Why Nice Ruins Relationships (And How To Change It)

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. Hey, welcome to today's episode of the show. Today we're going to be talking about niceness and how it can ruin relationships or negatively impact them. And this is primarily close relationships, dating, romantic friendships, people that are close to you. But it also can ruin work, relationships, all relationships, relationships with your neighbors. And it's so ironic because people are running the nice strategy to try to have better relationships. And so in this episode, it's gonna be very illuminating. You're gonna discover why that strategy actually doesn't work, even though it seems like it's gonna work on the surface and then how to change it. And this is very fitting as we are coming up to my three day virtual event called Not Nice Live. And if you haven't heard about that, you definitely wanna check that out. Go to drz.com-a z I z.com we're having the super early bird tickets on sale right now. You can save a ton. So now is the time to, to lock that in. It's March 1st through 3rd of this year, but if you read my book Not Nice or listened to it on Audible or my new book Less Nice, More you, and you got inspired, you felt like you saw yourself on the pages or really resonated with you, then this is going to be an experience that you're not going to want to miss because it's going to really take what you learn in the book. I can't tell you how many people I talk to who get it. They say, I love your book. I'm like, great, you know, what's different in your life? And like, well, I totally see why I'm so nice. I'm like, great. Okay, awesome. So, you know, I try to dig a little deeper and see what's changed. And you know, I'll often what I hear, not everybody, maybe not you, I don't know. But often what I hear is, yeah, I'm kind of sort of thinking about Making some of the changes or I'm sort of kind of working on some of the changes. Yeah. But if you dig, not much is different. And there's a reason for that. And you're going to discover in this episode why. But the solution is we. More is needed. We're afraid. Those risks to be different are very challenging to take on our own. I'm not going to say they're impossible, but most people won't do it. I'm not going to tell you what's true for you, what's going to happen in your life, but I want you to examine for yourself and see what's true for you. And if reading the book has inspired you, but you're not seeing major shifts occurring. And look, this isn't an overnight process. It does take time for this to change. And you're going to know when it's changing. You're. It's going to feel very different. It's the difference between. I'm kind of perpetually working on it and things are happening. And you will see and feel the difference. And that's what this event is designed to do, is to get you into that place where things are happening. By the end of these three days, it's going to be undeniable that things are in motion. And you're different because you've done different things. You have totally different insights. You've not just intellectually, but gotten something in your body, in your emotion, and you've chosen differently, you're acting differently, and it's off to the races. I would love to share this experience with you to help you really break out of this cage that so many people have been in for so long. And let me share about more how niceness ruins relationships. And I also want to share a story that just shows you how powerful this cage is. It almost reminds me of an addiction where I had an uncle who smoked most of his life. You know, I don't know when he started, when he was like 17, probably 16. And he, you know, his entire life, all throughout his, you know, being in a dad, having kids and young kids, and the people trying to tell you shouldn't smoke. You have young kids, you want to be there for when they're out. You want. He's like, yeah, I totally should. And he kept smoking. You know, then he gets older. It's like you're having some health problems. He had some heart problems. He got some lung problems. You should probably stop smoking. Oh, yeah, I was talking about smoking. And then it got to a point where he Was diagnosed with a fatal condition. I don't remember what it was. This is a long time. This, when I was young, something, something in the respiratory tract or heart that was definitely either directly caused by and certainly being currently negative, impacted by smoking. He should really stop. And I remember had this memory when I was a little kid. He was visiting our house, I was probably about 11 years old. And we had this basketball hoop on this driveway outside of her house with these oak trees around it and. And this white brick wall. And he was standing kind of sitting. It was like a three foot high wall and he was kind of sitting against the wall and smoking a cigarette. And it was interesting. I remember it as a kid. It's till this day. Cause I remember like, oh, I thought, you know, he was going to stop smoking. And people were telling him because I knew that much. I heard my parents talking about it and stuff. And he was out there smoking and he smoked until he died. He did not stop. He might even hear that story and be like, that's stupid. What? Crazy? How dumb, how dumb can you be? If I was in that situation, I would just totally stop. Would you? Would you? Are there circumstances in your life right now that are