I think one way is to remember that, like you, most people are struggling with their own issues and doing the best they can.
Sometimes those issues can cause people to be short-tempered and a challenge to deal with. When I stop and take a breath and remember that, it’s easier to be kind.
It doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but it makes it easier not to counter it with more bad behavior. When I stop to look at people as human beings just struggling like everyone else, I find that I can “explain away” certain things as not important enough to get mad about. I’m talking about ordinary daily things that get us riled up, not “big things” where getting angry is a natural response.
It does take practice. As hokey as it sounds, it helps me to have a “gratitude list” that I write down each night. I find five things during the day that I have to be grateful for and I jot it down. Not things like “my health” and “a home” because those are easy, I mean little things we take for granted. Seriously, I know it sounds cheesy but it helps you realize how good things are.
The fact that you’re even thinking of being nicer shows you’re a good person in my eyes.
I learned a technique when I was in marriage counseling, of distracting myself instead of getting needlessly angry. I mean, in a situation where I was helpless to change whatever-it-was which was making me angry (traffic, etc.). It has helped me culitivate a sense of peacefulness which helps tremendously in maintaining ‘nice-ness’.
Well, I may have a few thoughts. First, I used to hate that everyone told me that was a nice guy. No male wants that reputation attached to him. It made me angry, but I am actual reasonably nice. Later I became aware that many people were either naively nice or cynically bitter. Now that I am older I understand that being nice is a part of me, but I also expect others to be nice or I have no respect for them. I try to understand that I should not get upset about things that are out of my control and try to avoid anyone that does not practice niceness. If I cannot avoid someone that is not nice, co-workers, family, clients, I kill them with understanding and kindness. Good nice people attract other like-minded nice people, bitter jerks move on.
I’m told I’m a sweet person- I’m not sure I agree. I know I am far more relaxed than when I was younger and I anger less. Being more forgiving, making sure you extend kind thoughts when others least expect them.
I think it goes a little beyond explaining why you are nice- maybe more to explaining why you are not nice. I don’t have any power trips, Aany great ambitions- anything like that. I don’t need to play games.
Being good in bed helps too. (I heard that one- honest).
To beging with, Alice the Goon, you may want to change your user name to something less… thugish perhaps?
One thing that may help you is to stop thinking that you´re being targeted all the time (I know you do, took a telepathy course, honest!). If someone does something that upsets you don´t take it as if was meant to be that way, or on pourpose, unless it was… you have to be mindful of this things.
Anyway, better yet, just relax, life´s not worth going through it within an inch of a nervous breakdown.
Thinking about this, perhaps the key is to learn how to be vulnerable; a nice person can be easily taken advantage of and pushed around; you have to learn how to be open to spread kindness and have the moral fiber (or lack of common sense) to shrug off pricks and pains.
Seriously though, most of the time it’s just not worth getting angry. I think a part of it is being able to see beyond that moment and understand that it’s just a temporary annoyance and not anything that’s likely to happen again… or something that doesn’t really matter. The only time I really get in people’s shit is when the same thing has happened repeatedly, or if it really feels important… like a racist or homophobic remark, for instance.
But don’t take advice from me-- I’m a doormat. Working on that. I’m just saying it doesn’t always pay to be nice.
Never blame malice for what can be blamed on stupidity ?
I think Ale’s point is very valid.
We can never really know what someone’s motivations are, when they screw up, or when they annoy us, but most people feel like they know.
The trouble is our gueses get filtered through our own moods and feelings.
If you’re having a bad day, every little thing is the world out to get you.
If you’re mindful of your own feelings you can spot yourself doing this and you find, fairly quickly, that people don’t seem so bad once you stop projecting your dark mood onto them.
It comes down to this for me: “This event had made me unhappy. Would I rather be happy or angry? I’d rather be a happy person so I’ll interpret these events in a way that make me happy, or atleast doesn’t make me unhappy”
This works for letting go of anger at other people, random events and your own screw-ups. Such as when you yell at someone and slam the door in their face. If you later go and apologise you have no reason for regret. You’ve already done the right thing.
Anger doesn’t affect the person you’re angry at – it affects you. Whose stomach is churning? Yours. Who’s sleeping fine? The other person. Why give them that power over you?
Most stuff just isn’t that important. Five years from now, will this matter to me? Five months? Five days? Five minutes?
I understand the self-protectiveness thing totally, but remember that it’s possible to protect yourself non-violently. Think judo rather than armed combat. Keep a little space around yourself, sure – but you don’t have to destroy those who threaten your equilibrium, you can just walk away.
I have one mantra, and one motto. The mantra (as in, phrase I meditate on – not in some hippie-dippie sense, but it’s something I saw on a card on someone’s bulletin board 23 years ago, and I’m still processing it):
Teach only love, for that is what you are.
The motto is a more recent acquisition; I got it from Anne Lamott, whose writing on spirituality in a world of imperfect human beings resonates with me. She says that all rules for proper behavior can be boiled down to two:
I think you are unrealistic about these standards. Instead of comparing your lifestyle to the richest country on Earth (with the best publicity machine for showing the lives of the rich), please consider that you have a house (and presumably a car, TV + computer). Your country offers clean water, sewage disposal, health care and public education for all.
