Highly likely you know someone that has elements of the ‘Nice Guy Paradox’.
Check out the following paragraph and see what advice you would give someone on this topic.
Nice Guy Paradox is not gender-specific but for the purpose of this write up I’ll keep it in context to men.
Nice Guy Paradox: to be nice you need to have the strength to put others first, but if you put others first you put yourself last. If you put yourself last, you lose that strength to be nice therefore you can’t be the nice guy.
Within Asian many communities we’ve ended up raising kids with the pressure to be a nice guy without giving them the validation that they are perfect. Training someone to be nice all the time isn’t the issue. The issue comes when they are made to feel not nice enough. Two extremes tend to happen: either the person ditches the mission to please and ends up being seen as a misfit to the family or the person loses their sense of identity trying to please others.
The reason for this post is to bring awareness to the topic as the Nice Guy Paradox leads to major mental health issues and ends up breaking up relationships for the person. The thing to watch out for is that this affects people who look like they have their life in perfect shape. It’s likely that they are looked up to in the family, well educated and have a good job etc. While everything looks great from the outset the person will be suffering from a world of triggers.
If you are in conversations with a person who seems to get triggered around the conversation of being right, do assess whether they received approval for their good morals in life. If they continue to create drama and arguments regularly occur on the topic it’ll be worth looking into getting the triggers cleared.
Happy to speak further on this if you have any questions about it. I hope this raises an aspect of awareness of why we see people in great positions according to society but internally unfulfilled.
