expectations affect other people.

Expectations we place on ourselves can damage us just as easily. We expect EVERYTHING from ourselves for EVERYBODY and when we continually miss the mark, we feel like a failure.

It might be time to adjust your expectations and ask yourself who and what is most important in your life right now. How do you wish to spend your time? To spend your life?

If you’re overwhelmed by people’s expectations of you, it’s time to bear down and shave away the things that are no longer bearing fruit in your life and maybe even change the shape of some of your relationships.

The reality is, you can’t be everything to anyone at all. God is the only one that is capable of being everything to each one of us. Let Him be everything and allow yourself to be human.