I’ve always been described as nice. This isn’t a bad thing, but eventually, it became the most memorable thing about me. My niceness was the first trait I would mention when describing myself. Not creative, not smart, just nice. I was fine with this for a while because being known as “the nice girl” was never something negative. Before I knew it, though, this trait became a part of my personality. This led to a time in my life when I was being overly nice to people, which ultimately did more harm than good.
The main problem with being too nice is that people will try to take advantage of your kindness. When I was younger, I didn’t realize that people would pick up on my kindness and exploit it instead of finding it refreshing. It felt like I was just being nice to everyone because it was the right thing to do. To me, it was the bare minimum to help strangers and put your all into being there for others. I always thought I was just the right amount of kind, but in hindsight, I can see I was overdoing it. I didn’t realize that when you’re consistently available to people, they tend to take you for granted.
Gradually, being overly nice started to feel like a pointless endeavor. I eventually started to feel fake, as if I was only being nice so that people would like me more instead of out of the goodness of my heart. Above all else, I was annoyed with and disappointed in myself. I was annoyed because I allowed myself to become a people pleaser and disappointed because I knew it was secretly hurting me. I knew I should stop, but it was almost second nature by that point.
At the time, I was so wrapped up in my “be the nicest you can be” mentality that I forgot to set boundaries. Looking back on my younger self, I could tell that I just wanted people to like me, and the easiest way to do that was to simply be nice. I now realize that people-pleasing wasn’t serving me in the way I thought it was. People would ask me for help, come to me for advice and rely on me too much. They took my niceness as an opportunity to get what they wanted, which hurt a lot.
My kindness was a means to an end for some people. Instead of the warm feeling I would normally get from helping others, I started to feel exhausted. This part of my life felt like work.
Recently, I’ve tried to move away from being overly nice. However, old habits die hard. After all these years, I’m still addressing these issues and becoming a better version of myself. The one thing I know is that being nice is perfectly fine, as long as you don’t sacrifice your own happiness or boundaries to do it.