It's Cool to Be Nice
Recently, I’ve been thinking about being nice to people.
I don’t think nice is my default. I have to go out of my way to be nice. Well, I think I’m nice in the way that I want people to be nice to me but that’s not really how most people want people to be nice to them.
So nice is in the eye of the beholder? I suppose the golden rule is “Treat others as they’d like to be treated”. For me, that means I have to slow down and deliberately show non-hostile body language such as smiling and reciprocating emotional tone through vocal inflection.
For example “Dave I think you are cool.” My initial response would be “hahaha why”. But how does that person want me to respond? Assuming they’re being sincere, I might put a big smile on my face and say “Wow! That’s so nice of you to say!”
In fact, I’ve found that about 99% of positive social interaction boils down to simply smiling. Did you know you can actually practice smiling? There are muscles in your face that you can exercise to flex them out and get better at smiling. I think probably botox or injections like that make it harder to smile so that’s rough. Maybe you could still practice. Ever want to feel like a complete psychopath? Record a video of yourself smiling and practicing saying “hello!” “wow, thanks!” etc into your camera, then watch it. You’ll be so embarrassed probably, but you’ll get more used to it and it will really help in real life.
I personally strive to live a virtuous life and part of that is striving for excellence. Dear Sam, note the specific phrasing here - I strive. I don’t live a virtuous life, but I try. What does excellence look like?
To me, striving for excellence is asking myself in my every day situations and opportunities a simple question: “What is the best possible way this could be be done?” For example, planning a wedding anniversary. What would the best anniversary in the entire universe of all time look like? Shoot for the moon! Once you start there, it’s super easy to dial it back to the realistic and practical, but having that moon-shot vision sort of allows you to cosplay as if you were really doing the ultimate thing. Is that ridiculous? I’ll elaborate and give you a specific example.
My wife and I recently celebrated 12 years of marriage. How incredible! We have a friend who’s living in Germany and we would both love so much to go and spend a few weeks sightseeing. But we have 4 kids. And a non-unlimited source of money. However, we live 45 minutes away from possibly the most beautiful place in the entire world - Zion National Park. Rooms there are cheap even last minute when you’re only staying a night! Food is easy! There are so many people from everywhere there, we heard less English and more French, German, Dutch, Chinese, and those are just the ones I could identify. We have this long term vision of going to Germany and seeing the sights, but we’re in our own backyard yet it feels like more than it is.
We can even boil it down to much simpler interactions. Checking out at the grocery store. What would the best grocery store checkout customer in the entire world look like? My theory is they’d just buy the items efficiently and quietly and smile on the way out. So that’s what I do. Sometimes! Just today I made the decision not to go into the store because I know the cashier there thinks I’m cool and I’m not feeling that cool right now so it’s much harder for me to fake along.
I just kind of generally try to get better at things and optimize them. I view life as a learning opportunity and I get unlimited continues until I die I guess. Not to mention, the more bizarre the social interactions you have, the more memorable your life becomes. It’s so much more memorable if you have a short conversation with an interesting person in addition to all your other activities. We don’t have to let our past attitudes dictate our future behavior. The world is an open book. Most people aren’t even really paying attention to you enough to really notice any immediate changes, but I can promise you they’ll remember.
Still feel like this is impossible? Literally just pretend. Cosplay as someone who’s friendly. You can be totally cheesy and it doesn’t even matter. Practice who you want to be. Feel ashamed of a past social interaction? Role play out loud how you would have done it. Talk to yourself. Physically speak the words helps “spit it out” so to speak. It’s really helpful!
As a young lad, I had a bad case of the rhotacism which is to say I couldn’t properly pronounce my “R’s”. In about second grade the school put me in the speech therapy which was pretty cool because I got to go with the cutest girl in my class and it was just us two with the teacher usually. We just did strange tongue exercises which sounds strange, but within a few months I suddenly gained the ability to talk normally. If I got one thing from my public school experience it was that ability. I was very self-conscious about it. As an aside, my son also suffered and he somehow fixed it on his own. I told him to just do tongue exercises and drink milkshakes with the curly straws and it works itself out on it’s own. I know in other cases it can be caused by more neurological issues but I think there must just be something a little funky about my oral structure that causes this genetically.
My point is that our bodies are literally just physical conditions on our souls. The human body is incredibly limiting but it’s also incredibly wonderful. We can practice and exercise almost anything. We can get stronger by moving muscles. We can actually make ourselves taller by practicing good posture. We can make ourselves more attractive by actively seeking our own health and well being physically as well as mentally. I really believe that all physical limitations can be overcome with enough effort. If we want to.
