You do not have to be good

Forget about being nice—especially this time of year. Leave behind the pressure and the expectation of perfection and placating, of pleasing and performing. It will not get you where you want to be or where you need to go. 

There is an epidemic of niceness that is damaging our souls, tearing down our boundaries, and burning us out. Chronic people-pleasing and being perpetually nice is not bringing you to here, to now, to authentic and wholehearted living. Rather, it's pushing you to live to attain something. It's hoping that the nice and pleasing behaviour will grant you access to what you feel you are missing, levels of belonging you long to find, a greater sense of acceptance and safety and connection. 

Being nice and perpetually pleasing at the expense of your soul and authenticity can not get you what you need in any lasting way because it is not predicated on truth. At its root is inadequacy and the need for approval and validation from others to feel safe and accepted. Chronic niceness is about pleasing others to find a sense of essential goodness. 

Now listen, there is a difference between being kind and being nice. I am not at all abdicating benevolence or the responsibility we have to treat each other well and humanly. I'm addressing the underlying beliefs, where the nice and kind behaviour springs from. 

Remember, you do not have to be good; you only need to believe that you are already good, and you will find your centre of balance and belonging within.

Nice is defined as pleasing, agreeable, delightful. While being kind is defined as having, showing, or preceding from benevolence.

Rumi said: 

"Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing."

This is where things come together: pleasing others and benevolence do not have to be mutually exclusive or inclusive. Sometimes, something you do will bring about a pleasing and agreeable effect on others. You can do things to make other people happy in an authentic expression of love and connection, generosity and compassion. Selfless acts of care and goodwill are founded in the belief that everyone is worthy, everyone belongs, and that we are good, good, good at our core. And also, not every action coming from a place of benevolence has a pleasing effect. Kindness does not always pump the ego, but it always calls you home to yourself. 

Niceness and people-pleasing that does not come from a foundation of benevolence and kindness, that acts to feel good rather than acts from a belief of being good, foster environments of co-dependency, avoidance, abandonment, and more easily fall prey to abuse, neglect, and control. When I tell you to stop jumping through hoops to find your belonging, I mean, stop dancing to a rhythm that has no groove. Every relationship has its connective points that test it and grow it, that carve out trust between those who are engaged in it. This is different from feeling as though you have to prove yourself worthy of belonging. You do not have to prove your worth, ever. Run from any relationship in any sphere that demands you do so.

You do not have to be nice to receive the gift of belonging from the Divine, from the earth, from the essence of all things. You do not have to prove or please your way to peace. You can not. For the path is within, 'ordinary matter is the hiding place of Spirit,' (Richard Rohr). And it's not that the Divine is hiding from you… It's just that we sometimes forget that our goodness is our essence, and it's hidden underneath all our pleasing and performing and perfecting. Pick those things up and throw them away, unbury the hidden and bring them out to the light of day. 

Consider this: "Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true." Robert Brault.

From my upcoming series, "You Not Have To Be Good" this week with a subscription in the App.

Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco