Do Nice Guys Always Finish Last?
Niceness is a lot like driving.
‘It is?’
Yes, it is. I will expand more on that shortly.
For a long time, I thought social skills were a finite process.
You learn a few things and then you are good to go.
Yes, there are some basic frameworks to learn.
However, social skills are far from finite.
It’s a game of learning for life.
What works with one group of people can fall flat with another group.
An example is a handshake.
In the West, a soft handshake is seen as weak.
In many parts of the East, a soft handshake shows a welcoming personality.
It’s a game of learning for life and adjusting.
It’s not easy to hear the quote, ‘nice guys always finish last,’ because this seems so counterintuitive.
Why?
It’s because human nature is involved.
And human nature, just like mother nature, cannot always be logically explained.
Let me analyze this quote in more detail.
Do ‘nice guys always finish last?’
Yes and no.
Niceness and Driving
When I was in my early 20s, I had gotten a job in Zingo.
This was Uber for drunk people.
Basically, whenever a customer was too drunk at a bar and couldn’t drive their car, they would call a Zingo driver.
This Zingo driver would go on a small scooter to meet the customer.
Then the driver would pack the tiny scooter in the customer’s car trunk.
Drive the customer back home.
Finally, the driver would go back to the Zingo location in that tiny scooter.
So unlike Uber, you got your car back in your parking lot the next day.
One day, I pull up to a customer who was completely wasted.
Once I get settled in his car, I noticed that he drives a stick shift.
I had 0 clue on how to drive a stick.
I told the customer of my situation and let him know I’d call my manager to complete the ride.
However, this customer, Tommy, wanted me to drive his car.
He was completely wasted and thought it would be funny.
Plus, he was a bit aggressive as well.
After a lot of coercing, I finally agreed.
He began talking me through each step of the way.
I was terrified driving on the road.
Driving a stick was much different than driving the normal way.
My younger self didn’t like that.
For the entire ride, I was driving 15 miles underneath the speed limit trying to ENSURE that I didn’t mess up.
I was scared.
Tommy was getting annoyed by my lack of intention.
Ah….
Intention.
Such a popular word.
Why Niceness Happens
The reason I was driving so slow was that I had no clue how to drive a stick.
My fear of failing is what held me back.
I didn’t want to crash Tommy’s car or worse…die.
So I was moving very passively.
This is how a nice guy moves as well.
A person who is nice to the core has not updated their mind with the latest software regarding human personality.
They don’t know how to drive stick.
Sadly, they are using logical frameworks on an emotional being.
Yes, in the logical world, if you only do good things to someone, they will only do good things back.
In the emotional world where ego resides and pride exists, things are a bit different.
Humans don’t want to be surrounded by niceness because of a big thing.
‘Which is?’
Power.
The Average Person Doesn’t like Power
Don’t judge someone by their words.
Judge them by how they move.
Greatness is only achieved by a fraction of the world.
The people who strived for greatness had to give up social nights, spend hours working all day, and lost sleep occasionally.
Why?
Because they embraced accountability.
The fruit of accountability is power.
The average bubba who does none of that back-end work cannot handle power.
Even though they claim they want it.
The average bubba wants someone to be like, ‘Come here at X time so we can do Y and wrap up our day with Q.’
This will light up the masses.
However, the nice guy does the opposite. They instead give the average bubba a ton of power.
-What do you want to do?
-Where do you think we should go eat?
-You don’t like this opinion of mine? Oh okay, I will change it!
This nice guy is giving all this power to someone who never asked for it.
And even if they did ask for it, watch their moves, not their words.
Do Nice Guys Always Finish Last?
The quote of, ‘nice guys always finish last,’ is dead wrong.
Mainly because the nice guy never enters the race in the first place!
To enter the race, there needs to be intention.
Intention requires a stomach for failure.
Only a few enter the race of life, the rest just walk like zombies.
‘If I’m not supposed to be nice, then what do I do?’
You create value for yourself.
This answer may seem shockingly selfish at first.
However, let the ripple effects talk for you.
By creating value for yourself, through working out, eating healthy, learning, working on a business, etc.
The beauty of providing value by accident happens.
The process of leveling up causes constant learning.
This prevents you from being like younger me who was terrified of driving on the road because he never learned to drive stick.
By creating your value, it’s easier to pull other people up.
Rather than being the nice guy who wants others to pull them up.
If you got one thing out of this post, remember this:
Do not give people power they never asked for.
Leveling Up Your Social Skills and Knowledge
Social skills are a game forever.
Especially because you keep learning from different personalities.
What works in one road does not work on another road.
That’s because personalities are so different.
Just know that people say one thing and do another.
They claim they want to be supreme…
But when they are treated as supreme, that sense of accountability terrifies them.
If you’re nice, pause.
Then create your value.
After that, provide value by accident.
You’ve been sitting on the sidelines for too long.
Now it’s finally time to enter that race.
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– ArmaniTalks 
