Why Nice Guys Finish Last

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you, I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about the famous phrase, nice guys finish last and why that might be. So is it true? What does that mean for you? Are you doomed? Are you too nice? How do I deal with this? Isn't being nice a good thing? Right. Well, we're going to dive into all that in this episode. You're going to leave with a lot more clarity and a lot more, ultimately, permission to be you. Because let's clear that up right at the beginning. The opposite of nice is not to be a jerk, to push people around, to just be some maniac or narcissist or arrogant or whatever the fears are. The opposite of niceness is actually to be authentically you. That means showing up as yourself, expressing who you really are, saying what you really want to say, not holding back out of constantly trying to please people, which is what niceness is. And that's the thing that leads to, well, being last in life. So let's unpack that as well as the interesting origins of that phrase, and ultimately help set you up to become a lot more boldly yourself. And I'll be touching on some key themes in this episode. And if you really are excited about shifting this in a powerful way now, this year, maybe not even now, but yesterday, like, you could have made these shifts a decade ago and really, you know, saved yourself a lot of suffering. You know, there's that old saying that says next best. When's the best time to plant a tree 20 years ago? When's the next best time is right now. So we cannot shift what's happened before, but you can really shift the next year, five years, 10 years of your life by getting on the right track. And I want to share something very exciting with you. We have coming up, which is a virtual event that I'm doing called Not Nice Live. You can attend from anywhere in the world. So if you're listening to this, you probably have the Internet and you can join. All you need is the Internet. That's why it's a virtual event. So I'm super excited to do this. I love it because I get to work with people from all over the world and hopefully get to work with you to spend three days diving into becoming a more bold version of you, shedding the pattern of niceness. You're going to discover exactly why you run the pattern so much, how it's impacting you, and most importantly, tools and practices to break free during those three days. Not just a bunch of theory, but actually practicing it to break free during those three days that you can then carry forward into your work life, your social life, your love life. So I love those virtual events and I would love to share that experience with you. And if you've been to one of mine before, you know, you know, and I encourage you to come back because there is a momentum and a breakthrough that you can experience at these that really sets you up to crush it in the months that follow the event. So if you're interested in joining me, we have the super early bird going right now. That's why I'm mentioning it. So if you just go to my website, drizease.com you'll see right there on the homepage you have a banner inviting you to join us. Not Nice Live coming up. The event itself is in March, mid March, so you can get all the details there. Go to drazizdraziz.com and you can check that out. But look out, because if you're too nice, some bad things can happen. That's right. That's where this phrase nice guys finish last comes from. And actually had to look this up. I was like, where does that phrase even come from now, according to the Internet, comes from Leo Derocher De Roker. Yes. If you're a baseball fan, maybe you're shaking your head at me for not knowing that he's the manager in the 1946 Brooklyn Dodgers. Yeah, some baseball trivia for you. Yawn. In any case, though, where does this phrase come from? Well, he was talking about playing with one of their rival teams and he said something along the lines of in some press conference, the nice guys are all over there in seventh place. Right. Which is the bottom of their division or whatever. So this was later paraphrased as well, nice guys finish last. And that's not his exact quote, but he's basically saying, hey, if you're trying to be competitive, being nice isn't conducive. To winning. And then over time, the phrase took on a more broader meaning where people talk about if you're overly accommodating or too maybe self sacrificing too much, putting the needs of others first, particularly in relationships, business, or any sort of competitive situation, then it's going to be harder to succeed. And some people don't like hearing this. They say, no, no, no, niceness is good. We need more niceness in the world. And I think this is often just a misunderstanding of terms because when they say the word nice, they mean kind. We need more kind people in the world. And what's often happen when people are trying to be nice, though, is not kindness and it's fear, it's people pleasing, it's who do you need me to be? And I'll be that because I don't want to upset you, I don't want you to leave me. I'll do whatever you say. And basically, you're operating like a hostage in your life, even if other people aren't pointing guns at you emotionally, that's how it's set up. That's how it feels. So someone might say, hey, do you want to come join me for this thing? Or can you do this thing for me? And you have free will. You can say no. You could say, I'm not available. You could say, hey, thanks for inviting me. I don't think I can make it. You can say, I would love to, but my life's too full right now to spend time together. But maybe in a couple months things will open up for me. Whatever you want to say, whatever's true, you can do that, right? Can you? Maybe not. Because if you're in the nice cage, which I was for many years, you can't. I mean, literally. Sure, you