Kill Being Nice

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Kill Being Nice

You may or may not have already realized that being nice does not get you very far in life. If this is something you suffer from, you may have accepted it as a part of your personality. So, let us investigate this business of being nice. 

Is “being nice” a mood or a part of personality? I propose to you that there is no such thing called personality, that is fixed, that is natural and about which you can do nothing much. What you may call personality is really a jumble of opinions about how life is, and how life is going to be, and the habit patterns that you have built up in the process of living a life. It is all changeable. 

Human beings are far more shapeable than you may believe. So instead of viewing “being nice” as a part of the personality, I recommend that you see it as a mood-of-a-kind. 

Being nice is a mood that is like an opinion that if I am not nice and perceived friendly, people won’t like me, and my future is not going to turn out well. It may have been a useful opinion at some point in time, but making this mood permanent, like a fixed ongoing strategy of being nice, so that your life could work out well, really holds you back. 

Life brings you all kinds of breakdowns to deal with. That is the nature of life. To deal with certain breakdowns, you may have to let up being nice and confront the situation head-on with all your rage and seriousness. If you are being nice all the time, you may be sending out invitations to people to come and take advantage of you. My friend, Dr. James McManis, used to say all the time, “Nice people stink up the world,” and I agree. Nice people invest too much time, in making sure, that others think of them as nice people. Nice people end up tolerating nonsensical social, familial, business, and cultural practices that should not be tolerated but confronted head-on. People that take on being nice, suffer silently from indignity. 

There is another version of this mood that is about making sure that everyone perceives you as a worthy person, a good person, and a caring person. You invest a good deal of time into actions and relationships to ensure that you are perceived that way. You want validation from others. You want everybody to know that you are “good people,” that you care, and that you are well-liked. And as soon as someone fails to get you completely, fails to understand your intentions, and may perceive you as less worthy, you will go to war to ensure that you are completely understood. You will argue endlessly in business meetings and family gatherings in defense of everything you have done, hoping to present your true intentions. This way you really set yourself up for getting hurt. If others don’t see your logic, that would pain you to no end. You may begin to live like a victimized-good-person who is never understood and is always suffering. I call that heroic suffering. If you have this kind of automatic assessment that you must be well-liked in all situations, I recommend that you carefully reconsider your strategy. You want to be well-liked by people, but people will never give you what you want.

The Brazillian-American philosopher, and a Harvard professor, Roberto Mangabeira Unger says, “we want from one another, what every child wants from every parent: an assurance that there is an unconditional place for him in the world. No such assurance is ever enough, because every assurance is both ambiguous and revocable”. 

The game of life is auto-designed in this way. Everyone is trapped.  

We need to let go of this, piece by piece, step by step. Begin to say to yourself repeatedly, “What people think of me, is none of my business.”

There is another version of being nice that I call the mood of heroism. What is heroism, and why is heroism a bad mood? When we think about heroism, the images of a man come to mind, who is running into a building on fire, and saving a child. This is what Hollywood has done to us. In reality, very few of us are ever confronted with having to run inside a burning building and saving a child. And when we are confronted with such situations, what will matter at the moment is our capacity for courage and not that we carry around a mood of heroism. 

Many people that live in this mood of heroism, live in this interpretation that I and I alone are going to do something here. I don’t need anyone’s help since no one else cares. And then in the mood of heroism, whatever we do, whatever we say, is fair to us. With good intentions of being a hero in a situation, we make greater messes and also place ourselves in the situation of getting hurt. 

Let’s take an example of a woman or a man that willingly suffers in an abusive situation in the name of keeping the family together, in keeping a job, or keeping the business going, without seeking help from anyone even when help is available, believing that she and she alone or he and he alone has to deal with this. My friend, Chauncey Bell says that the mood of heroism is a self-pitying and self-aggrandizing mood. 

This is a mood that in spite of good intentions, does not deliver satisfaction. 

Let me bring another nasty mood to your attention that does not look like a nasty mood and hides out as a nice guy. This mood is called “being generally happy.” Sometimes, when I ask my clients, “how is your mood?,” and they respond by saying, “I am generally happy,” I instantly know that as their coach, I need to investigate further. 

Whereas “being generally happy” seems like a good mood, it’s actually not a mood that will deliver you power. In the mood of being generally happy, you hide what is causing you some sort of indigestion and anxiety, and instead of investigating it, you cover it up. 

Being generally happy is actually a miserable mood. It reveals a deep unexamined dissatisfaction about some concern that has not been dealt with. If you are experiencing a loss of power, take a look at whether you have built for yourself a bullshit mood of being generally happy. 

For example, you may be dealing with some inauthentic or abusive behavior of a partner, and in reaction, maybe even holding some small degree of resentment against them. But instead of confronting what you consider inauthentic conduct, you are keeping a happy front along with some small grudge. The French word for this mood is Ressentiment. Ressentiment is different from straight-up resentment. Straight-up resentment is, “Hey, you have done me wrong and this is a serious breakdown that needs to be dealt with and if you don’t deal with it, we are done.” Ressentiment on the other hand is a silent compromise of integrity, which is all about maintaining the status quo while having a persistent minor grudge about the person that you are in a relationship with. 

