How Being Nice Cost Me $2500, I Wrote This Article For Myself But You Can Read It Too

I once got scammed out of $2500 by a social media manager. That was the last time I can remember saying "I am tired of being the nice person".  The reason she scammed me was because I literally gave her a step by step tutorial in the form of expressing the depths of my ignorance in managing a social media platform at the time. And I believe the main reason she was able to so successfully dupe me was because I did not want to believe people like her existed. So I have come up with a name for them. Self-Serving Opportunistic NPC's.  I wote this article to myself, but you can read it to. 

Every so often on Social Media, someone says, "I am tired of being the nice person" The person is probably not tired of being nice; they are probably tired of being taken advantage of by other people who don't feel like they are doing anything wrong.

Some people in the world see niceness as a signal that "this is someone I can easily manipulate" and will use your niceness and desire to help others against you and keep you locked in a never-ending spiral of negativity and emotional drain. 

And repeated instances of this experience often result in someone who begins their "villain arc", and, unfortunately, ends up continuing the cycle of abuse in their own way. The problem isn't their niceness. The problem is an inability to set boundaries with people for whom niceness triggers cruelty.

Well, instead of just becoming villains, we are going to take a moment to consider how we are using niceness to navigate our world and what we can do to remain nice people while also setting boundaries with the NPCs who will take advantage of our niceness every single time. 

So why are we, nice people? The nice answer is that "we were just born this way," and there is some truth. There is such a thing as temperament, which can affect how we interact with others in the world. 

Some people are naturally chill and easygoing and have an innate desire to help others. And if that answer is satisfying, I beg you not to read any further. Because now, I am about to give the "breaking the fourth wall of existence" answer. So the "breaking-the fourth wall of existence" answer is that some people have been conditioned to be nice since childhood and honestly don't know any other way to be.  

Now, I beg you, ask yourself...what would have to happen for someone to default toward niceness and continue to be taken advantage of over and over again? 

You would have to gain somehow the belief that setting boundaries, saying no, or "being mean" is bad. And how does this happen? Primarily through conditioning in childhood. 

If life is a video game, then some people grew up in glitched family systems that punished them instead of praising them as they began the practice of recognizing and asserting their boundaries.

 This boundary violation is accomplished in many ways, but primarily through guilting, shaming, and family humiliation when the person tries to develop a self separate from the family they were born.

All of our families have a specific way of operating and interacting. It will help if you think of it as family programming. Some families are programmed to be loud and boisterous. 

Conflict is open and in front of everyone. Displays of dominance are celebrated, and displays of weakness are harshly ridiculed and mocked. 

Some families are programmed to be quiet and maintain peace. Conflict is a lot like the Cold War; everything seems nice on the surface, but underneath it, a pot of toxicity is waiting to boil over.  

Neither way is inherently better or worse than the other. The problem is if the programming is inflexible and doesn't allow for introducing new information. Basically, if the family won't change. 

And if you are someone who is born to a domineering family and you have a temperament that is sensitive to toxic family dynamics, then you might develop a coping skill, or glitch, of being very nice to others in the hopes that they will be nice back to you.

Which will work about 50% of the time.

The rest of the time, you will be taken advantage of by Self-Serving Opportunistic NPC's.

But today, we will talk about how you can change all that.

You will still get to be nice, and you don't have to sacrifice your principles or morals or become a villain or an asshole. 

If you are at a place where you feel like you are constantly being taken advantage of, then boundaries are about to become your best friend. No matter what you may have heard in the past, it is not selfish to put yourself first. 

If you have ever flown in an airplane and listened to the safety information, they will tell you to put your mask on first before you put it on others, especially if you are with children. 

This is because you can't help anyone until you are okay, and if you pass out, who will help your child? And for those tired of child-based metaphors being the norm, who will secure your pet, who you would never let ride in cargo? 

You have to set boundaries with the people of the world because some people are self-serving opportunistic NPCs. A self-serving opportunistic NPC isn't necessarily a bad person, nor do they sit up at night thinking of specific ways to get over on other people. 