could say those words, they could come out of your mouth, word hole. But you can't emotionally do it because there's this barrier inside this barrier of fear that basically says it's impossible if I try that something terrible is going to happen, they're going to hate me, I'm going to be a bad person. And so I have to, you know, insert whatever it is, do whatever they want, be who they want me to be, not say no, and therefore go along with the request. And basically I have to lose myself, right? I can't do what I might want to do or what might feel right to me. I can't listen to my own signals of what feels right and wrong. In fact, nice people don't even know what their own signals of right and wrong are right. It's like I don't. And this is the most common thing I see in people. They're just kind of confused. I don't know what I want. I don't. Is it okay? Why do I not want to spend time with that person? Shouldn't I want to spend time with that person? Oh, I'm confused because they seem so good on paper. Oh, but she's done so much for me, so I have to on and on and on. And really what you're doing is you're disconnecting from yourself. And it really is a painful setup because it feels like, well, my options are limited. I can either disconnect from myself and just be what I'm supposed to be, be the people pleaser, do what other people want of me, which has its own host of consequences. Some of them are internal, such as frustration, burnout, low self esteem, inner anger symptoms, physical symptoms that can arise from those suppressed experiences and emotions and finishing last. That's right. Being overlooked, being taken advantage of, not having the resources to then at the end of the day, take care of yourself, do what you want to do. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to are overly nice. They're giving and giving, giving all day long. And now they have a little bit of free time for themselves and they just have no energy, right? Because they've not listened to their own inner signals that were telling them when to say no or when they are suppressing or, and, and, or they're suppressing so much and that takes energy. And so they just don't have the energy to put into their own projects their own passion, their own side hustles, their own relationships, their own physical health which is causing you to fall further and further behind. And I don't mean in some competitive way, I just mean in fully living your own life, you get further and further from that. And those are the costs that come out of being too nice. So that's one set of options, or that's the set of results that come from one choice. And you might say, well, jeez, okay, let me choose the other option. Well, if you're in the nice cage, the other option is to say no, stand up for yourself, disagree, not give the person what they want, whatever it is, and be a bad person. Who wants to do that? Who wants to be the bad person? Nobody. Nobody wants to be bad. And so no one picks that option, right? You just stay in the nice, keep doing the nice thing. And so the way this shows up is if you do say no or you do have some boundary or something, you just feel awful, you feel guilty, you imagine you've hurt the person. How could I? A lot of self reproach and repeated criticisms and maybe magnifying the situation and thinking about what their friends are going to think, what other people think, oh, what do people saw? Oh my gosh, how could you abandon them like this? It gets more and more magnified. It's like an echo chamber in there. It's really, really painful and it's hard to get out of it because it seems true. That's the biggest challenge. It's like going into a, for some reason I imagine like a spooky, swampy woods. Imagine some fantasy movie or something and you go into those woods and you just get all turned around in there and next thing you know you're slopping through, you know, ankle deep water like, where am I? Where am I going? Right? So you get lost in that guilt forest and you never come out right? So okay, not going to go in there. I guess I'll just keep pleasing everybody and being who they want me to be. But if you, if you have the right guidance, you can actually make it through that forest and you can realize that that forest's not haunted at all. In fact, you don't even, you don't even need to go in there after a little while. As in you can say no and not feel guilty. You can ask for what you want and not be a selfish bad person. It's okay to tell someone that you don't like one thing and would like something else. That's healthy, that's a good thing. And it might seem really far fetched and you're like, I don't know about that. Well, that is not you, my friend, that's the programming. In fact, one of the key things that I do with people, and I write about this in the book Not Nice. But what I'm really excited about and love doing at Not Nice Live, the virtual event, is it's going to come to life. And you're not just going to read about it, you're going to do it. And we're going to build out your Bill of Rights and do some very powerful exercises, some of which we've never done before at a virtual event. So if you've been to my other one or been to Notnight's Live before, this is a brand new thing I'm bringing in where I really said, okay, people know this intellectually in case you're not Familiar. Let me back up here. The Bill of Rights is a document you create, whereas you're claiming some of the things you're allowed to do in your life. You know, like I am allowed to say no when I don't want to do something. I'm allowed to ask for what I want. I'm allowed to disagree. Right. These are basic rights. And I'm not telling you what should be on your list, but I'm encouraging you to create your own list where you're telling you what you're allowed to do. And how do you know what goes on the list? Well, it's what