How to Stop Being Too Nice

Being ‘nice’ is generally not an issue. Most people do like polity and someone who is soft-spoken. Indeed, psychological research shows that someone who is high in agreeableness (one of the big 5 personality traits) is more likely to have a healthier intimate relationship with their partner.

However, being a ‘nice guy’ in an environment which is competitive is different. Someone who is too compliant or prioritizes someone else’s interests over their own can face many issues, ranging from experiencing more stress while facing issues with peers to diminished career success (across both genders).

Let’s first understand who a nice guy really is.

The Psychology of the Nice Guy – or Gal

As beings with high intelligence, we tend to make decisions while being aware of what we or others want. We also tend to be somewhat aware of how others perceive us. Many of us, as I mentioned earlier, also tend to appreciate when someone is behaving kindly, politely or favorably to us.

So, sometimes we attempt to maintain a positive image of ourselves in order to fulfill our need of belongingness.

This is understandable.

Now, imagine someone who is perhaps more fixated than the average person on maintaining a positive image. Moreover, they do generally empathize or sympathize with others. They also genuinely enjoy positive interactions with a relatively smaller, more close-knit social circle.

It could even be that they had been told to not stick out like a sore thumb in social settings earlier on, in their childhood.

However, this person does have their own, distinct thoughts and values. Perhaps, they do not share it much with others – not even with their friends.

Instead, when in company, they focus on other people’s problems or issues.

This could easily lead these individuals to overvalue others’ thoughts or emotions while undervaluing their own.

This type of person could fall under the ambit of the pop cultural term of ‘nice guy’.

To sum it up, a nice guy has certain key aspects to their behavior. They are

• very conscious about one’s perception in front of others,
• lacking in assertiveness,
• prioritizing others’ decisions or grievances over their own.

The Consequences of Being a Nice Guy

When you put the other person first almost every time, your own goals and problems take the back seat.

So, you end up solving your own problems less – perhaps, complicating them even further in some cases where you could prioritise others’ interests over youre – and this overburdens you, building up stress levels over time. This is not just the case with problems, but also about your very own personal goals.

Eventually, this can lead to a feeling of resentment.

Not only that, since you have been behaving this way for a long time, it becomes harder and harder to stand up for yourself. Basically, your behaviors have been shaped and consolidated.

On the other side, the people around you may also begin to get more comfortable asking you for, often unreasonable, favors. Since you say yes usually, their expectations of you also are that you comply; it could be that they push you more confidently with time.

This, in turn, increases the possibility that you would continue being more complicit.

And so, you remain locked in a cycle of stress and psychopathology in order to remain a nice guy.

Practical Tips to Stop Being Too Nice

To break from this cycle once and for all, I have compiled a brief list of things you can do. These tips are not generic ones – rather, I have used them in my practice as a clinical psychologist to solve issues my clients had of ‘being too nice’.

All of them have roughly similar levels of importance. I would advise you to try them chronologically. However, if that’s an issue, you could pick and choose.

They could still help you anyway!

1. Define your boundaries and uphold them

There is usually a point after which helping others could be downright hurting you. The point where this occurs, I would argue, should be your boundary.

One of the things that I have unfortunately noticed in my practice – and in everyday life – is that while people might define their boundaries, they don’t end up upholding them.

This, I argue, is because of three major things:

• A lack of practice,
• Thinking that enforcing the boundary would hurt the other person,
• Fearing a social and emotional pressure of not fulfilling an expectation.

While these factors require another article to explain, I will go over them briefly.

Enforcing necessary boundaries is healthy for both individuals involved in the relationship. It’s necessary for improving your mental health and curbing stress. On the other hand, it balances expectations

Here is an example. Your coworker is asking you to cover up for them at work while they go out and do activities outside of work that they can probably delay. Covering up once or twice is fine and it could even strengthen your friendship.

However, if covering up for them becomes frequent, you would have to lie for them or work over time. This has, thus, become stressful for you.

Hence, this should serve as a boundary. You could either write it out, say it out aloud for yourself – or do both.

“I can cover up for my colleague once or twice. But if it’s becoming regular, I cannot do that.”

Having defined the boundary, the next task is to uphold it.

So, the next time your coworker wants you to cover up, stick to this boundary. You don’t have to be rude about it. But stick to the boundary script.

Saying ‘no’ can be tough. But you know what’s tougher?

Fulfilling expectations that drain you out.

2. Reciprocate, not overextend

Robert Trivers enlightened us that altruism has (possibly) been engrained in us through evolution back in the 1970s. Naturally, many of us want to help people who look to us in their time of need. However, a key point that Trivers mentioned was that this ‘instinct’ is of reciprocal altruism.

