This week I was reflecting back on being nice; what does that mean for me and feel like?
I know from being a child that if I wanted to fit in or be liked, I had to be nice to people. If I was not nice, I would be not liked or be part of a group.
So what do I mean by being nice?
- Agreeing to things that do not feel right to me
- Saying yes when I mean no
- Eating foods that I don’t like, just to please others
- Going to places where I don’t feel comfortable or want to go to
- Talking to people where I don’t really feel comfortable or safe.
I know when I was young, my parents would have lots of visitors come to their house and we were always encouraged to be polite and say hello to everyone, give them a hug or go sit on their laps. I also remember occasions when some visitors would come home and they just did not feel right but I was forced to say hello and go up to them, even when my whole body said No. If I refused I would get told off. There were times when I completely refused and accepted the telling off.
But as I grew older and created my own circle of friends I soon learned you had to be nice to fit into a group otherwise you would be pushed out. In those days, that was worse – not to be part of a group – as I would feel uncomfortable being left out. Friends would gang up and not talk to me; they would ignore me and not let me play with them and they would call me names. I would feel scared walking to school and going home in case someone would physically hurt me.
I know I took this behaviour into my adult life and felt I just had to be this way – this is life and nice became a normal thing. I worked out that if you are nice, you fit in and you are liked by all.
What I have learned through the teachings of Universal Medicine is that being nice is giving our power away, in pleasing other people. Being nice says to the other person, “It’s ok, you don’t need to be responsible for your actions and behaviour.” It says “my needs don’t matter only yours,” but how could this be true?
Nice has been a constant underlying pattern in my life with family, friends and colleagues. When I gained more awareness around being nice, I could feel how harming it is for everyone. By being nice I am not being truly responsible for my own actions and not allowing another to be truly responsible either. This was not easy to identify in my daily life initially, but now I can see clearly how it plays out.
More recently I have noticed that I have avoided how I have tried to please people to avoid any confrontation. This has been across the board, with everyone. I wanted to be liked by everyone but it’s not about others liking me, but about my own self-love, self-respect and being loving to myself.
Now when I sit with this in truth I realise that it is so harming, as I am not being open and honest when things are truly wrong or behaviours are not acceptable, especially when I have felt the truth in my body.
Being nice does not allow us to explore a situation to get to what is really going on, therefore it does not provide the opportunity for true responsibility, nor for any learning or understanding.
As I have been working on deepening my self-love through the connection to the stillness and inner wisdom in my body, I have been able to observe my own behaviour and the behaviour of others towards me, through our communication and movements. When I am racy inside, trying to please and be nice and entertaining, I fail to read what is really happening before me in relationships – or perhaps it is honest to say that I don’t want to feel it. By coming from a place of inner stillness, there is so much to feel and understand but I have to be willing to go there.
Normally I would get caught in other people’s lives, issues and dramas, and with that I would feel sorry for them and then get caught in being nice by wanting to help rather than being open and truthful in my expression of what I feel in that moment.
What I now realise, by not expressing my truth, is how I am allowing another to indulge in their behaviour and saying-without-saying “it’s ok to behave like that” when it’s not. This is harming by not taking self-responsibility and is not supporting them or myself at all.
So coming back to our stillness and inner knowing allows us to be aware, read the situation and express in truth. I now know how important it is to be truthful in relationships and not get caught up in being nice where I do not honour myself or the other person at all. Nice and ‘people pleasing’ is not being loving and does not truly serve.
By Amita Khurana, BSc Honours, Hotel Business Owner, Director, Practitioner/Therapist, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk UK
Further Reading:
True Role Models – From Being ‘A Good Man’ to Taking True Responsibility for My Choices
Giving Your Power Away: Why Being ‘Good’ Doesn’t Work
Learning to Feel my Feelings: Human Beings, not Human Doings
1,227 Comments
People do not want to hear truth, they want the sugar coated version of events as it cushions them from feeling what is really going on. I know this first hand as I’ve been there myself. Knowing true strength comes from facing and expressing truth, not hiding from it, supports us to walk the world fearlessly.
Due to childhood conditioning, societal norms and gender stereotypes many women find it difficult, even painful, to express their feelings or put themselves first, to the extent they will often answer a question with a question. For example when asked to make a choice about something, they will bounce it back and ask “What do you want?” or “Which one would you choose?” Wise not to collude in this manipulative game of “I can’t’ or “You are more clever than I’ and gently hand it back for them to own and choose for themselves.
To use niceness as a cover for not expressing our true feelings is the same as telling a lie. It’s false way of being and should be exposed when-ever possible.
The evil of nice exposed at last. To walk in the shoes of niceness does not serve us well as the real you remains hidden. A revelation to know the value of not doing things to please others and instead honouring our sense of self and expressing truth.
Growing up with a European background it was expected that you were always “nice” around people, especially with relatives and family friends- this meant when greeting relatives a kiss and hug was expected, even if they felt creepy or not themselves- it was a sign of respect…however, in truth it was the opposite- disrespectful and overriding of our own inner feelings.
I love my deepening awareness of ‘being nice.’ It’s amazing how often it creeps in. For me, it has screamed of ‘like me!’ or ‘accept me!’ Bringing this love which is here being sought from externally, is my responsibility to bring to myself. Then truth can be spoken, space can be given, healing can be offered, and true love can be displayed.
