Identify When Being Nice Becomes Unhealthy
We evolved as highly social creatures. We need each other for mutual support and cooperation for accomplishing a task or fulfilling a need: for physical, thinking, emotional. We have brains that have been moulded by long years of evolution to understand each other. We can easily understand language not only on its surface level (which is the literal meaning) but also more abstract like sarcasm and figurative phrases, tonality, and body language. We can also able to pick up the implications and intentions like distinguishing a joke from an insult.
We have flourished as a species through successful human cooperation. It progressed us from being hunter-gatherers working together to hunt a deer for dinner to complex organization collaborating and sharing expertise within a billion-dollar company.
Empathy is a talent
We enjoy watching movies. We feel the characters inside the story and embody them as if they are real. Our attention is not only invested in the protagonist but also with other characters. Each of which has different personality and motivations interacting in a constant fast pace in different circumstances, and we seem no problem keeping up with it. We appreciate the story by the process of paying attention to what are the different characters is thinking and feeling, how they influence each other in the story. We do it so naturally and passive that it requires us little effort that makes watching movies entertaining to us — the only thing we need to do is to pay attention.
Brain States
Everything psychological is biological. Fundamentally our brains run on chemical, electrical, physical processes that make up how we perceive the world. Brain states mean emotions have a physical pattern that is near-universal to us. This means that if two happy brains examined — you’ll see similar activity and patterns. Thus, we need to value emotions more when interacting to people, these are tangible.
The Healthy Nice
It is a way of expressing the truth and authenticity while being attuned and put value to other’s thoughts and feelings. Healthy nice is best for long term strategy for human cooperation. As it encourages camaraderie, open and transparent communications by making people feel safe and valued. It builds stronger and deeper connections by establishing a relationship in trust. It is a form of humility that overcomes common frictions in human interactions like self-centeredness, ego, status and hierarchy.
But If being nice is all positive, why then it is being associated with negative things like being weak?
The Unhealthy Nice
It is a form of nice that compromise respect to oneself and others; Hide himself /herself in comfort zone and don’t have the courage to express or stand on truth, even it is necessary. They emulate some of the character traits of the healthy nice merely to conform and be accepted. They also use the positive emotional effect of healthy nice to manipulate or deceive other people.
The Different Types of Unhealthy Nice
1. Being nice even when you are being disrespected deliberately and repeatedly
Some caveats with disrespect, we should be aware that disrespect has different forms that their distinctions can be found in their motivations.
Unintentional Disrespect
This can happen if someone doesn’t know the person very well. They might say something offensive to another because of the ignorance of their background like religion, gender identity preference, past negative experiences, their personality, culture, language etc. This can also happen when they are discussing a delicate topic and in their exchange of thoughts in the attempt to solve the problem or to figure out the truth, their conflicting views can run through risks of offending someone in the process.
Poke-fun Disrespect
We can commonly experience this when we are hanging out with our close friends. There are times when you are making fun of each other that if you listen and judge the plain meaning of your words it sounds very offensive. But its underlying intention and emotions beneath its surface is to poke fun and to evoke laughter among each other.
Deliberate Disrespect
This comes from a place where other people want to intentionally hurt your feelings. This usually roots from the negative emotions that they are experiencing and is being transferred or projected on to you.
If you have the choice to avoid or stay away to the person that is persistent to hurt you, then that is the best choice. But if the situation requires you to face it and that the act is affecting your life negatively, then the next right thing to do is speak up. Speaking up is not necessarily trying to fight back, or to hurt and take revenge, but it means that you are calling out the truth of the unfair act and that you are trying to re-establish the relationship and to communicate that it affects you negatively and that it needs to stop.
And also by not speaking up to the person, it may encourage them to do it to you again, for the reason that you will be perceived as an easy target to express their malevolence. Also, the person will think that it is ok to be done to you and they will not have the hesitation to do it because they will be comfortable that you don’t dare to speak up.
Tips on how to speak up on being disrespected.
1. Acknowledge where they are coming from
2. Point out the behaviour not the person
3. Encourage Win / Win Situation
4. Make them aware of the Lose/Lose situation or the cost of their action
Acknowledge where they are coming from.
Be attuned to where they are coming from and communicate it to them. Nothing encourages rapport better than knowing someone understands you, especially if they acknowledged your emotional place where frustrations or pain resides.
Point out the behaviour, not the person.
Behaviour is a mixture of habits. It is malleable and can be built and reinforce. You probably met or know people who change their fate by changing track away from negative habits. We have the capacity and potential to change for the better. Thus we don’t want to approach negative behaviours in all of us that is something set on stone with our identity.
Encourage the Win / Win Situation.
From the book “The 7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen R. Convey, there is a powerful concept in the book that explains the Six Paradigms of Human Interaction, a philosophy of human interaction. It consists of Win/Lose, Lose/Win, Lose/Lose, Win, Win/Win or No Deal. Two of which we are going to tackle.
Win/Win
“Win/Win is a frame of mind and heart that constantly seeks mutual benefits in all human Interactions. Win/Win means that agreements or solutions are mutually beneficial, mutually satisfying. Win/Win solution, all parties feel good about the cooperative and feel committed to the action plan. Win/Win sees life as a cooperative, not a competitive arena.” — The 7 habits of highly effective people.
Make them aware of the Lose/Lose situation or the cost of their action.
