Stop Being Nice, Start Being Kind

Your inner "Nice Guy" has a high likelihood of killing your happiness, and it needs to be addressed. It can develop in a number of different ways, but here’s my story.

I was raised in a moderately dysfunctional family dynamic.

My dad was, and still is, an abusive asshole.

He was also raised by abusive parents by whom he was also adopted, and despite complaining that his childhood was terrible, he hasn’t been hugely successful in ending the cycle of abuse himself. He rules our family with an iron first and a filthy temper.

My mother, as a result of his abusive and manipulative ways, is a chronic liar, very secretive, especially deceptive and riddled with anxiety. These traits are of course entirely forgivable, given the piss poor quality of his treatment.

We live in fear.

My mother did what she could for us and is a wonderful mother, but as I mentioned, because of the fear present in this house, she has developed certain defenses against my father in the form of the aforementioned traits. Whilst effective against him, they do tend to spill into her other relationships and cause friction with people who don’t treat her that way.

Sadly that makes her hard to trust or rely on. Her power was taken away from her long ago, or so it seems, and she’s not confident enough with others to understand that being truthful with the world is okay and people will accept it; she sees everyone as the abuser.

So she is nice.

She feels the need to ask permission for everything she wants to do. She will, for example, announce to my father what she’s going to do most days and why, even things as menial as a trip to the store. If her reasons are not what he deems acceptable for some arbitrary, irrelevant reason, then he coerces her into not doing so... which is bullshit. She shouldn’t need to ask permission. I totally get communication, but there’s a line.

It's also highly likely that she will be lying about the activity she’s asking to go do anyway, again, understandably so.

Unfortunately, he’s impacted me too. I’m no saint, and I’ve developed some traits that need work too. There’s no dispute there. I have trust issues, and I have had anger issues amongst other things, but all these have been heavily worked on, both on my own and in therapy.

I have made an effort to correct my bad behaviour and so has my sister, but my mother has not. She’s not yet been able to discover a deep self-awareness.

In the end, it comes down to self-awareness, after all, and calling yourself out on your own bullshit when it comes to light. Not all of us are able to do this.

I give a lot of credit for my self-awareness to ex-partners who helped me see my issues in a way that was unavoidable. They helped bring out the worst in me and gave me a chance to see it. As such, I was able to work on the aspects of myself that I didn’t very much like and smooth over some rough parts, very thankfully. Though it was certainly not easy to do.

My mother will soon be leaving my father, and I will do my best to help her see her patterns upon which she can then work on safely.

I could to some degree argue that I was dealt a crappy hand in life to start with and resign myself to misery and powerlessness... but I chose to believe it’s not where you start the game, it’s how you play your hand and where you end up that matters.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. I don’t live in poverty, I’m not starving or suffering without things like a shower and a warm bed, I’m only one pissed-off father away from it to be fair, but I digress; to some level, suffering is suffering, and if we drop the desire to quantify it, we’ve all suffered at one point or another.

It’s part of life.

A crappy hand, however, can be played well if we let our highest wisdom develop and guide us. It can provide us with a solid bedrock foundation of self if we let it. It can, and usually does, bring us through valuable lessons and realisations.

This was one of mine.

One day, as I was sitting in meditation, it sprung to mind that myself and my mother had both developed into "nice people"’ despite the toxic family situation we’ve been through. I wondered how that was even possible. Surely we should have become livid raging assholes after a time, but we hadn’t.

You see, through my father's appalling treatment of us, we had been conditioned to behave in ways that pleased him. No one dare step out of line or act in a way displeasing to him for fear of abuse.

So essentially we had become his well-behaved pets.

I became aware that this had spilled out into other areas of our lives and caused all sorts of issues!

This discovery sparked within me a deep anger, not that he hadn’t ignited me with rage on endless occasions previously, because trust me, my cup fucking runneth over with repressed rage aimed squarely in his direction.

We had become people-pleasers.

This people-pleasing behaviour or, "nice guy" personality, had developed within us, and it was very active behind the scenes, wreaking havoc in our lives in so many ways we weren’t even aware of!

How could this have happened?

It’s fairly common when we're growing up to be taught that we must “be nice to people.”

But what does that even mean? Does it mean be kind? That's sort of the intention I think, but not really.

It’s very important not to confuse kindness and niceness. I’ll go over this again a little later.

In my world, being "nice" meant... involuntary sacrifice. Sacrifice your needs for others' happiness at any opportunity. “Don’t rock the boat.”

What it really meant was don’t do anything that might displease someone or otherwise inconvenience their lives for your "measly" needs.

It meant I shouldn't care for my needs.

But that’s total and complete horse shit!

It took me until very recently, and I’m 26, to uncover this particular unconscious belief that was lurking within my mind. Autonomously deciding my life for me without much awareness from me. I was almost oblivious. Like a people-pleasing robot.

