Nice people need not be nice all the time!

Genuinely nice people are actually nice. They have no hidden agendas behind their smiles. What you see is what you get. People who fake being nice are toxic. They were never ‘nice ‘ to begin with. So don’t confuse those two quite different kinds of people we come across. If you want to know who is who, watch their actions. Those fake-nice people are passive-aggressive even without you knowing about it. Because they also overdo ‘’niceties’’ all the time. Imagine they are like the overly enthusiastic expensive car salesmen who try to push a lemon onto you. You ask them: “Is the car reliable?” and they answer: ‘’These models are some of the most reliable in the word!’’. (Sure they are, only this particular specimen isn’t at all!) Yes, fake but nice people lie through their teeth by maneuvering the truth!

Therefore even nice people can be toxic. Specifically, the overly nice people I have known were extreme passive-aggressive. They act okay even when you say something that unintentionally slights them or that they have misconstrued. They keep up the brave facade when they don’t want to, or they don’t really feel like it. They turn every kind gesture into a “duty” or “obligation”, only the recipient isn’t aware that this gift is handed over with a sugar coated grudge or an expectation.

And you wonder, “How can this person be so nice? Certainly there’s something that bothers them.” Then suddenly, they turn on you. On a dime. And your every little infraction is blown up into epic proportions, because they’ve been sitting on it for so long, letting it all fester. That kind of faux niceness is the worst type of deceit. People show you who they are? Well, not always, if they’re just too nice.

Because they try so hard to fit a very narrow picture of the ideal person that they attack everything that doesn’t fall under that self-defined category. They raise children and immediately demonize aggressive behavior in toddlers when both gentleness and aggressiveness are needed in balance to unlock human potential. So they ride their children until they are completely submissive to them, which makes them helpless against everybody and every thought suggestion. “Nice people” are some of the most frustrated and robotic people on earth.

In fact, some of the people that are a little bit more blunt and honest can be less toxic than somebody that smiles to your face and tells you certain things to manipulate you. Often, some people that are honest are less manipulative, as they have no need to sugarcoat things to get what they want. That being said, it doesn’t mean being blunt or straightforward is always the best approach—it depends on the context and person you’re talking to. So yeah, that person that’s being nice to your face just might be manipulating you without your knowledge unless you pick up on it.

Moreover toxic positivity is where groups forego reality to maintain an illusion of consensus through acts of altruism. Warm smiles and a cherry tone of voice are used to lead people away from important, substantive discourse. Nice people are toxic because their positivity is weaponized to avoid uncomfortable discussions that need to be had for the goodness of the group. This creates an illusion of consensus by pushing discontent just out of sight. In reality, such groups are a pressure cooker that produces violent extremists.

Sometimes, toxic positivity is built into social media platforms where answers that make people uncomfortable are collapsed in a flurry of trolling comments. Sometimes the pressure from this forced consensus results in a pop where answers that go against the consensus seem to explode, because the consensus was an illusion. The result is often very not nice. By the way, if you ever wondered which is stronger, the brain or the heart, the answer is the heart. Biologically at least. And romantically, I guess. But back to that ''energy'' thing. We can't see it, but we can feel it. Yes. All of us can! Let me prove it to you.

Have you ever entered a room where two people were verbally fighting? The ''air'' is still heave with the anger of the argument. You just want to get out of there, right? Have you ever been around somebody, and you just felt good being next to them. They didn't even have to say a word. They just make the surroundings somehow better. That's the kind of energy. And we all have some. Don't we? Cheers!