Karen Monroy

I pray before my feet hit the floor each morning and in all my praying, I’ve never prayed to be an asshole. How about you? I used to pray for help being nice. It’s a bad habit I gave up when I realized the response from the universe was a consistent stream of assholes-different names and faces, but assholes. I also realized I was very confused about nice.

The minute we begin to deal with terms like ‘nice’ we jump into the polarity of ‘nice’ and ‘not nice’. We have the surface conversation about nice behavior. Disagreeing without being disagreeable. Minding your manners.

And then there is the more authentic, deeper conversation about nice. Have you ever realized you do Nice for you?

Yes, we tell our-self we do it for other people, but that is one of those pernicious lies we never investigate.

We do nice to avoid confrontation because we don’t want to be embarrassed or uncomfortable.

We do nice to get something-a response, help, favor and even sex.

So nice helps. It greases the wheels of life. But I think you and I can do better than narcissistic nice.

By now you have come up with a list of evidence that you do another kind of nice as well: a random act of kindness, the hug, the ‘atta-boy, the larger than normal tip. I’m not saying this kind of nice is meaningless. I am saying you are bigger than that.

Lettme ask you this: Exactly how far do you stretch yourself to be nice?

Is your criterion for when you are nice, how convenient it is?

Boy howdy, when I noticed this in myself I cringed. If I didn’t have time for nice…oooh my list of rational excuses were the best: I was on a deadline, I had a mission, I was right and the ace in the hole, I don’t really like you, so who needs nice?

If you suspect someone is an addict of some sorts-from food or exercise to money or drugs-and it clearly is interfering with their life: are you willing to be nice enough to share you notice they have a problem?

How about that caustic co-worker? Everyone talks about them behind their back. They feel excluded and defensive. Are you nice enough to level with them?

Here is what your ego says, “who died and left you in charge?” “Who are you to say these kinds of things to others?”

Ah, good point. This view means you have confused narcissistic nice and authentic nice–and there is a world of difference between them.

Sometimes the nicest thing to say is, “no.” No you can’t suck my energy, no you can’t pollute my environment with your toxic anger and hell no, and I’m not pretending everything is fine when it isn’t.

Being nice isn’t a criterion for doing business with someone either-not if you want a quality job. When was the last time you hired someone for a job just because they were the best for the job? Oy.

I’m not telling you to keep folks in your life who are not nice. I am telling you egos know all about nice and how to manipulate with nice-and that is really not nice.

PSSSST! See those buttons down there? It would be real nice of you to use one!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Monkey Mind AKA Ego, Personal/Spiritual Growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.