Kind and nice are not the same thing yet many people think and act like they are interchangeable terms. This should be chalked up as simple ignorance. We are all busy and we don’t look up everything. However, this concept holds a lot of people back in the world of relationships. Let’s get the book definitions:
Kind: having or showing a friendly, generous, and considerate nature.
Versus
Nice: Pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.
Why does this matter? This matters A LOT in how you interact with other people. This matters a great deal when you are dealing with people who care, who think deeply about their interactions with you. This matters greatly when you are dealing with people you care about and things that have importance to them.
I could very easily say that men and women could absolutely remove nice behavior from their lives, and they would be better off in most situations. They would be more genuine, altruistic, real, affectionate, and trustworthy. Here is why. Nice is largely all talk and very little action. It’s superficial and often fake or lacking any real substance. ANYONE can be nice but, there is absolutely no doubt when someone treats you with kindness because there is action behind it. They DO something that they wouldn’t or couldn’t do for everybody. But they did it for you. That means something. It holds weight, it matters. ANYONE can say niceties to your face and make promises they don’t keep.
Consider this: Let’s say little johnny or Jackie doesn’t make the sports team after tryouts. The coach has two basic options to inform the player that he or she did not make the team.
The nice approach: fluff them up about how awesome they are and tell them they are bringing back last year’s roster and blah blah. It’s nice, it’s half-truths, it does not HELP the child. It’s not fully honest but it does spare the child’s feelings. The coach in this instance does not really care about the child, his/her athletic development, and I could argue is doing an injustice to the game. Yes, it’s that serious.
The kind approach: In a professional tone tell them the truth. This gives actual feedback that the child if he/she is so inclined can take and improve themselves with targeted work overtime. This gives the child a chance to make the team as opposed to the nice approach. The coach is putting him/herself out there and sharing tough truths. It’s realistic, its life, and yes while it may hurt feelings it has a far greater capacity to actually help the child in short and long run than blowing smoke up their asses.
So why use nice at all then? Or in other words what is the value of being nice? Being nice allows a person to gain social acceptability in a pinch. It works ….nicely….. for inconsequential interactions with acquaintances. It’s often used in a manipulative way again to gain favor with the audience (coughs***”Nice Guys”***).
Often, women exhibit large amounts of the nice behavior. I’m in no way saying that women aren’t kind but, there are times where women face a catch 22 that men generally don’t. The catch 22 is that when women are honest it can have some poor outcomes. A woman is direct and blunt. People think she is a bitch. A man does the same thing and he’s acting like a man. The problem is sometimes the truth is going to hurt feelings and women tend to spare feelings a little more than men. Women generally do not want to be associated with negative terms like “mean” and a woman may face accusations that she is mean by simply telling a hard truth as opposed to a man may be described as “honest/blunt/tough/and mean” for saying the same thing but would not be looked down on as much or at all. Theres an argument to be made that women tend to be more agreeable than men (See definition of nice). Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m trying to call this one fair.
Nice feels well, nice to from woman to woman and at times from women to men. However, IF it is found to be said in a disingenuous manner its game over. You have lost that relationship or at least damaged it. Men, have very little use to this because it lacks anything of substance behind it therefore it is a waste of time and breath. It’s better to say nothing at all or do something to help. Understanding these ways of looking at it largely split down gender lines is very important.
Takeaways
The biggest takeaway you can get here is to be more deliberate and honest with your interactions with people, especially those that you really care about. Practice being a good active listener and removing niceties from your vocabulary and fighting those ingrained auto responses. Stop saying “sorry” when you aren’t, stop saying empty well wishes and sympathies that are rooted in nothing. Instead, don’t say anything at all or ask, “What can I do for you?” or help if you care, and have the time and capability. You will stick out in the best way by being more deliberate and really thinking about what you say and why you care or don’t care about something. It also has the great added bonus of sending energy vampires running for the hills when they go to get their time ration from you, and you simply stare at them and then say “that sucks man” as you walk away.
Here is a final example you should consider. A scenario that you have run into over the last two months or will run into. Let’s say you call a friend and you exchange the normal pleasantries and they say “I’m sick as a dog”. You have come to a response crossroad. The nice thing to say is “I hope you get feeling better”. This statement is effectively worthless in practical terms. Or you say “what do you need/what can I do for you?” or you simply show up to their house with chicken noodle soup. That’s the kind response. Or you can say nothing at all which may come off cold but, you don’t just auto response and you also don’t commit your time and resources to a person that you don’t want to do that for. This makes your time and resources valuable.
Doing a little thinking on this subject and you conduct yourself is a simple way to improve yourself with very little effort and it’s absolutely something you should take on.