By definition, Ressentiment is a psychological state that comes from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred, that go hand in hand but cannot be acted upon, frequently resulting in some form of self-abasement. 

What is self-abasement you might ask? Self-abasement is a humiliation of oneself. It is an act of behaving in a way that makes one seem lower or less deserving of respect. 

We all are prone to have Ressentiment. And we must kill our Ressentiment. Ressentiment can really destroy your life and limit the potential of your business and personal relationships and the potential of your power in those relationships. It would serve you to let go of your Ressentiment by carefully assessing the matter and seeing your participation in the matter, and then doing something about it. 

You may think, “Well, Ressentiment is ok for me, as I am getting such and such out of the relationship.” Fine. You may have found workability and you may be getting such and such out of this relationship. But you may also be unaware of where you might be trapped, and what you might be missing. 

If you cannot locate your Ressentiment, I will show you where to find it. Ressentiment lives in the house of gossip. 

So, the ugly head of being nice shows up in more than one way. Ah, we need to kill these sets of moods. The realization of these traps opens up a possibility to give up living for the sake of looking good to others. 

In a moment, I will tell you about a life-changing strategy and a mood that will help transform these nasty moods of being nice. But first, let me tell you about another cousin of being nice and generally happy which is “acting positively”. 

Acting positively is a mood of pretending that is refusing to deal with some breakdown while keeping a happy front. To deal with serious breakdowns in your enterprises and your personal environments, you may need moods of indignity and rage at first to move you to deal with the situation. The mood of acting positively, goes along with the lack of capacity, for the recognition and articulation, and courage, for the disclosure of the authentic mood. Acting positively may keep you busy trying to see the sunny side of everything. Breakdowns don’t live on the sunny side. To deal with them you must be willing to let go of your mood of acting positively and take a serious look at what is really your mood about a certain situation. 

Characterizing your mood as a mood of indignity due to something that happened with you or still happening with you, may give rise to the mood of rage. The mood of rage is not just about an afternoon roar but about a wave of existential anger at the practices that insult you and injure you. The moods of indignity and rage can move you to confront what you must and reshape your environment and the course of your work and life. 

To transform these moods of being nice, acting positively, and being generally happy, we must use the sharp knife of intellect, and carefully characterize what kind of a mood is causing us our loss of power. 

In getting very precise, in the characterization, in the articulation of your moods and others’ moods, you can begin the process of transformation. 

If you have one of these or a related mood, characterize it and own it, and begin to write it down for yourself in your notebook when you see that mood. You can also speak to your trusted allies and your mentors about your insights and characterizations of your moods. 

As you begin to characterize your moods, you start gaining power. I will tell you a secret and fun way to gain this kind of power. Begin to characterize for yourself the moods of other people and see where you can see the underlying moods of resignation, victimhood, and being nice. For the time being, keep the negative characterizations of others’ moods to yourself. I am equipping you with a dangerous skill. Till you are competent with this kind of thinking and speaking, keep your negative characterizations of others’ moods to yourself. Then assess carefully, when and where you must with care, make a characterization of someone’s mood. 

As you characterize others’ moods you will gain greater awareness of your own moods. You may begin to ask yourself if it is wise, to have this strategy to be nice at all costs and how this strategy might be trapping you. 

I recommend that you give up the mood of being nice as a default strategy, for the sake of realizing your own full potential and dealing with serious traps that you may have gotten yourself in. “Being straight” is a good replacement for being nice. When you start being straight, you no longer violate your conscience. In an abusive situation, you will see what it is and speak how it is. If you have the power to stop what is not right, you will take action and stop it. If you do not yet have the power to stop or speak openly about what is awful, then consider it unacceptable clearly in your private view. 

While being straight, you never let go of what should be confronted, and never hide behind your excuse of having good intentions, where you have contributed to making a mess or have tolerated one. In other words, you hold yourself and others accountable for their language and their actions. 

With the mood of being straight, you can fully own all your mistakes or lack of skills in some situations, and in owning it authentically you commit to caring and learning. Or being straight in a different situation, you no longer pretend to be something that you are not or have something that you don’t. Being straight is about being authentic and being vulnerable. Power comes from one’s capacity for vulnerability. The practice of being straight delivers to you the context of vulnerability. Yes, you got that right. When you are being straight, you are vulnerable. You could lose whatever you were getting out of the business or personal relationship. But if you don’t risk it, you will never change the situation you want to change. 

When you start being straight, you might shock others at first. However, being straight will deliver you a great deal of power and satisfaction. You will no longer participate in the dirty dancing of others or the ones of your own making. When you are being straight, you will not be nice. You will be powerful.