So, courtesy of one of the blogs I'm following, Full of Grace, Seasoned with Salt, I had a very shocking wake up call.
It was discussing a book, No More Christian Nice Girl, and I realized that I am that "nice girl". And basically in this post, it discussed the fact that being called nice is not really a compliment-and in fact, throughout history, it was an insult.
I looked up "nice" in my little pocket thesaurus and some of the synonyms include: pleasant, agreeable, polite, refined, careful, delicate, subtle, dainty.
I'm not saying that sometimes being nice isn't a good thing. But rather than being nice, we should strive to be good.
I myself avoid confrontation at pretty much all costs, but what I need to realize is that there is a time and place for confrontation. I should not be afraid to stand up for myself, a little anger at the right time can be a good thing, a good motivator. In fact, every time I felt myself getting angry, I could frantically try to calm myself down. In my mind, ever being angry or upset was such a bad thing.
I took the quiz on the same blog, and I got a score of 26, and a score higher than 10 means bad news-I am deep into the "nice person problem".
I am very much a people pleaser, I care too much what others think of me and I worry about how others see me. This is such a deep rooted problem for me, I have some real self-esteem/self-confidence issues. I am quite self conscious.
But I need to not be afraid to get angry and upset and stand up for what is right. I am so good at just putting on a happy face and doing what everyone else wants me to do-even if I don't always feel comfortable with it.
Even writing this now, my heart aches. I ache to be a better person; a good person, not necessarily a nice person.
Musings about changing seasons
5 years ago
This post was featured in the August Issue of Bosom Friends!
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Thank you! :)
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ReplyDeleteSuch a good post for me to read. I SO struggle with the same issues. This is food for thought, indeed.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite amazing... I thought of something similar just few hours ago. Because of our cat!
ReplyDeleteBecause my father calls the cat, Bisha, "nejhodnější kočička" (I'm Czech, so this is Czech), which means something like "the best cat". In fact, "hodný" could mean both "nice" and "good" (and originally it clearly meant "worthy"), but when father said it today, I realised that Bisha is certainly not "nice". I often see her hissing and "slapping" the other cats when she doesn't like their behaviour. And yet, I cannot deny that she really is the best cat I've ever known.
And when I thought of this, I wondered if God put Bisha up as a little example for me. Of course, she's a cat, not a human, so I cannot learn how I should behave from her (we have a much better example for that, right?). But I could learn a bit from her attitude.
Yes, we do have a great example-but sometimes it's helpful for us to have an example that is a little more visual for us.
ReplyDeleteI'm reading a book right now entitled "The Nice Girl Syndrome". It is a great book for the most part-while I don't agree with everything it says, it does make some very good points about our "nice" behavior
Precisely.
ReplyDeleteIt also reminds me of something C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere... I believe it's in Mere Christianity, but I'm not sure. It is more or less exactly this - that we are not meant to be nice, that we are meant to be good, that a person who's not nice can learn to be good and that it might actually be harder for someone who's nice. Something like that.