They are at a place in their life, as a result of both their life choices and environmental factors, where they need a lot of emotional support. 

They may have deep emotional wounds and seek out others in their life to help share the burden of some of their concerns. And many of these concerns are the result of consequences of life-long unexamined patterns of toxic behaviors.

 You aren't going to fix their problem overnight, next week, or even if you sat down with them once a week over the next five years.

 And some of these NPCs aren't looking for help. They just want validation that their lives are as bad as they believe they are. Which is what you do every time you sit and listen, as a nice friend would.

You have to know yourself and know what is too much for you. I can't define that for you, and if you are at the point where you are saying, "I don't want to be the way I am anymore," then you have probably reached that limit. 

I cannot give you a specific definition of any of the following terms, but ask yourself, is this something that they often do? Is there any progress on their behavior, or are they enjoying the company of you and their misery? 

You can set a very simple boundary: "I am very happy you feel comfortable sharing your struggles with me, but I am becoming burned out, and I believe it would be best if you reached out to a professional, crisis line, or warmline". 

A warmline is a new type of hotline available for people to talk. 

When you have this conversation, the person will either understand and thank you for your honesty or pressure you into going back to the way you were before. 

They may try guilting you by saying, "you're the only one who will listen", or "no one else understands me". They may also try anger and manipulation. 

If you see any of those behaviors, it might be best to leave that situation and eventually remove yourself from that person. The response people give you to set boundaries is important because it tells you how they see the relationship.

You must remember, you were conditioned as a child to feel bad when setting boundaries and someone else who doesn't care about boundaries can tell and will use the same techniques as your family to get you back in line. 

You have to learn how to say no because if you don't, the opportunistic NPCs will take advantage of you. I know that you want to be seen as a nice helpful person, and when you are in a community with other helpful nice people, it can benefit everyone involved. 

You feel fulfilled because you can provide a service, and that service is appreciated, respected, and reciprocated in the environment.

But if you are not in a community with good people, saying yes all the time will result in you getting in situations that make you want to become a villain. You will become that SSONPC's primary method of resolving the immediate crises in their lives. They will burden you with knowledge you didn't ask for, ask you to do things that you don't want to, and guilt you when you say no.

This can happen at work too. So many of us go to new jobs and want to be seen a helpful employee and will actively take on more work or the work of others. While temporarily we are seen as hard workers and invaluable to the job, eventually we end up doing the work of an entire team in addition to our job because we don't say no. 

You have to protect your energy. Don't do things you don't feel like doing. Don't work for free.(Which is one I struggle with) Clock out and don't even think about work at home. Make a separation. Don't let others demands on you overwhelm you.

The main reason why nice people stay nice is because of a fear of upsetting people. They feel like by setting a boundary, it means people will hate them or, worse, that they are somehow being mean. 

And there is a reason they have this fear. It didn't just appear from nowhere. It is because they have repeatedly been punished for saying no in the past. 

Some families reward boundaries with physical punishment, withdrawal of affection, and shaming. 

And there are people in your life who will respond the same way, but only an NPC will get mad at you for saying no and setting a boundary. That doesn't mean you won't have some conflict, but only an NPC will continue to argue with you and be non-supportive of your decision.

You need to know who these people are in your life, no matter how painful it might be, to recognize it.

And finally, lets talk about your niceness. Sometimes niceness is just lying with extra steps. No one is nice all the time. It is impossible, there are things that frustrate you and things that get on your nerves.

And honestly, honesty is more important than niceness. And sometimes your friend's song isn't polished, the food doesn't taste good, and you aren't interested in watching that movie. If you value niceness over truth, you become someone others have to treat with suspicion.

You don't have to be cruel. Honesty without tact is cruelty, and there is no nice way to say your breath smells bad. Unless we come up with a word called halitosis. Learning the balance between cruelty and objective truth is hard and takes practice, and a reasonable person will appreciate you for it, while an NPC will just call you mean no matter how you say it. 

As you start practicing this, the people in your life who are simply taking advantage of you will start to show themselves out of your life. Even though it might be currently uncomfortable, it will eventually serve you for the better.