People Pleaser: How To Stop Being So Nice
Nice.
Isn’t that good?
Why would I want to stop being nice?
A couple of months back, I had a discussion with a friend who praised being nice.
He said his entire brand was built around building more nice guys.
Hearing him say that with a straight face had me dying of laughter.
I thought he was joking.
But no.
He wasn’t.
He viewed being nice as a good thing.
So this got my curiosity.
As we talked longer, I came to realize he wasn’t describing nice.
He was actually describing kind.
Kind and nice are NOT the same.
This is an important distinction to make.
Confusing the 2 for one another leads to a lot of heartache, betrayal & surprise endings.
And not the good kind of surprise endings.
Let me reiterate.
Kind and nice are not the same.
Let’s learn how to stop being so nice.
Signs of a Nice Guy
A nice guy is a people pleaser.
That’s my nice way of saying it.
Plenty of the most confident people out there have been the nice guy before.
This is when they confused people-pleasing as social skills.
We were rarely taught how to carry ourselves in social interactions.
Therefore, we wing it.
And a part of winging it is us going back to our baseline state.
The fear of confrontation.
The fear of confrontation can create a passive person.
A person who works with the narrative:
‘If I just give the other person what they want, maybe they’ll like me!’
Pay attention to those final 4 words:
Maybe they’ll like me.
^ This is the CORE mission statement of the nice guy.
Why Niceness Leads to Self Destruction
A lot of villains in movies were once the nice guys.
They were playing their ‘ideal’ role in society.
However, as time went on, society was not rewarding them.
Rather, the exact opposite.
Society started to take advantage of them.
Piece by piece.
The nice guy started to learn a dark truth about reality…
When you give someone everything they want, then they will want more.
Not everyone though.
I don’t want to paint such a bleak perception of people.
However, that’s the case with many people.
Why does this happen?
Because social skills are not led with the conscious mind.
It’s led with the subconscious mind.
‘Can you explain what you mean by that?’
Sure.
It comes down to feelings.
Spotting Fakeness
I feel confused about the word: feelings.
Especially with being a former engineer.
The word ‘feelings’ was often seen as a taboo word in my field.
It’s too gray.
Too abstract.
Yet, feelings are the core driver of social skills.
You can be putting in all the effort in the world.
Saying all the right words.
Wearing the perfect outfit.
But ultimately, people make a decision on whether they like you or not by analyzing THEIR body:
- Did you make them feel empowered?
OR
- Did you make them feel drained?
These 2 questions will determine likability.
With nice guys, there is a drained feeling.
‘Why?’
Because the subconscious mind can spot micro-movements in body language.
The subconscious mind can also spot intent.
You ever had a gut feeling that something was wrong?
Yet, you intellectually talked yourself out of it…
All for your gut feeling to have been right?
‘Yes, man! That’s happened too many times.’
Well, this was a situation of your subconscious mind spotting the intent.
But your intellectually gifted conscious mind talked you into believing something else.
The reason nice guys can accidentally give the wrong impression is due to the intent they are working with.
They aren’t often present.
Instead, they are working with the ‘what’s in it for me’ mentality.
Aka: The ‘maybe they’ll like me’ mentality.
Learn How to Stop Being So Nice With Kindness
Self-improvement and social skills go hand in hand.
Anyone who separates the 2 is a fool.
Why is this?
Because self-improvement leads to a purpose.
A set north star that someone is working towards.
Earl Nightingale once said:
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.
How fire of a definition is that?
When someone is trying to realize a worthy ideal, do you think they have time to impress others?
‘Hm…probably not.’
Not probably not.
The answer is no.
This isn’t to say they are a jerk.
It’s just that their order of values is different from the nice guy.
‘Different how?’
The kind guy has an order of values. With their purpose being high up there.
While the nice guy has little to no order of values. Which causes them to be scattered.
The mind needs a target.
And when the mind doesn’t have a target, it’ll assign itself one.
The target it assigns itself is the approval of others.
We can talk about this for a while.
But the core difference between the nice guy and the kind guy is an ideal.
To learn how to stop being so nice, the mind needs some values.
The ideal can be different for different people.
Starting a business, raising a family, building a dream body, etc.
These are just 3 options.
Any of these 3 options require more real estate in the mind.
And by giving the mind a target, naturally, a charm comes over you.
The more you try to impress, the faster they run.
The less you try to impress, the faster they come.
Melting Away Niceness
If you are trying to learn how to stop being so nice, a great question to ask yourself is:
‘What other interests do I have?’
You’ll be surprised how this is a foreign question for many.
They just take it day by day.
So their mind drifts from opinions to opinions.
With me, a large part of my life is centered around communication skills.
And that can be broken down into subcomponents like:
- Writing this blog.
- Recording YouTube videos.
- Giving a speech.
- Working with a client, etc.
It doesn’t really matter what it is.
Scratch that…
It sort of matters.
Make sure the task is more so based on YOUR competence rather than THEIR approval.
-Are you more focused on writing better for each piece?
-Or are you more focused on what others will think of your work?
This question is more important than it seems.
And this question will determine if you remain a nice guy…
Or you graduate into being kind.
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– ArmaniTalks 
