Nice defined

What is nice? It’s a word we all know and use, but rarely stop to think about.

Are you a nice person?

Would other people describe you with using this word?

Let's say you're going at a dinner party and one of the people there, said:

"Hey, when we get there, just be nice"

When recieve this kind of advice, what's your experience at the dinner party? When you're at this dinner party, what are you actually focusing on? Are you focusing on speaking freely and spontaneously asking what you’re most curious about, and being fully engaged?

Of course not.

Being nice, at its core, is about focusing of being liked by others and making everything smooth

Let's see how does the rules of a nice person look like:

• Believe that if you are good enough, nobody will reject, betray, or criticize you.
• Never interrupt someones's during his/her talk.
• Never disappoint anyone, even if you disappoint yourself.
• Say “it’s fine” when it is absolutely not fine.
• Give people unlimited chances and call it understanding.
• Apologize for having needs. Say "Sorry" a LOT in general.
• Make yourself easy to use, easy to ignore.
• Call boundaries “selfish” and exhaustion "generosity & niceness"
• Protect everyone from discomfort except yourself.
• Hide your true opinions to remain likable.
• Say yes immediately, then feel trapped afterward.
• Treat other people’s emergencies as more important than your own life.
• Forgive without requiring changed behavior.
• Give more than you can afford—emotionally, financially, or physically to everyone who needs it.
• Avoid asking for help so nobody can accuse you of being needy. You should be more giving
• Become angry at people for not reading feelings you never expressed.

And each of these rules are a big problem that can take away much of the joy of living. In the process of eliminating social anxiety and shyness, eliminating this kind of attribute, should be one of your main goals.

You want to be LESS NICE. You’re not just a nice person. You’re not just a kind, loving, generous, good-hearted, patient, wise, smart, proactive, and responsible person. Because you also have a shadow of yourself, which demands pleasure. I mean pure pleasure, Eating sweet foods, having sex, no responsibility at all. No work, just fun! You need to feel your shadow, own it. You don't suppress the desire, but you also don't let it drive the car.

I’m not saying you aren’t those things(loving,kind etc...), In fact, you may have many or even all of those qualities. But guess what? You’re also selfish, self-centered, judgmental, impatient, impulsive, greedy, and careless in some ways. We are all. You are. And you should have a healthy amount of self interest.

Because we humans are animals, even though we often forget this fact, and we are extremely complex. In fact, we share a large amount of our core brain structures with reptiles. This part of our brain is primarily concerned with keeping ourselves alive, securing a mate and having sex, and maintaining power and domination over others so that we can secure said mate and sex.

We also have a highly advanced emotional brain that we share with all mammal species. This makes us focused on deeply connecting with others, helping themout as they help us out, and devoting ourselves to taking care of our young children.

This combination is, incredible and makes us miraculous species. And yet, this can become extremely confuzing when you are just supposed to think of feel only one of the particular ways. Your mind is a collection of different, complex entities that vary greatly in their desires.

This concept is somehow related to foundings of the famous neurologist "Sigmund Freud", known as ID, Ego, SuperEgo. Read here for more information.

Not nice

One of the First steps towards eliminating shyness and social anxiety comes from within. You, a person who feel isolated from the world, is likely to have a lack of of self.

You don't know your strengths. You don't feel worthy. The first one is actually familiar for people who have an experience going to job interviews. The strengths and weakness of the interviewee, is the kind of subject that interviewer asks from the interviewee in a usual interview process. It is often subjects to some jokes too Example. The goal of this question might not really related to this subject, but this question also shows how self-aware you are.

Now, the opposite of nice is... Not being a jerk. The opposite of nice means, you know who you are, you know your values, and you know what you value. Having these in you mind then, you're going after what you actually want.

You are still kind, caring, generous, loving and a helpful person. But you're not doing that to please others. You're not doing them so no one feels discomort near you. You're not living in fear of "Was i good enough" and "Did anyone like me?".

Instead, a “not nice” person’s mindset may look something like this:

• I know who I am.
• I understand my strengths and weaknesses.
• I know what I value.
• I can be kind without seeking approval.
• I do not have to make everyone like me.
• I can pursue what I want without constantly worrying about other people’s opinions.

I can choose to say yes, and I can choose to say no. I can hold back and keep quiet, or I can ask a tough question that challenges someone. If someone close to me is doing something that annoys me, I can bring it up and talk about it. When I really want something and the first response I get is a no, I ask questions and see if the other person is open to changing their mind. I’m completely free to choose exactly how I want to be in this moment, based on what feels right to me. I am the decider. I am the creator of my life.

I'm me. The real me. And it feels good. I dont know how people react to this. We don’t have control of whether people like us or not. The only thing we have control over is, how fully we show up.