your soul hungers for. What you know on some level is healthy and more alive and more free. What's out of the cage. That's what goes on the list. And then, and then we have this great list and people, you know, I know, I've read the book and they tell me they have this list and they're like, okay, but how do I, like how does it. Then what right? Well, then we have to internalize it, we have to enforce it. It has to become your new programming right. Because you could have this list of this Bill of Rights that says I'm allowed to say no. And then the coding, the programming in your nervous system though is like, no, say yes, don't say no. That's terrible. So you have this nice document, but it doesn't do anything. That's like having a Bill of Rights that's not enforced. And so we want to create an emotional sensation that's linked to this Bill of Rights that allows you to feel the power of it and the permission of it and to claim that in a way that maybe you never have before in your life. So I'll be guiding you through a process at the event, if you'd like to join me for that. And one thing you can do is to start by creating this list. So if you don't have my book, not nice. You know, definitely check that out. There's a whole section in there about that. And then what I highly recommend to people is to read that Bill of Rights. That's the very first thing is just read it, make it familiar so it's part of who you are. Because that's how we. The ultimate goal of all this is to upgrade the programming because that's all this is. Being overly people pleasing and overly nice is not who you are. I know it might seem that way because you've done it for 10 years, 20 years. And when I talk to people and say, how long has this been going on? Most people will say my whole life or as long as I can remember. So it feels very deeply a part of who you are. It's your essence or something, but it's not. It's just conditioning. And so it can be a little scary to challenge that, to test that. Which is why I'm a big fan of the group immersion environments like the online event, because you're not alone trying to do this. And you get this strong messaging that comes from outside of you that's presenting you with a new programming, a new option set, a new way of being. And you look around in the room and say, all these people aren't bad people. These are very heartfelt, caring people. They just have been under a spell. And maybe you have too, my friend, and it's time to break that spell. Because finishing last sucks. And it's not the worst part, though. Being overlooked, being ignored. I know I did that for many years. It sucks, but. But it's not the worst part. I think the worst part is the regret. You know what I mean? Maybe you feel it now, maybe not yet. It depends on what age people are, where they are in this journey, when I talk to them. But if it's been going on for any length of time, like more than a couple years, I start to get in there with people. There is the regret of. And it might be specific things like, oh, I wish I would have done that, or I should have ended this relationship sooner, or, you know, I should have gone for this thing. But ultimately it all comes back to the regret of a life not fully lived. And that means things you didn't really do, things you didn't really go for, experiences you didn't really have, but also not being who you really are. And I think on a soul level, that's probably the most painful thing. Not missing out on some dating opportunity or something. You know, those are great, but no, I mean missing, like being separate from, at odds with, not fully congruent with who you really are and who you're meant to be. Now, that's losing in life, right? And I'm not saying you are a loser. I'm saying that that's a pattern that has us lose or finish last. Not just on some metric of success out there in the world, but I mean, on who you are, who you're meant to be, what you're here for. And so that fires me up, because I don't see it as some death sentence. You're not doomed. You're just in a cage and you can break out of that cage, and hopefully you can feel my voice. I'm passionate about this and I'm excited. Let me talk about an action step here on how you can break out of this cage. Time for action. Action, action. Your action step is going to be just to pick one new permission, one new right for yourself. And I gave a few examples in this. In this episode. You know, I have a right to say no. I have a right to ask for what I want. I have a right to disagree. I have a right to change my mind. I have a right to cancel plans with somebody. I have a right to reschedule. I have a right to not get back to somebody right away or maybe ever. Now, some of these, you might hear them and feel shocked. But for me, these are all very true statements at this point. So pick one of those or create one of your own. Just one. Just one that feels like you need it. It's resonant for you and just start to repeat that to yourself. I am allowed to. I have permission to blank. And the invitation is going to be to say that, to write it down somewhere and say it to yourself maybe once a day for the whole next week until we meet again next week in the next episode. And if you're excited for more, join me. The super early bird. We keep it, I mean, as accessible as possible. Right now, the tickets are just $97 for three days of the whole virtual event. I mean, that's an extraordinary level of immersion at that price. And the reason we do that is we want to make it as accessible as possible to anyone in the world. I don't want to be any excuse that you can't, you know, be there and really make a radical change if you want to in your life. So thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again. May have the courage to be who you are to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to socialconfidencecenter.com.