like smoking that you keep doing and you tell yourself. Well, people tell themselves different things. They tell themselves, I'll do it later. I'm sure that's what he told himself for many years. I'll do it later, I'll do it later. Or they get to a point where they realize they're not going to do it later and they're like, well, I'd rather just do this until I die because this is what I enjoy. This is how I want to be. I'm too. It's too late. It's too late for me. So how does this relate to niceness? Well, there was a woman I was talking to and she had a partner. They'd been together for maybe three years. And it was okay in the beginning. You know, they dated for a while and it got along well. But she was so nice. Textbook nice, pleasing. Say what you want, smile, nod, go with the flow, whatever you need, it's all good. That's how she learned this is how you got to be right. And this is. It's. Men and women both can play this, they run this software. But for women especially, you know, be a nice girl, be submissive, be what he wants, especially in dating. And that's all going to go in your favor. Heck, it might have, you know, some men might have been like, this is great. She does Everything I want. But not this guy. He was a bit more, you know, he'd been into growth and was wanting a more deep relationship. And so about a. I don't know, 8. I met her about three years in the relationship, so I'm gonna guess around a year into the relationship, give or take it, started to have problems because he'd say, tell me what you really think. He got frustrated because he'd ask her, where do you want to go? Do you want to do this weekend? She'd be like, I don't know. Whatever you want to do. They never fought. Never, ever, ever fought. And she made sure of that. So if something bothered her, she stuffed it. You might say, well, that's nice. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Right, well, that's. Just add that to the list of one of 1,000 things. That's terrible programming from nice training. Because a fight is actually necessary. If there's friction is necessary. People hear a fight and they think, oh, my God. Yelling and screaming and throwing down chairs. And some people grew up in a house like that, and they're like, I'm never gonna do that. That's not what a fight is. A fight is when there's a differing. There's conflict, there's differing desires, differing opinions, differing perspectives. That's conflict. A fight is usually when one person wants the other, you know, to win. They want the other person to make sure that they see their viewpoint. They're attached to being right. They want control, they want certainty, they want to be better than. Or, you know, make sure the other person feels worse than right, wrong. And we all fall into that. Sometimes that's where it gets a little bickery or people have a hard time hearing the other person. But if people can calm down and really hear each other, then it just becomes a conflict. And conflicts are not necessarily comfortable. And sometimes it starts with a fight. You know, I used to think when I was younger, the quality of my relationship was based upon the fact that I never fought. And I also could not sustain a relationship for more than a couple of months. So, hmm. There's a pattern forming there. In any case, now, by the time that I met her, this is why she was actually starting. She joined my mastermind program. By the time I started working with her, is her partner was going to leave her. Basically, he was just like, not no longer felt like there's not much there. And that was what it took to get her to say, oh, my God, I got to do Something. I got to do something. Because here's why. Niceness ruins relationships. The metaphor that I use is AR glasses. AR is tech speak for augmented reality, in case you didn't know that. I'm so smart and savvy. In any case, these glasses which are coming, they are sort of, you can, you can do it with your phone now, which is if you go to Amazon and you're looking at an object, I was looking at a mirror to put it in our garage where we have some workout equipment, the home gym, and you can, you know, look at the mirror on, online, on your phone and before you buy it you can say, see in my room, see in my house, or whatever. And you press that button and all of a sudden it's like, scan the wall. So you kind of move your phone back and forth with your camera on, across the wall and then boom, Next thing you know, there's a mirror on your wall through your phone screen. It's trippy, it's pretty cool. But the next level is, what if that wasn't looking through a phone video screen? What if that was your eyes? You know, you have glasses on. And so there you were literally seeing this mirror that's not there. It's being projected there. You know, it's on a screen and it moves as you move your head, so it looks like it's staying in one place. That's pretty cool. Now that's what we're doing with nice programming. So she was not interacting with her partner. You are not interacting with the people around you. When you're running the nice pattern, what's happening is you are augmenting, you're running something on top of them. And usually it's something way back from the past. So in her case, you know, if she disagreed or spoke up or did anything that was not nice, she'd get smacked, particularly by her mom was very heavy handed, physically yell at her and whack her. And so she learned, you know, don't, don't