In short, you scratch my back and I scratch yours.

So, if it’s just one person doing all the work, the relationship is not balanced. With time you will be expected to continue being the only person who gives in the relationship.

In the case of toxic friendships or intimate relations, the other person might only contact you when they need something from you. While some people might behave this way no matter what, if you find yourself in a relationship which demands you to go out of the way without reciprocation, you need to re-evaluate your own behavior.

So, instead of going out of the way so frequently for someone, start mirroring some of their own behavior with you.

It would be natural for them to react negatively (the longer this relationship has been, the more negative the reaction usually is). However, this is an important part of setting up new, more balanced rules and boundaries.

Here is an example. You have been thinking a lot about – and talking to – someone you’re interested in having as a partner. They text you whenever they feel like it. And as a good friend, you’re there for them. However, when you text first about something you want to talk about, they don’t reply as often or as vigorously as you do.

This is an imbalance in the relationship. The way that you remedy this is by responding to their texts how they usually respond to yours.

If they behave negatively or seem surprised, remember to not be resentful. Remember the fact that even if it was a one-sided bond, you guys were still somewhat in a relationship. You can be straightforward though and tell them about the problem you were facing in the communication.

3. Prioritize tasks based on their importance

Usually, nice guys or gals seem to almost fixate on making sure certain relationships keep ‘working’.

As a result, they stop being nice to themselves. Or perhaps, they weren’t nice to themselves since the start, which led them to overcompensate by being nice to others.

Stop and think about what’s important for your progress, or health (both mental and physical).

Are you neglecting things you are interested in? Have you been taking care of your health lately? What about your plans to go to the gym? Or maybe there could be other side missions you always wanted to go on.

Have you been meeting deadlines at work or school?

When you start to dig, you might find that there are many things that you have been neglecting about yourself while trying to please people. The reason for that is most of your time is being spent on thinking about what they think of you.

Reassess your plans for the day, the week or the month. I would advise you to make a list of things that are important to do for the day and rate them according to how important they are for yourself (your personal progress or mental and physical health or urgency). Devote more time to the things which are more important.

And make this a habit.

Having said that, you might be worried about people losing interest in you because you’re spending time on yourself.

But, let’s be honest. Do you want to be with people who are unhappy that you’re working on yourself? Plus, in actuality, being selectively available is actually considered to be attractive according to research.

4. Develop your own takes and strengthen them with actual evidence

Chances are that if you’re too agreeable, you’re generally more gullible than the average person. It could be that you give undue validation to others’ perspectives. Perhaps, even to the point of invalidating your own beliefs about things.

This could make you very susceptible to cognitive dissonance, which is basically feeling a distressingly significant gap between one’s belief and one’s actions. Agreeing to others’ views which you don’t necessarily believe yourself is not a happy place at all.

Instead, here’s what you could do that would be healthier for you in the long run.

Filter opinions based on actual evidence and facts.

It’s one of the main things I do with my clients during therapy sessions. Irrational beliefs are thought to be one of the major causing factors of behavioral issues. They’re irrational because the evidence behind them is significantly sus.

So, the next time someone says something impressionably, you could test if their take holds up to evidence. Chances are that some of the ones you agreed to early on would not.

And that, right there is the opportunity to form your very own confident opinion.

Now, the next part is to shape and strengthen your take.

To make sure you’re assertive and rational, a two-pronged approach could suffice:

• Practice presenting your take in front of people (preferably multiple groups).
• Gather information for and against your opinion.

Sharing the take with people would help you be more assertive with your opinion and automatically train you to face more social adversity. When you talk to people – and actually filter through your own understanding of the facts and emotional lens – you could end up developing your social intelligence and emotional intelligence.

Plus, practice makes perfect!

On the other hand, understanding both sides of the coin would help you ground yourself in a more informed and nuanced or deeper view of the world. While you may face resistance, having a truly defendable claim or take can do wonders for recognizing your individuality and uniqueness.

Exactly what a ‘nice guy/gal’ would not be expected to understand!

Conclusion

When we usually talk about being too nice, we often mean overextending oneself or sacrificing the value of one’s emotions in order to appear nice to others. Being too nice could also mean having expectations that our niceness would result in others being nice too.

However, as Albert Ellis, one of the most influential psychologists of all time, put it; demandingness is often at the root of many psychological problems.

Thus, the tips I gave you are not to make you less polite if you’re already somewhat comfortable with how nice you are. The goal isn’t to be needlessly disagreeable or antagonistic.

The goal is to not lose yourself while trying to be there for someone else.