A short talk by Dr. Aziz explaining that chronic "nice guy" behavior stems from a phobic, excessive fear of others being upset (fear of being disliked). He argues this fear drives people to sacrifice values, boundaries, and honest expression to preserve internal safety, and recommends confronting the fear consistently as the path out.
If you spent months or years being the nice guy but not being able to change it. There is one reason why I studied this and thousands of people and written two best selling books on this topic of being too nice. And it comes down to this one thing which is you have a phobia, an excessive fear, a strong overreaction to someone being upset with you. It doesn't just feel bad or uncomfortable, it feels awful, it feels like death. And then as a result you will do whatever you need to to prevent people from being upset with you. So forget about your values, what you really think is important, what really needs to be done in your workplace. Forget about boundaries, forget about saying what you really think. It all comes down to how do I preserve that sense of safety inside of me by not upsetting you. And the way out of this is paradoxically to confront the fear of being disliked. Watch other videos on my channel to learn exactly how to do this. But until you confront that fear consistently, you will always be too nice.