share. If something's bothering you, keep it silent. That's a matter of survival when she was a kid. So now it's, you know, 30 years later or whatever and she's with this guy who's like, hey, tell me what you really think. What do you feel now? What if what she feels is upset or dislikes something or wants him to do something differently and he's right there saying, hey, tell that to me, I need to know that. And she's got these glasses on where instead of him saying, hey, tell me that what she's really seeing and hearing is if you tell me what you really think and feel, I'm going to yell at you, I'm going to whack you, or I'm going to leave you. Do you see that? Right? Because if she really heard him, what he really wanted in the relationship, she would do it. But she's not interacting with him. She's interacting with some augmented reality that's overlaid on top of him. Does that make sense? And if you think she's the only one doing this, and you only do this in romantic relationships, well, I got news for you. This is happening everywhere. You're wearing those cool glasses everywhere. Google Glass, remember that? Google Glass, that was a thing for a while. They were. It was too early, too early for its time. They look too dorky. But I think they're working on other stuff now. I know Apple's got this freaking computer you wear on your face, which is not the same thing. I think what we're. You know what's really gonna take off is when it's like sleek, cool looking glasses that actually put stuff in front of your face. Cause that's what I need. I don't know about you, but I need stuff in front of my face. I need screens on my eyeballs. I want retina screens. I want, you know, neuralink jacked into my brain. I don't wanna think for myself. I just want a direct download of curated information by some mega algorithm that's gonna go right into my brain and tell me what to think and tell me what to buy. That's the future, baby. In any case, the reason this ruins relationships, this overlay, is because the survival programming that you got when you were young and nice programming was not about effective relationships. It was about survival. It was about fitting in, doing whatever mom or dad or your cousins or your brothers or sisters or the cultural field of your religion or your community or culture told you that this is how you gotta be to fit in so you don't die. And we're like ducklings, you know, ducklings, when they're born, they imprint. I think that was Piaget. That was one of the ones that used that information to. I don't know, I try to sound smarter than I am there. He was some French psychologist that studied children. But I ripped some. I have some memory of, like looking at a textbook with Piaget for some ducklings following him. So I'm gonna go with that. I'm gonna go with that. Still got it. In any case, when ducklings are born, they look around and the first object they see, they imprint upon. So they do that ideally with their mother duck. But what Piaget discovered is if the mother duck's not there and the first thing they see when they pop out of their egg is him, then they imprint to him, which means he fills the role of mother. Follow him around. So this is like this textbook picture of him walking around a field, these ducklings following him. I don't know what they did after the picture. They just incinerated the ducklings. I don't know. In any case, we are like that. Only instead of just like the second, the first person you see, you imprint. That's pretty simplistic. We sort of imprint over that first five, seven years of our life and get most of our programming in at that point of what I'm supposed to be and what is good and bad, what is right and wrong, what do people like, what do people not like? And then we carry that with us. I like to think of it as a software that you get installed over the first seven years and then you run that pattern for the next 470, however long you live. And most people will never change it. And the reason it ruins relationships is, first of all, survival is not the purpose of a relationship, of any connection with other people, because survival is inherently self focused. And when we're self focused, we're not going to have thriving relationships. Now, nice people hear that and say, okay, be other focused. But then they're basically saying, okay, I'm gonna give other people everything they want so that I can survive, which is still self focused. No, a real healthy relationship actually involves how do I help meet the needs of others and skillfully ask for and advocate for my own needs. That's a healthy frame for relationships. But niceness has none of that. It's all about personal survival. And what happens is you avoid doing the things that actually are going to create a healthy bond. What creates a healthy bond between people? Well, it's going to be some revealing of what's happening for you, an authenticity as the. You know, Brene Brown made famous the word vulnerability. Letting yourself be known, be seen for who you are, and being curious to see and know others, this is what creates a healthy relationship. And so when you don't do that, when you refuse to do that, even though everyone around you is saying, show us who you are and you don't, that's like my uncle smoking till the day he dies. Now, I've seen other people in my world who say, yeah, but Aziz, people aren't this client of yours is lucky. Her partner is waiting around asking her to open up and