Image credit: @raskal for @dear_milu
HOW CAN YOU PROMOTE NOT BEING NICE?!
Let’s start with a dictionary definition:
nice
nīs/
adjective
pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.
Bet you can guess where I’m going with this.
Have you ever wanted to be deemed a nice person?
Because here’s what that looks like:
“WOW SHE IS SO AGREEABLE”
“WHAT A SATISFACTORY MAN”
Doesn’t have the same panache, does it?
We are trained, conditioned, and shamed into behaving in a way that will cause little disturbance. I mean this for everyone, but I especially mean it for women.
We are taught to play nice.
When we don’t agree with something, we often perceive the consequences of being disliked – our lives imploding, or having to suffer the guilt of being unladylike – as so dire that we shove our words back down our throats and stay silent.
Many say the greatest human fear is the fear of not being liked.
It’s true that it takes an extraordinary amount of courage to push boundaries, to shatter paradigms, to rise up and show up as exactly who you are, without needing to soften the edges so that you might not make people uncomfortable.
But here’s what I have to say about that:
If you’re not hurting anyone, I don’t care how loud you are.
I have actually built my life around making people a little bit uncomfortable. I speak and write about things that, traditionally, most people would never in one million years voluntarily stand up and speak about.
And you know what?
This is why we suffer.
We don’t feel like we are allowed to be, do, or say the exact things that we need to be, do, or say to be completely free.
And guess what?
I care more about your and my freedom than any person feeling uncomfortable about the fact that I or you honor our humanity.
We are here to be human.
Not to be pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory.
In fact, if someone ever called me satisfactory, I would take that as a greater insult than cursing me to hades for being honest about the sometimes challenging aspects of growth and authenticity.
The path to extraordinary is going to involve turning some heads.
Kindness is not the same as being nice. Compassion is not the same as being nice.
They are VERY VERY different things.
Compassion often includes doing things that will make you unlikable to some.
Kindness often includes doing things that are not necessarily pleasant.
So, shake down those doors of perception.
Shake them wide open.
See what is underneath.
You might find anger, you might find truth.
You will find treasure.
Choose you, your voice, your life.
Forget those who question where you have been or where you’re going.
You are not here to be nice, you are here to be human.
And once you blow those doors off, I can assure you it will rain with blessings.
To your bravery, my love.
Robin.
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