It took several relationships of a romantic, platonic and professional nature, plus lots of meditation, to realise what was going on.

Now that I'm able see these beliefs out in the daylight, however, I can openly witness their ridiculousness!

It’s ass-backwards to live your life aiming to avoid ever upsetting, displeasing, annoying, bothering, irritating, angering or inconveniencing someone; it’s practically impossible and it requires so much more effort to live that way.

They say that nice guys finish last and assholes get everything they want.

Whilst life typically is not quite as black and white as that, there is some truth to it. If you know where to look, you can locate all the evidence of your nice guy infection and slay it.

You can look everywhere: your personal life, whether it be your family dynamic, or within your relationship or dating life; in your professional life, impacting relationships with colleagues, superiors and career prospects.

Wherever you look, your inner nice guy is there and it’s a problem.

This nice guy outlook and behaviour pattern can and most likely will have you accepting the metaphorical backseat in life because you don’t want to seem unkind or selfish. Therein lies the problem.

Often, we confuse being nice for being kind, as I mentioned earlier, and we confuse self-care with selfishness. This is dangerous and needs to be looked at.

Whilst they are similar, there are some extremely important differences, mainly regarding our levels of consciousness and free will in our choices, that set them apart.

Being nice, in my opinion, is a pattern.

A pattern that neglects the needs of the self at almost every opportunity, we sacrifice what we want or need whether we truly want to or not. It’s almost involuntary and the result of beliefs conditioned into us somewhere along the line.

Being kind, however, is a choice we make of free will, fully aware of what and why we’re doing so. There is no sacrifice we don’t want to make but "have to." There’s no giving up things we like because of some unrealised or repressed sense of obligation to please the other party.

I once heard being nice described as “violence directed at ourselves." It certainly contains a harsh truth.

Differentiating between the two has been a very powerful realisation for me, and becoming more self-aware has allowed me to identify when I’m exhibiting these behaviours, therefore allowing me to challenge and change them.

It’s okay to say no. You don’t need anyone else’s permission to do what’s right for you. But when you look around and see the astronomically high number of people displaying this sort of behaviour, is it any wonder so many of us are afflicted by poor mental health?

It’s okay to cancel plans, it’s okay to send your food back. It’s okay to disagree with someone, it’s okay to make mistakes. Accidents happen.

You’re allowed to take time making decisions, you’re allowed to take a vacation, you’re allowed to do something simply because YOU WANT TO.

Having said that, I feel that it’s also necessary to state that you don’t want to be doing a full 180 here and become an abusive asshole like my dad. You have to draw a line and find a balance. Be respectful.

My dad does whatever he wants whenever he wants at the expense of anyone else’s feelings, wants, or needs. He is never to blame and anytime he fucks up, it’s either your fault or it’s not important. But when someone else screws up, it’s as if the world is ending and you’ve ruined his life. It’s completely irrational, hypocritical and irresponsible. Not to mention infuriating.

My mum was once reduced to tears because she dropped a glass... a fucking glass?... C'mon. He was such a dick about this stuff it made her into this, but when he gets in trouble with the police, it’s no big deal?

Yeah, no!

Classic narcissist right there.

One other example of the far reaches of this nice guy crap is that I have, on many occasions, put myself through literal relationship hell for one example, when I’d want to end a relationship. I would feel that breaking up wasn’t "nice" and I couldn’t do it without them being okay with it... nonsense. It made things very tricky.

But life has a way of bringing you into situations wherein your ill-seated beliefs are exposed to you in the form of challenges to overcome, as lessons for you to learn, and it’s a harsh class at times, but usually we’re glad we took it.

To wrap up, with as much compassion for all you nice people out there as I can have, you must ask yourself if you’re being nice, or being kind.

Being nice has lead me into depression, anxiety, disappointment, stress and devastation amongst other things.

Don’t let that be you.

Learn to say no. Have respect for your self and self-worth; what you want matters and is important. We get one life... or at least in this case, it’s best to assume that and be glad if we’re wrong.

Remove yourself wherever possible from abusive situations. Do that first, as my mother and I are doing. Safety first of course, and then go to town on your inner nice guy.

Identify where you’re being screwed out of what you inherently deserve: a caring and abuse-free relationship with people, a chance for promotion, some alone time, the right to disagree with someone... whatever it may be, and approach that area of your life with self love and self respect.

Fair warning: You may see things in your life start to fall away in the process, but if those situations were built on nice guy principles and will not adjust to respect you as you have adjusted to respect you, there’s a very good possibility they are enabling your nice guy, not helping yourself grow out of it.

It won’t be easy, but try to become responsible for your shit and take care of yourself. Don’t be a doormat nice guy.

Take care.