Your Niceness Is Not as Selfless as You Think

Your niceness is not as selfless as you think. It's a pattern that serves you in ways nobody admits to.

Niceness operates on a cost-benefit structure nobody talks about.

The nice person gets something from their niceness: approval, the sense of being good, the relief of not having conflict. They also avoid something: the discomfort of being disliked, the risk of confrontation, the vulnerability of stating a preference and having it rejected.

This is not a condemnation. These are human impulses.

But calling it selfless is wrong. The niceness is self-serving in ways that happen to also be pleasant for other people. The niceness keeps the peace in a way that is comfortable for you, even when peace is exactly what the situation doesn't need.

The relationship that needed a hard conversation instead got niceness. The problem that needed someone to say "this isn't working" instead got accommodation. The person who needed to hear the truth instead got a pleasant non-answer.

Nice is not kind. Nice is comfortable.

Kindness, however, sometimes requires you to be inconvenient.

Start there. Everything else waits.