The Price of Nice

Did you grow up being told you must be nice. Was it ingrained into your behavior to be nice to everyone all the time? 

For many this is the case, even to the point of developing the "disease to please."  People- pleasing becomes a way of life. You feel compelled to put others' needs first, over any of your own needs.

Are you the person who can never say "no" to any request? Do you try endlessly to have everyone's' approval? Do you always want to make everyone else happy?

At some point the price of being nice is too high. People may manipulate or exploit your willingness to please. You avoid conflict or confrontation or the anger of others. Relationships become a burden and your own emotional needs don't get met. This can be deadly to relationships.

Your deep fear of negative emotions sustain your need to be nice. The more you identify with being nice without being real, you become filled with nagging doubts, insecurities, and lingering fears. Anxiety becomes a constant for you. 

Unless you do something to stop this cycle of pleasing others at the cost of yourself, you will eventually "hit the proverbial wall." You will exhaust your emotional energy and may feel like giving up altogether.

The content of this post comes from a book called The Disease to Please, Curing the People-Pleasing Syndrome, by Harriet B. Braiker, Ph.D

You may be spending your energy "shoulding" on yourself, living by what you have absorbed that you "should" do. You may think you must always be nice and always put others before you.

If this is the case, I recommend you check Braiker's book noted above. You'll find the 21-day action plan for curing the disease to please.

It Is Time to Be Nice!

O.K. The election is over. We can quit arguing with each other. It is time for us to be nice. That is how we can make the world a better place.

And if you have forgotten how to do that, here's Kid President on YouTube to explain how:

Now, let's go out there and be nice.

What Does It Mean to Be Kind?

Can you be nice without being kind? You know you have seen it, probably even done it. You did or said something just to be polite. Your being nice to them was unkind to you. For instance, You did something for someone without really being present with them, a handout perhaps, that was really easy, didn’t require much of yourself. Maybe you handed a dollar to a panhandler and hurried past them. Being kind would have required you step outside your comfort zone to make real human contact with that person – eye contact, a greeting, maybe even a brief conversation with the human being they are. The dollar is nice. The human contact is kind. Are you kind or are you just nice?

Nothing wrong with being nice, of course. It is easy. And sometimes it is greatly appreciated even though you didn’t invest much of yourself in it. What is a problem, however, is when your being nice when it is done because you believe other people’s needs and feelings are more important than your own. When you value others’ feelings more than your own you don’t feel good about yourself and it makes it hard to take the time or effort to be good to someone else. Like with co-dependency you end up feeling powerless, unloved, worthless or depressed.

Of course, being nice and being kind can coexist. But too often we do something nice and think we have fulfilled our responsibility to the other members of the human tribe. But have we been present to the other? Have we invested anything of ourselves? You may intend to be kind, you offer assistance “if they ever need it.” But do you follow through and actually take the time and effort to understand the other’s situation and make a real difference? Kindness is an investment that goes beyond just the willingness to help.

All this has me taking a hard look at my “acts of kindness”. How often am I really only being nice? How might I go further and be truly kind? It is easy for me to get tangled in trying to sort this out. I’m basically a nice person, was raised to be nice. So when have I gone the next step and been kind? I used to pack an extra bag lunch once a week to give to a panhandler who was almost always on the corner of the highway exit that I passed on my way to do my volunteer job. I never made an opportunity to get to know him or learn how he got to the point of begging. So at what point did I move into kindness from being nice?

As I look at it now I don’t think I did make it an act of kindness, not really. I invested a little time and effort, but not much of myself. It was a little out of my comfort zone to make any contact with a homeless panhandler, though. So what do you think?

Keep an eye out for kindness as you move through your week. What do you see others do that you think is kind? I like sharing those kinds of things on social media. I subscribe to the Good News Network and share various posts on FaceBook. I also share Random Acts of Kindness. Why do I bother with that? Because the more kindness we see the more kindness we are likely to feel and do. And sharing that encourages others to be kind.

Think about how Pay It Forward has worked. Kindness is a way to pay it forward. Pass it on.

[I’m reading A Short Course in Kindness by Margot Silk Forrest. Have any of you read it? Much of what I’m posting is based on her book as it applies to my life.]