Let's you are entering a room with about 100 people. How much people of these people are gonna like you? It's about 62 people. Right? Just joking. We dont know.

But i do know one thing for certain: If you dont show up you're self fully around others, there are a LOT less people who like you. People can feel it when you're not your authentic self. And most people feel disconnected with you.

High cost of a nice person.

Even we might feel some stress during being nice... It might not be clear to you why you should get rid of it.

Yeah, but nice is still good, isn’t it? If I were somehow better, saintlier, more giving, then I wouldn’t have all this fear and guilt and anger anyway. I mean, being nice is the best way to be in the world, after all. I just need to try harder!

Nice programming runs deep and it's hard to see the otherside before making any progress.

Below i'm writing some of costs of being nice to make the subject more clear how niceness can wreak havoc into your life. I've experience all of this:

1. Anxiety:

Being nice is about pleasing others and feeling bad if you're going to break someone's feelings. You're worried how others will react to you and think of you. You feel responsible for other's feeling.

If i invited some people who didn't know each other, i feel so responsible if it goes well or not. What if some of them didn't like the others? Yeah my anxiety would skyrocket, and guilt comes after that too.

This creates, a sheer amount of anxiety.

2. Resentment & Rage:

Resentment & anger builds up day after day, you feel sucked. Shyness and Niceness in general, can turn into resentment and rage, when feelings, needs or bounderies stay unexpressed for a long time.

You feel angry about being mistreated but you can't express it.

3. Powerlessness

Pleasing others. Putting other first. Extremely accommodating. Avoid speaking your mind. These rules makes you powerless, because you are. You can't go to what you really want.

These rules they teach you to abandon your own choices. You become disconnected from what you really want, while other people’s needs, moods, and approval control your life.

This rules are generally robbing you of your power and force.

As we do this, we have the unspoken expectation that goes something like this. If I’m nice and play by all these rules, then life will bring me good things. People will like me, respect me, hire me, promote me, date me, love me, and be my friend. The problem is this plan doesn’t work. It doesn’t bring you the things you really want. The nice stance is inherently a passive one. It’s the path of avoidance of discomfort and hoping that life will magically turn out the way we want it to. It’s a life of fear with a thin rationalization: I’m choosing to live this way because it makes me a “good person.”

4. Isolation

Life is sad and certainly not fun when using these rules. You do all this things but at the end of the day, you still feel lonely. You feel people wont notice your sacrifices. People are not giving you back the things as you expect.

Some people might know you and even love you. But they don't really know you. They see the mask over yourself and this result in weak connection that you really not enjoying it.

5. Bonus: Physical pain!

How does "being nice" creates a physical pain? Well, your body has a few mechanisms for as an attempt to minimize the emotional pain and discomort.

One of them is being denial. When something uncomfortable and painful happens, your brain and body can simply ignore it.

These defenses exist to minimize the experience of uncomfortable or painful feelings, such as anger, hurt, fear, terror, sadness, and grief. They often operate below our conscious awareness. Hence, we rarely think: Hmm, I’m starting to feel some terror about knowing life is impermanent and I’m going to die. I’m also feeling deep grief about my brother being ill. Now, to defend myself against these feelings, I’m going to maximize my stress about work and focus on my upcoming project as if it’s life or death. Instead, we just feel stressed about this damn project at work, check our email forty- seven times per day, and worry about what will happen if we don’t pull it off perfectly.

The ultimate defence over a painful situation that you start to feel notice, is physical pain.

This is the perfect defense because it’s absorbing and distracting. Have you ever woken up with a neck so painfully sore that you could barely turn your head? How much do you think about that during the day? Heck, how much do you think about that per minute?

The physical pain aspect of the niceness is a bit out of topic here so i'll suggest you to do some research about it, if it's intrests you.

Over-responsible

Are you feeling you're taking too much responsibility for others?

A nice person, is often drains his/her own energy by being a care-taker instead of taking care. Here’s the thing. You are not responsible for other people’s feelings. They’re not incompetent children. They’re adults who can handle their own feelings. They can work through disappointment, hurt, anger, sadness, and upset. In fact, doing so will make them stronger and healthier in the long run. You cannot stop others from feeling all discomfort, or all pain. It is an impossible task, a fool’s errand.

Differentiation

A simple concept named Differentiation can help you to overcome the over-responsibility and rejection in general. Differentiation in this context means, we are all different in someways. I dont have the same feeling as you. I'm me. And you are you. I have my own thoughts, feelings and opinions, desires, hopes and fears. We can disagree, disappoint each other, or feel differently without either of us being wrong or unsafe.