Now compare that to living on the streets of Bombay. Forever.
Or having **everything you own ** swept away by a tsunami.
Or walking miles each day under the African sun just to get drinking water.
This was good and you should feel proud of yourself. What this shows is that people can change and get better.
Finally consider this. there is no ‘limit’ on the amount of happiness in the World. If you give of yourself, others will respond and you benefit from the feedback.
It’s easy to piss people off - but it’s infinitely better to cherr them up.
I do think helping the less fortunate really helps–since I started teaching, I’ve come across so many kids with just terrible burdens–working while going to school to pay the family bills because their sole parent is dying of cirrosis, kids with terrible diseases, kids that had to leave home because of horrific abuse that no one would or could do anything about. Worrying about other people’s problems takes you out of yourself, because NOTHING leads to anger and bitterness and unhappiness like being stuck inside your own brain. You get stuck in these horrible, non-productive thought circles that leave you exhausted and angry.
Second, and this really isn’t PC, a good marriage help. Good sex has been mentioned–it certainly helps keeps things in perspective–but also just knowing that there is someone in the world that really does think I’m amazing, wonderful, etc, who is nicer, frankly, to me than I am to him, means that I don’t stress about whether or not ther people I am being nice to will return the favor, and I don’t feel ill-used when they don’t, because I do have someone in some context that is taking care of me, doing me favors, concerned with my well-being. I don’t know how you can arrange this, but I would advise you that if you are still single and if you are ever thinking about marrying, make it someone really, really nice. It makes it much easier to be nice to the world. I would assume being married to an ass has the opposite effect.
I don’t know if I’m nice, but I try very hard to be patient, kind and helpful. I can’t imagine yelling or swearing at someone in public. Partly, it’s how I was raised. My mother had a fierce temper, which would often get turned against her family or some poor clerk in a store. It made me resolve from an early age that I didn’t ever want to be like that. Machiaevelli said, “It’s better to be feared than loved,” but look at what a happy life he led.
Same here; it absolutely horrifies me to see someone embarrassed or having their feelings hurt. I also have a naturally mellow temperament; it rarely seems worth the expenditure of energy and time to fuss. Thirdly, I can nearly always come up with an excuse for other people’s bad behavior (“He must be having a hard day, poor thing.”)
It’s funny you should start this thread, Alice, because there have been many times that you’ve posted what I was thinking. I felt that we were probably very much alike, but in this area we’re very different! Do me a favor and send me some of your spare backbone. In the meantime, I’ll just be lying over here in front of the door.
I’m not one of these “nice” people of whom you speak. But I do believe that I get nicer each year. It takes practice. Not just in your actions but you must practice the mind-set. One of the things I now say to myself - almost automatically - is: did that *really *change the quality of your life? Since the answer is no 99.9999 percent of the time, I try to let it go.
I now greet people as cheerfully as possible and wish them a good day.
I’ve always been “nice” but I’ve also been sad. Like twickster said, holding a grudge doesn’t hurt anyone but you. Part of my being “nice” is being frank - getting said what needs to be said, not playing games, and moving on.
I have huge flare-ups with my business partner 2 or 3 times a year. I blow up, he blows up, I tell him what I’m feeling, he tells me what he’s feeling and we’re good. If we don’t get good, we can’t have a business together. Not worth it to sit around and seethe.
My mantra is **“You can’t change other people. You can only change how you react to other people.” **
It really, really helps. Niceness comes from the inside.
I thought of something else. My baby sister is severely Bipolar and she has great difficulty in dealing with people. She told me this little saying, which helps her maintain her cool sometimes:
People do things WHICH make you angry, not TO make you angry.
Kinda helps one take a step back from the situation.
I just don’t see the point of letting people get to me. If someone does their damndest to piss me off, and they succeed, well that only hurts me. I had enough experience with holding grudges.
Plus, like other people said, the unhappiness of the…other countries is with me all the time. (I won’t say “Third World” because I don’t believe India entirely fits the Third World.) When I went to see my aunts this summer, we called my uncles in India. Both of them are having a really tough life. My younger uncle actually cried on the phone to my aunt because he doesn’t have enough money to get his knee surgery. My aunt, who is younger than him, scolded him and sent the money the very next day, but it’s humiliating to have to ask your younger sister for money, especially when you know she’s not rich, either.
And those are only the middle of my relatives. Some are so poor they have trouble putting food on the table. At the very least I don’t have those issues. It helps me maintain a sense of perspective.
Even putting all that aside…my mother is not a nice person. She believes in making friends only with people that can do stuff for you. She’s an angry woman, too. In exchange, she’s a very unhappy woman. I don’t want to be like that, and I keep that example in front of me.
I, like you, am naturally empathic and empathetic. So what do I do differently? I take a second to *Listen * to that empathy. I’m not saying I never blow up or do anything I will regret, but it’s rare. Usually the only thing people will detect is a flash of irritation, which I smooth away and deal with the situation. I’ve found taking that second to process and realize what the other person is feeling makes me much less likely to jump down their throats. My boss is terrific at this as well. You can visually see her stop, absorb what you’re saying, analyze it, and then respond. It’s quick–very quick–but she does it almost every time someone says something that her instincts make her want to just jump on.
