Are you being too nice?

Most of us are taught from an early age that we should be nice to people and not deliberately exclude anyone. When we grow up however, we have to WANT to be generous, helpful and sympathetic to a person, otherwise trying to be ‘nice’ can come across as patronising or obviously fake.

On the other hand…

Being overly nice isn’t going to get everyone to like you and it can easily come across as desperate or even stalker-ish to new people!

With friends and family if we are always overly generous and forgiving with everyone, eventually, even the most well meaning of people will start to take advantage of our nice nature.

How many of us have been long time friends or partners with a seemingly outgoing person who’s always in the middle of some drama? It’s easy to become the person who just provides them with constant attention and an ego boost, which gets thrown back in our face the minute we stop.

Being too nice can mean we are accidentally flirting! If someone fancies us or is having a bad day and feeling unloved and then we are suddenly really nice to them, they might easily take it the wrong way. Then what happens? We don’t correct them because we feel bad about being mean because we are too nice! Awkward.

There are times when our nice nature can breed our own resentment. I know we shouldn’t just do a favour to get one in return but when we knock ourselves out to be considerate and helpful but don’t get that same level in return, it can be rather depressing. Which leads to one of these conversations “You are so ungrateful! All the things I do for you…”

We need to understand sometimes other people are too busy to have the time to reciprocate or too stressed maybe to notice. It’s never a good trait to deliberately be a martyr and hold it over everyone anyway.

Still, constantly being, doing and thinking things for others – even with the best of intentions – can be exhausting and frustrating. We need to put ourselves first sometimes without feeling guilty.

Anyone else do some of these?

So the question is: Exactly how nice are we meant to be?