When you are too nice, you are a magnet to not-too-nice people, situations and incidences. You will find yourself in situations where you and your boundaries get constantly disrespected, you very often get treated as a doormat, and you meet the same kind of people again and again who take your niceness for your foolishness.
1. You think and deeply believe everyone is like you
Being too Nice, you expect the world and its people to be just like you, and when your expectations get hurt repeatedly, You start hating yourself for being too nice and try hard to change yourself, but you fail.
You are self-aware and understand that becoming the opposite of yourself will be an injustice to your true self. With this understanding, you continue to be too nice despite all the hurt and disappointments and believe that not everyone is bad.
You hold on to their nice side and choose only to see and focus on their good side and ignore their bad behaviour, thinking they will respect you for understanding their fears and insecurities.
You wait and crave their validation and acceptance, but that never happens.
Your understanding of their nature is considered foolish, and your niceness gets abused as and when these people need validation and acceptance. Have you noticed? Despite being nice, you have no one around you who truly understands, appreciates, unconditionally loves you, highly respects you and is available to you in tough times.
That’s because you, being optimistic and nice, are always considered self-sufficient and robust and can only give but don’t need to be given to.
You repeat the same pattern of being left alone in your lowest moments. Just know that the world has all kinds of people, and not everyone deserves your niceness Accept people for who they are if they are not nice, don’t convince yourself that they are. They are not you and will never become you.
2. Look deeply into your past patterns
To reach the root cause of understanding the repeated patterns. You must reflect on your past habits and understand why you tolerated the shit behaviour. Study your patterns and Analyze all the situations and incidences where people disrespect you.
You will learn that it was your tolerant behaviour and weak boundaries and standards that led you to people, situations and experiences that left you feeling bad for yourself for being a Nice person.
It is essential first to understand why you are a Nice person so that you can analyze your patterns and approach them with a more educated mindset. Becoming self-aware and understanding that becoming the opposite of who you are will be an injustice to your true self.
With this understanding, you continue to be too nice despite all the hurt and disappointments.
3. No one ever appreciates your Support or give your credit for your Support.
So you were buying a coffee to attend an urgent meeting you were added to by your manager. And while picking up your coffee, you saw a colleague struggling with their new laptop access. Like a nice person, without being asked for help. You then decided to approach this colleague and help them. You also spent a few more minutes to share additional information about this laptop.
They did not thank you as they never had asked for your help.
You missed a few minutes of your meeting and missed the agenda of the meeting. I am not saying you did wrong by compassionately comforting your colleague. However, this incident shows how you need to prioritise what is important to you and what is not.
You have to learn and understand what is worth your time and allocate your time and energy to activities, tasks, and people, which are priorities.
The worst is when your compassion and good intentions get questioned, and your emotional maturity and vulnerability are confused for your weakness.
Stop being Nice? Go away to Mars? Get sucked by a black hole?
Nope!!
You can’t do that, but what you can do is learn and understand how to stop being an overly nice person and save yourself from any future pain and disappointments. I have shared some great
—Love, G
Geeta, who likes to be called G, when not working, can usually be found reading a book, spending (perhaps a little too much) time meditating, practicing yog, or just vibing in the present moment like a mindfulness pro. And—despite claiming she knits very badly—she still picks up the needles now and then. Blogging to share her life learnings is her passion!