I recently read and archived a well-written article about the differences between being nice and kind, their upsides, but mostly their downsides.
I couldn’t say it any better than the author, however, here are a few nuggets of wisdom from me to go by.
Being nice is a facade. I could never really find the best word to use to qualify what displeasing yourself all the time to please others meant. It’s called being nice, it’s called people-pleasing. Being nice is what you do when you know people are watching or calculating your moves. So in order not to disappoint them, you follow the rules and do what’s in the book as opposed to what you really want to do.
Being kind on the other hand differs in the sense that you’re being yourself. In displaying an act of kindness, you’re showing that you feel real emotions for people or things and as such moved to express them. Nobody forces you into it. Nobody asks you about it. And certainly, you don’t see or think about anyone while exhibiting any of these kinds of traits, because it’s real, it’s the authentic side of you.
Now that we’ve established the mild difference(s) between niceness and kindness, I’d like to buttress what their downsides (or consequences) look like.
But of course, every action comes with consequences, good and or bad. And either of these traits above isn’t exempted.
Here is what happens when you’re being nice. Once you even pause from it, either due to sudden self-awareness or exhaustion, you become the bad guy and once you stop being nice entirely, you’re certainly nasty. Niceness is an extremity, and so is, being “un-nice”. Most people would prefer you remain nice toward them as opposed to being yourself or kind even. So when it looks like you are saying no a whole lot, asking for breaks in-between, minimizing contact, and channeling your energy to you, then you are not a nice person anymore, and as such you’re the total opposite. There’s no middle ground here for the pleased ones. You’re plain nasty when you aren’t kissing their ass anymore.
But expressing kindness is a constant, it’s inbuilt therefore it’s bound to show in whatever you do. But a slight variation in your usual kind gestures to people can exist and as such won’t be easily relegated to an act of wickedness or nastiness for someone who’s being nice. Instead, it would be seen as being pure humane. Since we have to hold back at times from being or expressing certain traits we are to fuel our energies up for more.
In other words when you’re kind and you don’t express it as much, notice I didn’t say stop, because you can’t just stop being what you are on the inside, then you’re only humane. The world is full of people who care less and less of people who truly care and the unbalanced load can be burdensome at times on the latter— not excluding the innumerable victims of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados, etc. for instance.
When the universe constantly requires the help of the kind ones who are overwhelmed by their capacity based on their few numbers, it can elicit a need for what looks like a break. After all, the kind ones equally have their lives to live, loved ones to take care of, family members to look after.
Which makes it totally humane that a kind person wouldn’t always express their kindness the way you might expect all the time. They are always giving, in a little way, through big and subtle gestures, and they aren’t keeping scores or pleasing anybody but rather genuinely being there for whoever needs it.
So when they feel the need to retract, it wouldn’t be seen as being unkind, cold, mean, or nasty, but simply being humane.
When we can appreciate the subtle differences between being nice and kind, it helps to make us refocus on what’s important and what’s not. Most importantly it saves us the hassle of beating ourselves up each time we are helpless and can’t help others. Because we know if we had, we’d give. And the littlest we do have, be it love, light, prayer, positive words, financial aids, we’d definitely give — which is an act of kindness. This is antithetical to constantly biting ourselves out to please others and getting heartbroken when we are suddenly seen as nasty from deciding to change from that. It’s not worth it.
Nice gestures are like this: taking up someone’s extra shifts at work even though you need some free time, going out of your way to buy gifts for your friends every Christmas, picking up everyone’s slack mentally and emotionally as well.
Be kind, not nice. To find out how click here.