Lose/Lose
“Both will lose. Both will be vindictive and want to “get back” or “get even” Blind to the fact that murder is suicide, that revenge is a two-edged sword.” — The 7 habits of highly effective people
We have a trait as humans when going for a reward, to evaluate the effort required and probability of accomplishing it, the ratio of the cost of effort and action to the reward, that would affect our decision on pursuing it. like for example, figuring out if our desired goal will be worth our time and effort. Making them aware of the Lose/Lose situation will make them realize that not only they are inflicting negative emotions and that it is not the best thing to invest in because of the little gain and this is costing them as well.
Here is an example statement:
“I acknowledge where you are coming from ( can insert a specific root of their the action) but your actions (can insert a specific actions) is unfair the way I treat you but I’m willing to make an effort to resolve that. Your persistent negative behaviour to me is causing me this inconvenience and emotional discomfort and stress that is not reasonable and just, that is a hurdle to us in forming better relationship and in the end what we got from this is unnecessary burden of negative emotions like be vindictive to each other.”
2. Being nice and ignore the truth even being taken advantage of repeatedly
Unlike being deliberately disrespected, being taken advantage of is a form of disrespect that is more subtle. This may arise from someone being comfortable with the other person that they are not capable of speaking up to the unjust act. This also may arise from discrimination that they may think that you don’t deserve to be treated fairly.
Speak Up
It isn’t being rude to tell the other person that they are being unfair and point out the act, as long as you directly communicate it to the person in private(as possible). This communicates that your intentions are pure to correct the action and communicate the inconvenience that it affects you. This way you are not taking advantage of you being right and use the advantage or opportunity of it to shame someone publicly. This commonly happens in human conflicts that instead of resolving the problem, they are motivated with the opportunity that they are right, to use that to emphasize the fact that they are right and the other person is wrong and campaign it to everyone else, to up their status and other people see them in a good light.
Telling the person that they are being unfair, is giving the other person a chance to correct his action. If he or she is unaware of it then you made them noticed the act. If you are the one wrong, and that you probably have misinterpreted or misjudged the situation, then you made yourself aware of it and give yourself a chance to correct it also. What is dangerous is that you may be caught in the trap (which happen often with this kind of social conflicts) to keep and hold-in the negative emotions that may turn into more toxic form like for example, talking behind the person’s back and go on in reputation destruction and spread it.
3. Being nice to please others and compromise truth because of the fear of what other people think.
It is a form of deceit that you maximize the probability that you will be well-liked and accepted or be admired by creating a fabricated persona to suit what other people want and compromise your internal truth — your own genuine being.
Your actions are in service of others’ validation. You chase validation from other people without putting value to self-respect drowning down your inner voice.
this doesn’t establish relationships with truth. This person is in fear of not being accepted with being vulnerable to the fact that nobody is perfect.
Why are we afraid to be authentic?
Because we are putting our real self on the line and be subject to judgements, rejection which is painful. We tend to put an alternative persona to mitigate the risk of that pain.
Why truth hurts, Why we are afraid of the truth?
Truth can range from inconvenient up to painful. Truth may conflict with our current belief system that can disrupt our worldview.
Truth carries responsibility that we can blind ourselves from by justification, procrastination, denial, or by blaming or passing it on others.
Confronting the truth
Procrastinating with the responsibility of truth is like sweeping dirt under the bed that you can delay it by getting it away from your attention or denying its presence that you will inevitably be going to deal with in the future. as you keep avoiding it, it will pile up making a simple responsibility bigger than it should be if you dealt with it earlier. this is how our negative habits can get deeply ingrained to us, denying its presence until it is very hard to get.
Have the courage to be disliked
Nobody is perfect but nobody is better than you by being you. There is no other person that is completely like you since the existence of reality. You have a unique mixture of motivations, potential, capacities, abilities, experiences, perspectives and insights that you can bring to the world. The choice to affect people around you with it positively or negatively or to hide it is your choice. The only way you can express it fully and liberate your authentic self by being vulnerable that you are flawed and can be subject to be disliked.
The Social Mirror
If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror-- from the current social paradigm and the opinions, perceptions and paradigms of the people around us — our view of ourselves is like the reflection in the crazy mirror at the carnival
These visions are disjointed and out of proportion. They are often more projections than reflections, projecting the concerns and character weaknesses of people giving the input rather than accurately reflecting what we are. — The 7 habits of highly effective people
4. Being nice to deceive other people
Niceness gives off the feeling of warmth and other positive emotions that can heavily influence us in our decision and thinking. That we may get tempted to use its power to persuade and influence — to deceit others. But it is not a decision that going to last because you can fool a person once or twice but eventually the truth will prevail costing you the foundation of any relationship — trust.
Lies is easier to produce without much responsibility
Junk foods like cheese curls taste delicious because they are great at tasting like the real cheese and like lies easily manipulated with fake stuff to match and enhance the taste over real foods and without dealing with the responsibility to produce it organically. It tastes great with fake stuff but not good for everyone.
Lies will eventually be exposed by truths
For example, you are an under-experienced engineer, but you are exceptional at deceiving other people that you are seasoned but you are indeed incompetent.
You build your project with some fake calculations and you comprised the building with substandard materials and nobody noticed and the building somehow standing. You might get away with it for a while but lies will be interacting with other truths in reality and it will be tested. For example with your building, factors like gravity, wind, weather and calamities. other truth in the law of nature will expose your lies.
Being nice is an admirable act and responsible way to conduct yourself in the world that is invaluable for successful human interactions and cooperation. And that the negative that is associated with it is a product of trying to use it to protect one’s ego and hides the weakness in character or to deceive other people.