Why bother? Why should I want to get better? For me, it’s just interesting. I think “hmm that person seemed to be a little on-edge. I wonder if I could do something to help them calm down.” A lot of it is just living to learn people deal with addictions, appetites, and frankly most people need a nap and simply don’t want to be doing whatever it is they’re doing. I can learn and understand the world more and it becomes much more predictable. Incentive structures are pretty simple to root out and understand.
So I understand. I can get all the crap out of the way that makes people “bad”. They’re tired. They’re hungry. They’re hot. They’re cold. They’re lonely. Whatever. That’s not who people are is it? We can cut to the chase. Pretty much everybody is incredible. They have the most insane stories. I have tested this theory to the absolute extreme by literally soliciting outside a post office somewhere in Tennessee and a random lady told me her entire life story and all about her grand kids in about 10 minutes after saying hello. People want to talk. Smiling, nodding, giving positive feedback is what people thrive on. Your attention.
As the title says, it is cool to be nice. It’s nice to be cool too! Being nice makes you cool! People are like “wow, he’s a nice guy, he must be cool and confident”. As I mentioned before, sometimes this fraud does bear some weight. I can’t always be “on” like that. Really it’s just a symptom of having too many friends I guess, or being too well-esteemed. I make all these little connections with people and I feel like it becomes such a huge part of their lives. People are grey - especially at their jobs. So when I come along and dash some color they really seem to enjoy that. I need color too though! I’m not always ready to dish it out. Does that make me fake? Who am I really then? Maybe I should give the whole gig up! Or is it fair to have less energy for social interactions some times and more energy other times? Maybe it doesn’t really matter!
In high school I ran for Student Government. Everyone had to give a speech in front of the whole school about why they should vote for you. We had a practice run that morning just in front of the other candidates and I was so nervous I had no air in my lungs so it came out all gaspy and incoherent. I was on in 15 minutes and heart was pounding like a drum! I couldn’t calm down. I was pacing but nothing helped. I couldn’t even talk I was so nervous. Finally, I was up. I had to go out. What to do? I just had to breath. I stood at the podium like a deer in headlights, breathing. People assumed I was cool and confident and thought it was funny. Maybe they were laughing at me. I just breathed for 30 seconds, maybe a minute. By that time I did calm down and I gave my speech and I won the election.
I think as long as we’re being earnest, we shouldn’t worry about being insincere even if we are “pretending” to be nicer than we are.
I’m going to wrap this ramble up, but here are a quick list of things I’ve learned that people consider “nice”:
- When company arrives at your house, ask if they’d like a glass of water. Also ask if they’d like ice or not. You’ll be surprised how thirsty people are and how split people are on ice water. Keep in mind it takes approximately 30 minutes for a glass of water to run it’s way through your body without any food so make sure your bathrooms are in fit shape as well.
- Offer old ladies your arm, the ones that need it. Help them up and down the steps, hold the doors for them. Even help them to their vehicle and open the door like you are their personal chauffeur. This is one of my favorite cosplays, as an Esteemed Gentleman. The old ladies really appreciate it and I know they need the help. Also offer to help old ladies unload their groceries, though be cautious about approaching strangers in the parking lot. Good posture and smiling goes a long way, but not as far as having good intentions.
- Thank veterans for their service. This is controversial. I’m not saying we stand by every decision the US military-industrial complex has ever made. I’m saying the average person that served in the military, I don’t even fully know what that means but I do know that you’re at the command of the US President who could quite literally order you to die. That’s quite the commitment, however corrupt that commander-in-chief may or may not be. All you have to do is say “Thank you for your service.”
- Bow to people. This is strange but it works, possibly just because I’m “tall”.
- Say “Hello!” to people you know. You can literally only say that. Or you can say more.
- Learn to get comfortable shaking people’s hands. It’s just a thing, man. We can fist bump. I think a classic handshake is not only a great way to ensure any influenza will be mutually shared, but as a sign of openness and friendship. Carry hand sanitizer. I heard once that you should never shake someone’s hand sitting down and I think that’s pretty good advice.
- Introduce people. Be aware of your company. Introduce yourself! You can actually just walk up and say “Hi, my name is [insert your name here]” and you’ll have at least a 50% success rate. I’m still close friends to this day with people I met that way. “Mind if I tag along?”
- Thank people personally for random crap they’re doing for you even if they’re doing it because they messed something else up or because you’re making them do it. “I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out with this today.” - Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
That’s all I have for today! I think you can be nice to people and it will make you happier! Give it a shot.
I love this painting titled God Speed by Edmund Leighton, 1900.
