I’ve been listening to a motivational speaker this weekend. He has a lot on the ball and is a huge success. He tells it like it is and there you go. I have been pumped up by what he is telling me. I think by listening to him that I can move out of my standard 9-5 and start doing the things I should have been doing my whole life. I think I can get there. I might have a problem though. He tells people that nice people don’t get “bad word”. I didn’t like the bad word that he used so I’m not going to repeat it here.
But what happens if you strive to be nice?
Don’t get me wrong, there have been times that I have been mean. Real mean. But I didn’t mean to be mean. I was frustrated and stressed and I let myself get careless and vocalized my frustration when I shouldn’t have. I hurt someone’s feelings – bad. But I have carried that around my entire life and the person my frustration was aimed at probably didn’t give it another thought, especially after I sent her a dozen red roses. Was I wrong? Yes. Have I beat myself up about it over and over? Yes. It’s time to let it go.
That’s not the only time. I can remember working with a group of people and found out way after the fact that they didn’t appreciate me rolling my eyes during meetings. I honestly did not know that I was doing it. I didn’t think they would pick up on it since I vocalized my thoughts about our discussions. But I guess I did. I ended up leaving that group.
I should have known that I had a problem early on in my professional life. I remember one of the first companies I worked with had an in-house therapist. I was having an issue with a co-worker and the therapist made an observation about me that I never realized. She said that I didn’t have a tolerance for people in authority who were not as intelligent as I was. Yeah, that one has come back to bite me in the ass a time or two.
But, one of the things that I struggle with in my life is being nice. I’m serious. I pray every morning for help in being nice. I have a tendency to be snarky. I don’t make an effort to be nice, ever. Besides, I think being nice should just be something that happens automatically. I don’t think you should have to work at it. And, as bad as I want to achieve all that I’m capable of achieving, I don’t want to do it at someone’s expense. I’d like to be nice about it.
But, what if I am being nice at my expense. What if I’m miserable because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. What if that smile on my face doesn’t really reflect what’s going on in my life and the person I’m smiling at doesn’t have a clue. What if I’m eating myself from the inside out because I’m so stressed out and miserable. There are times that I do what someone else wants me to do because it’s going to make them happy. It doesn’t matter that it’s going to make me miserable and I’m going to have regrets. And there are times that I won’t tell someone what I really think because I don’t want to hurt their feelings. It would just be so much easier and better for all parties, in the long run, if I just said what I needed to say instead of what I think someone wants to hear.
We all do it. Some of us do it more than others. I’ll sit back and tell you that I don’t when I know good and well that I do. So when I heard that motivational speaker say that nice people don’t get ______ I thought he’s so right. I need to think about me first and I’d be sorry if I had to be mean to someone but that wouldn’t keep me from taking care of me and myself first. And I let that sink in for about a day. And then it was obvious that I couldn’t do it.
It would be nice if I had no one to please but myself. But in reality I want to make other people happy. I really do. So, what would happen if we both ended up happy? Isn’t that something better to strive for? Yeah, I think I’ll take that road.