Anger-phobic

Let’s start with this question: is anger good or bad? What do you think? What’s your initial gut reaction? For most nice people, anger is an unacceptable, undesirable, and generally bad emotion. If one is nice, one shouldn’t feel angry, irritated, or upset with others.

These are the stories I lived by for decades. I would get anxious or depressed, but never angry. Sure, once in a while I’d feel enraged at another driver on the road, but these instances were internal and hidden.

People often classify emotions as positive and negative. sadness, anger, irritation. But these emotions are completely healthy to have. You just need handle them accordingly. For example, when you feel angry, don't just suppress it. Really feel it, and use it toward the person you're angry with. This will fuel you when speaking to talk in more assertive way.

Boundary-less

To illustrate with an example, imagine you own a house. This house has a backyard with a lawn, some flowers, and a fruit tree. Life is good.

Your neighbor also has a backyard behind his house, which borders yours. Sometimes, when you’re out back in your yard, he’s out in his yard as well. Imagine the following scenario, and notice your internal reaction: He sees you behind your house and shouts a friendly greeting, walking towards you. He walks across his yard into yours, making his way through your flower bed, stepping on several of them. As he chats with you, he casually walks to your fruit tree and picks two of the juiciest, ripest peaches, placing one in his pocket, and taking a big, satisfying bite out of the other one.

How are you feeling in this moment? Are you enjoying the interaction? Or is part of you a little irritated, a little upset, a little pissed off? Well, if you are, you shouldn’t be. You should be tolerant, after all. I mean, he didn’t know he stepped on your flowers. You have a bunch of peaches on that tree. You should be more generous and share a few with him… Sound familiar?

Here's the thing: These internal reactions are so important. They reveals your boundaries. What you want, and what you don't want and dislike. This stuff matters. It matters because it's your and your experience. You matter.

Would you say anything to your neighbor? Would you tell him you’d prefer that he didn’t pick your fruit without asking? Would you tell him to not step on your fucking flowers? Or would you smile politely, nod, carry on a friendly conversation, and only internally react? Would you be angry, but too scared to show it, and instead wait until he was gone, then go into your house and tell your spouse, “Honey! You wouldn’t believe what Albert just did! That guy is such an insensitive, stupid jerk!”

Speak-less

There may be dozens of places in your life in which you are tired of holding back, being silent, playing nice, getting looked over, ignored, disrespected, pushed around.

Below i write some aspect of it so you can understand it better.

smarter, better, and more certain

During a conversation with people, sometimes it is hard to honor your perspective because you’re not so sure inside yourself. Maybe you don’t know what you think about something, or where you stand on a topic. This might be from a lack of practice of discovering and honoring your perspective. In fact, you may have years of habitually assuming your thoughts, opinions, and feelings about a subject don’t matter much. But as you examine what your perspective is more and more, your sense of certainty will grow stronger.

You also might be automatically assuming that other perspectives are more valid because you deem them as smarter and better. Part of this might be due to their age, experience, or status. It might also be a response to the level of certainty they have when they communicate. If they sound confident, it can automatically create a sense of uncertainty or doubt inside of you. But remember this: Certainty does not correlate with accuracy. Just because someone sounds certain, it does not mean that what they’re saying is accurate. It also doesn’t mean that it’s more thought out, researched, or backed by anything at all. This is something that i finally learned after listening to people in my life journey, From college to my relatives.

Remember, people just say stuff. You might be surprised. But if you want to make sure, think like a scientist. Place your hypothesis "Is people mostly say stuff without having a extensive knowledge about the subject?" and go through it. When you feel someone is saying something wierd, challenge them:

How do you know that? What makes you say that?

Interesting, I haven’t heard that before. What research did you read that said that?

You'll surprised by how do most people just throw their two cents to any conversation, whether or not they had any extensive research about that subject.

Sharing freely socially

Most nice people don’t think they deserve much attention or focus when interacting with others. They tend to keep the conversation focused on the other person, asking them questions, and sharing less about themselves. They don’t want to be an egomaniac or attention hog who just talks about themselves. In fact, being the center of attention is often uncomfortable, even when they’re just talking with one person, let alone a group.

What would serve you more is to have a healthy expectation of attention in a conversation. This means you think you deserve attention, for others to be present with you, and listen to what you are saying. What you say is significant and it matters, because it’s about you. Even if it’s you simply sharing something you read, or an experience you recently enjoyed in your life. That matters, because you matter.

What came to your mind? Your dog, a movie you watched yesterday, working out? Don’t dismiss anything like this as irrelevant or uninteresting. Anything about your life that is interesting to you, is interesting. It matters.

The point is you can express yourself. You can share who you are. Because you matter. What you think, feel, and experience matters.