Is Being Nice Fear in Disguise?

Being kind and being nice are two separate things. Being kind is an effort to treat people with respect and compassion while staying within your integrity. Sometimes we emit our light to the world despite the darkness we may see in others. Being “nice,” on the other hand, is a more insidious situation.

Often women suffer from this the most because they were conditioned at an early age to please others, to be nice at our own expense, derived from centuries of feminine repression—think corsets, demureness, cheerleaders. "be good" and don’t express your true power. Don’t try to be an equal, but please men, please societies expectations (run by men). I love men and the masculine principle, and this is not a man-bashing post, or talking about patriarchy—instead, this is an honest reflection on how women can be conditioned from an early age to only live in one side of their nature. It's fundamentally imbalanced and its a reflection of her family dynamics and potentially also the collective culture that she was raised in, inculcated in, and conditioned in.

This type of conditioning in childhood then affects all relationships in our lives, showing up in the form of people-pleasing, against one's true instinct. How can we express our truth, our righteous indignation, when warranted? Ultimately, it blunts our personal power and erodes our own integrity. We act that way due to a fear of being disliked, abandoned, or rejected, but this behavior inversely turns upon us, where we are actually disliking, abandoning and rejecting ourselves in the process. Ultimately it comes down to self-love and self-respect. It's okay to have boundaries, it's okay if people don't like you, it's okay, as long as you like you.

Sometimes this can happen to men, too, based on their family dynamic, raised to be nice because others in the family disrupted the peace and they took on the role of peace-keeper, people-pleaser.

In Taoist tradition, the Yin energy is associated with darkness, passivity, femininity while yang is associated with light, action, masculinity. If we live in just one side, or in the shadow of either side, we suffer. What we must seek is balance between the light and the dark, the masculine and the feminine, giving and receiving which in turn will give ourselves, and others, true justice.

Soul-Prompt: How has my family dynamics (and society) taught me to be nice in order to be accepted and loved? Where has it harmed my own sense of integrity?