Category > Relationship with yourself, Your Body
Pleasing & Being Nice or Being Loving?
What is the difference?
Remember, we learn how to behave!!!
a good or bad behaviour is being a man or a woman.
A people-pleaser might think:
“If I don’t do what my (girl or boy) friend wants, she or he will be upset with me and won’t like me. I won’t be a good friend to her/him anymore, so I better please them.”
There’s nothing wrong with being nice we could say – but we recommend stopping for a moment.
Being nice is a behaviour we often use to avoid reactions in other people or in complicated situations, conflicts, fights, problems, etc…
Reasons why we may play nice are:
Lack of self-confidence
Fear of other’s anger
Fear of loneliness
Guilt & payback
Looking for approval
Feeling other’s loss
but we are not !!!
What do we actually choose
by being nice?
“To stay comfortable in whatever situation without feeling triggered”.
In choosing to be nice we are not only avoiding what we are feeling, but what the other person may feel and specifically how they may react.
If you feel you might be a ‘people pleaser’ just ask yourself if you are avoiding reactions of others.
It is super important to care for others, but when we please them we’re not supporting them at all!
So…why not be loving instead of being nice?
Being loving comes first of all from loving and caring for ourselves, our feelings and our body.
When we are ‘in love’ with ourselves we have the power to choose and express how we feel. This takes care of our needs and supports others to be respectful and do the same.
"BEING LOVING MEANS BRINGING UNDERSTANDING TO THE OTHER BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF OURSELVES."
Self-Worth at 13
“I personally have been through the experience of being ‘too nice’ when I was 13. At the time, I used to have a friend that was super sweet to me when the two of us were alone but, when we were around other people, she used to make fun of me. Me, being as insecure as I was at that age didn’t respond back because I was scared of being lonely.
Now, being 22 years old I understand that this girl was even more insecure than I was & that is why she needed someone to bully, in order to feel better with herself. This experience taught me to not allow this behaviour and respect myself even more.”