Dropping the cloak that screams ‘like me!’ sets us free to be ourselves. When we truly love and honour who we are, there is no desire to be nice or liked, we simply walk our truth.
Being nice and overriding what we truly feel can ultimately cause us to become very ill.
Yes Anonymous, overriding what we feel means we’re not in true relationship with ourselves and this can have a harmful effect on mental and physical health. True health includes self expression, our ability to align, listen and activate inner guidance.
Being true over being nice will always be more healthy for us and those around us.
Being nice instead of being true is not friendship, it’s using a behaviour to control others.
Being nice does not expose the rot in the world, it does not expose the abuse and it does not expose the unwanted behaviour that none of us truly want.
One of the reasons the world is in such a mess is that we are all too worried about telling the truth, we keep the nice game going at the expense of what is true.
Being nice is so ugly.
There is a man who works in the same place as myself and he is constantly declaring that I am on another planet because I do not laugh at his jokes unless I really find them funny. I will not pretend to be anything else but who I am and in that I respect, love and care for myself. When I overlook what is true to me it doesn’t sit well in my body or mind and I find that it continues to niggle and, if I don’t clear it, it can sit in my body waiting to bubble up in negative feelings and expression.
I never really considered that all the times I was being nice, and there were so many, I was in truth saying to the other person; “my needs don’t matter only yours”. But now when I realise that, I can feel a real thud of disregard in my body which is simply the consequence of placing someone else’ s welfare before mine. Being nice is definitely not a very self-loving way to live, but a way many of us have lived, often for most of our lives.
“I can feel a real thud of disregard in my body which is simply the consequence of placing someone else’ s welfare before mine.’ Put so well Ingrid, it’s easy to relate to this feeling, and expose the insidious ways we harm and put ourselves down. The belief that ‘being good’ and ‘being nice’ at the expense of self is how to be in life is cultivated when we’re children and often girls more than boys are groomed in this way. To feel the impact of this disregard in our bodies at any age signals a new level of awareness and opportunity to love and put ourselves first.
From a young age, the ideals and beliefs around being nice and polite are prevalent in most cultures, some more so than others. Whatever the level I can now feel how harmful this is as it suppresses our expression on many levels. It does what it is designed to do, shut us down.
Being ‘nice’ was something many of us were pushed to be as children, when our body inside was saying no, and so we learnt to override our bodies and their many impulses. Letting go of being ‘nice’ and be true to ourselves and speaking our truth feels so liberating.
Amita, this article is interesting to read. We are not encouraged to be true and honest, almost the opposite, children are told to be ‘nice’ and ‘good’ and ‘polite’, none of these are true or natural for us, it is natural for us to simply express what we are feeling and what is true.
‘ We are not encouraged to be true and honest, almost the opposite’ What you confirm is that we are encouraged as children to lie, rather than express from our true self. A disastrous model for life and hence the many problems we experience as adults.
Reading this I can feel how common it is in society for us to ‘be nice’ rather than be honest and true. I love that young children are naturally honest and have not yet learnt to ‘ be nice and polite’.
Unfortunately, kids are taught from young that being polite is needed over and above saying what they feel might be true incase it offends… but isn’t it much better to hear what’s true than try to cover it up?
For me, ‘being nice’ is simply not being honest, and sadly it is something we are encouraged to do from an early age. As children we read the world and the people in it so very naturally, but each time we are told to be nice we are overriding this awareness and in doing so losing the honest connection to ourselves and to others. If there was one word, I would love to remove from the dictionary it is the word ‘nice’. How wonderfully honest the world would be without niceness
When I find myself racy inside there is something I am avoiding. I purposely keep myself in the raciness not to feel what is going on in and around me. Clocking how I feel opens the door to letting it go. Raciness is not who I am but an energy I have allowed to run in my body that I have chosen to keep myself from connecting more deeply to the natural stillness that is within.
“Nice and ‘people pleasing’ is not being loving and does not truly serve.” Super true in fact being nice over time affects our physicality leading to illness and disease.
Being nice has a quality of oiliness, slipperiness and an attached agenda.
Our movements either support us to connect to or confirm the stillness within. If we find ourselves being nice or racy then we are moving in a way that purposely avoids connecting to the stillness. It is through living stillness that we accept responsibility and all that is on offer.
Nice is collusion and says we agree to this level, no matter what, but not to be true, and doesn’t allow true responsibility for either of us. Nice feeds the lies and undermines the truth we all feel and know, it’s not loving for either ourselves or others.
Niceness can also be used as a cover up when someone actually really does not like you even though you are being loving and true but does not want to show that. Like tolerance in war.
I so agree Lieke, that we can actually cover up how we truly feel about another by being nice. I can put my hand up for having done this in the past. But while I am putting on the facade of niceness on the outside, inside of me the truth would be churning away and trying to get my attention, asking me to be honest, something that would benefit both of us, whereas being nice doesn’t benefit anyone.
My body nowadays is immediately communicating to me when I play ‘the nice card’ and I am fully aware in these moments that I am avoiding my responsibility to be honest and to love the other and myself to bits instead of fooling everyone and leave everything as it is, comfortably so.
So true Annelies, the body has to hold or brace itself in order to carry through not being authentic.
Being nice does not expose the rot in the world, it does not expose the abuse and it does not expose the unwanted behaviour that none of us truly want.