It's Time to Stop Being "nice"

Over this last week alone I’ve had many conversations with women who struggle with prioritising themselves and their personal goals. 

This can look like being too busy with our kids' activities to spend time on ourselves.

It can also look like saying yes to things we really want to say no to just to get along.

Or saying nothing at all when we actually have something important and valuable to say.

It can also look like justifying or over-explaining why we want something instead of it just being enough that we want it.

I can recognise all these things in other women because I've 100% been there (and to be honest, am still there sometimes).

Listen, I’m no stranger to family responsibilities and demands.

For eight years in my 30’s I was the main caretaker for my husband who had serious medical challenges and accompanying mental health issues (until his passing in 2014). At the same time I was also working full-time, first in corporate roles and then at a business I co-founded (BRIKA) that was running at full tilt.

I’m now co-parenting my daughter with her dad, which means that when she’s with me, which is a good part of the time, she is 100% my responsibility. 

Life is busy and can feel overwhelming. The demands are real, making it so easy for us as women to give it all away - to our work, our partners, our friends and family, our kids.

Even if we see ourselves as independent, driven, career women, we can feel like we're leaving a part of our "job" left undone when we don't also continue to fully take care of and be responsible for those around us. 

I have been obsessively reading Dr. Gabor Maté’s new book, The Myth of Normal. I’ve also been devouring any podcasts he’s been on recently (this is a good one!). 

And just yesterday, after having more than a few chats this week with women struggling to carve out time for themselves, struggling to speak up, struggling to say no, his words hit me hard:

“When I see really nice people, I worry about them,” Maté said. “What that niceness is, is the repression of healthy anger.”

He also commented on a New York Times article that referred to women as society's "shock observers".

During Covid, he said, on top of their own duties, women “took on alleviating the stress of their husbands and their children. And they felt guilty when they couldn’t successfully do so.”

“Women have always played that role in this patriarchal culture. It’s a society that imposes a certain expectation on one gender."

Dr. Maté  goes on to explain studies that have shown the connection between repression of healthy anger or of emotions in general to disease. Given our propensity to please and avoid saying no, it puts us at a higher risk for chronic illness.

“Women take twice as many anti-depressants, get 80 percent of autoimmune disease, they get more chronic illness, more chronic pain than men do,” Maté said.

So. You already know that all that being "nice" (ie. pleasant and agreeable) is making you resentful and perhaps even a little bit (or a lot) miserable.

Now you know that it could actually make you sick.  

Of course I'm not suggesting to be the opposite of nice. But if you're being nice because you want to be agreeable, not rock the boat, or because you want to be accepted or liked than that niceness could actually be hurting you. Your niceness is a way of turning your back on yourself. 

There were many years in my life where I gave so much more away than I kept for myself. Yet somehow through it all, my inner voice always whispered to me, keep a tiny little bit for you. And I know now that's the only way I got through the hardest challenges in my life in tact.

Since then I've learned that my niceness didn't come from the place of pure selflessness or radical generosity. I gave away too much because I didn't truly value myself. My value back then came mostly from how others saw me. 

When I started to value and truly love myself everything changed.

I began wanting more for myself, raising my standards and believing in my goals and dreams.

And the universe responded in kind.

Today I do work that is aligned with my purpose.

I am surrounded by like-minded, supportive friends with a similar growth mindset (and new friends keep coming into the picture!)

I have healthy, nourishing love in my life.

It all began to change when I first fell in love with myself.

I want to have a real conversation about what it means to love ourselves and show up for ourselves. And how it is only from that place that we can be the most generous to others.

Let's stop being nice. And instead practice being kind (defined as being of friendly, generous and considerate nature) to others, but first, and most importantly, to ourselves.

With love,

Kena xo

Kena Paranjape, Founder, All You Are