Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Not Being Nice Is Good

Yesterday, I read this about how being nice can actually be detrimental to your growth. I can totally relate to it. In fact this is one of the lessons I want my daughter to imbibe. In India there is a lot of stress on girls on being nice and to never hurt anybody’s feelings though you might be hurting your own in the process.
I decided a long time back that being nice was just not working out. Being nice means trying never ever having to say “No”, even when all you want to do is scream `No’ till you go hoarse. It would generally lead to a lot of cribbing and cursing later on. Was just not worth it. More over you might end up doing a shoddy work just because your mind wasn’t in it and you didn’t want to do it in the first place. So it would end up doing more harm than good.
Often I would say “Yes” to avoid conflict and confrontation at all cost. Avoiding conflict was an important part of being nice. I also wrongly believed that I was not geared to handle conflicts in life. In my mind I was simplifying my life by avoiding conflict. In some situations it backfired badly (very badly!!) when I could’ve saved situations and friends by honestly saying `No, that’s not possible.’
After being nice for a considerable number of years I realized that it was time to experiment with not being nice. It was really difficult initially. People would just assume that I was ready to help them with writing that brochure for free. It took every ounce of will power to politely but firmly put my foot down.
Being nice means thinking from other person’s perspective and giving more weightage to that than to your own concerns. Simple logic defines that this way you would end up doing things, which are not in your own interest. Whatever your Moral Science teacher might have taught you in school, being selfish is almost a prerequisite for survival. This is not to say that you trample on others but to put your interests at the center stage. This is especially important in professional life.
Over the years I subconsciously follow the philosophy of Via Negativa, which means trying to find what you want by eliminating whatever is adding to negativity in your life. This more or less means, “not being nice” to people, situations and other things which are not adding to your growth in life.
Works for me!!

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