he's gonna cheer her on. That's not how it is in my life. You know, if I'm more authentic with my, my husband or my wife, they're going to be upset with me. If I'm more authentic with my family, they judge me and tell me to get back in the box. So I have to. Okay, so you are doing that for who? For them. Because when you're in the nice programming, the most important, the prime objective of the program, of the software, is to survive. And the best way to achieve that objective is by fitting in. So the idea of doing something different or challenging the system or standing out or not doing what your parents wanted feels like death. There's no way I could possibly do that to them. And there's no other option in that level of awareness and consciousness. That's just how it has to be. But something else is completely possible where that's not the purpose of your life. You're running a totally different software. Imagine a computer that is running, you know, some sort of data coding software, some real techy, boring data system stuff. No offense to my data scientists out there. Maybe you love that stuff, right? And then that same computer can run an app like my kids love this drawing app that I have on my iPad, where they get to, you know, you can do different color markers and then if you want, you can have a marker that just shoots out like rainbow stars. That's their favorite marker, right? You're not going to get that marker in real life. You're only going to get that on an app. It's like rainbow stars flying all over the screen. It's amazing. So the same computer can run very different softwares. It's a very different life. And so you could be running a software that's about letting yourself be known, about being truly curious about the needs of others, about playfulness, about expression, right? Because a nice person, you say, why don't you fully express yourself through art, through singing, through media online? And they're like, oh my God, what would people think of me? I can't put that out there, right? Do you see how quickly the old program comes in and shuts down that fun little app, the drawing app with the sparkly rainbow shooting stars, and put you down into the grinding of numbers. Imagine just some old DOS looking thing. If you know what DOS is. It's like a black screen with white text and it's just churning out computer language. And that's the program that we're running. And that not only does it feel terrible, but it kills your relationships. Because if she did, this client that I was working with did not change. Her partner would leave her. If you aren't more direct and more real at work, you will get overlooked. You might hang on and keep your position as other people get promoted over who you. And eventually, when there's layoff times, guess who gets laid off. That's right, you. Not because you're not skillful, not because you're not talented or capable or intelligent. It's because you refused to speak up. You refused ultimately to take a risk. And that's what this all comes down to, is taking risks again and again and again. So let's turn this into action. Time for action. Action. Action. Your action is going to be to ask yourself this question. What would I do in a healthy relationship? Or what seems like a healthy way to be in this situation that could be with a partner, that could be with a friend, that could be at work. What is like psychologically healthy or mature? What's mature here? And you may or may not know, you know how to do it. I'm not sure yet, or I feel scared to do that. But what feels mature and start to flush out this is what this is doing is this is allowing you to see a new way of being. And then, then we can start to step into that. And if you want help with this, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, come to Not Nice Life, the virtual event you can attend from anywhere in the world. We're going to be going through this. So this is kind of like, okay, what now? How do I make this real in my life? That's what I mean. I can't do it here in these 20 minute episodes, but we have three full days together and so we can actually really map this all out. And the beauty of it is, versus a book or a podcast episode is, I'm there in the room. We're doing it. You're going to do it. Be honest with yourself. Be honest here. What percentage of the action steps do you think you do from these episodes? 10%. Right. People are like, I'll get to it later. I'm driving. Okay, all right. And that's no judgment, but just watch your patterns. And if you want that extra support, I certainly need it. That's why I attend events. I was just at a virtual event myself, five day one coupled, like last week. Why? Because I know I'm not going to do all this stuff on my own. In every area of life. If I want to, you know, really challenge my edge and face my fears and do something I've never done before, I'm always getting the support I need to make that happen. So I look forward to possibly seeing you at that event. You go to draz.coM-R-A z I z.com and I am excited for you to shift this pattern. You absolutely can change this. You don't gotta be like my uncle who's smoking all the way till he dies. I have seen so many people become so much more, less nice and so much just being boldly yourself in the world and that's, that's our outcome. That's our North Star and I cannot wait to see help and support you in getting there. So 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 it.