WHY Being Too Nice Ruins YOUR Happiness and Success!

The world urgently needs more friendly and helpful people who think less about their own advantage than about that of society. As we all know, there can't be enough good in this world, but being nice - hard to believe - also has its downsides. Perhaps you have noticed that in professional and private contexts, the winners are never those who dutifully stand in line, play by the rules, and let others go first.

The promotion, the fancy apartment and even the dream partners go to the people who throw elbows, the scheming strategists and the sometimes quite inconsiderate among us. We'll show you why that is, and why you should move from the kiddie pool to the competition pool in the future if you want to succeed.

1. Between yes-man and burnout

The job market loves nice people. Strictly speaking, the global economy probably benefits overwhelmingly from workers who volunteer to be exploited to their heart's content every day; coming back again and again to ask for even more overwork. It sounds cynical, but this is exactly the pattern in which many companies operate.

There are the worker bees who diligently perform quietly and without making demands; if you ask them to do extra work, it's basically no problem. They are always the last to take vacation and the first to volunteer for overtime. To these employees, anyone and everyone can put anything on their desk. It will certainly get done in the best possible way, regardless of whether or not it falls within their specific area of responsibility.

These employees never register criticism or make demands of their own. They are loyal to the hilt and are happy to remain in the status quo. For their environment, they are a sure bet as far as additional workload and the imposition of more and more activities is concerned. Since they never say no, they don't notice for a long time that the workload is becoming more and more unbearable and that their endurance is being pushed to the limit.

Those who expect a salary increase, promotion, a nicer office or at least praise and recognition in return are very much mistaken. People who demand nothing get exactly that => nothing.

2. Unfortunately, we don't have a promotion for you.

The next level at work is basically denied to nice employees. Friendly and kind people hardly ever get promoted or even make it to the top. If in the course of your professional life you have often had the suspicion that superiors are basically imported directly from hell, this indirectly supports this theory. The problem with being nice here is that it lies like a veil over our competence.

We are superficially seen as the well-behaved dutiful ones, not the sovereign jack-of-all-trades we have become over the years. What counts is not how much we love our work or how strongly we identify with the company, but only how well we sell ourselves to the outside world. Supervisors love verbal grenades as much as employees who can sell them a plan or agenda and, most importantly, themselves in the best possible way.

The human factor doesn't count in promotions. The famous soft skills are still criminally neglected when it comes to employee management and leadership qualities. Nice people will never be able to sell themselves in a job interview as flawlessly and put themselves in the perfect light as the ruthless careerists. They are too honest for that, too self-critical and far too objective about what is feasible and what is possible.

It is difficult for them to produce empty phrases just because they are veritable sales arguments. A nice person will always keep the big picture in mind, not his own advantage. This puts them at an enormous starting disadvantage in the race for the next promotion right from the start.

3. Perfection myth

In the professional, but also in the private sphere, the rumor still persists that perfection is feasible. It is not, let's reveal that much right away. Nevertheless, many people still chase after their illusion. On the way there, they bend and twist themselves and renounce their needs to the point of self-destruction. They say yes and amen to everything just to get closer to the goal of being the perfect housewife, mother or employee, the perfect husband or team player.

We think taking our desires into account makes us worse candidates for a place on the podium. What we fail to take into account is that we are chasing a phantom. Being nice is not the key to perfection; it leads us straight toward the abyss that is a mix of burnout, rejection, and perpetual failure. The bad thing about it is that no one likes people who pander to everyone. So being nice leads us straight in the opposite direction than the one we really want to go in.

4. Love or suffering?

In 2002, a sensational dating and relationship guidebook was published that soon became the talk of the town and generated plenty of conversation among women and men. Sherry Argov's book "Why the nicest men have the most horrible wives" took around 100 years of equal rights to absurdity in just under 300 pages. In it, the author put forward the hitherto daring thesis, now no longer so controversial, that nice women and nice men, by the way, always come away empty-handed when it comes to choosing a partner, or have to settle for the dregs and shopkeepers.

This was received with great indignation, but studies proved in the meantime just how much truth there is to it. The nice women who will do anything for their men and the nice men who would walk over burning coals and jump through burning hoops for their sweethearts are too good for the dating world. The women who give everything and more for a fulfilling relationship make it too easy for the men and at the same time overwhelm them with so much concession and displays of love.

The men who want to shower their mates with affection get the reputation of being softies and soft-spoken mama's boys who have no backbone to show and are therefore perceived as unmanly and weak. On the Leading Front, we need some resistance and, above all, a credible standing as a personality in order to appear attractive to the opposite sex. We need our own opinion, fighting spirit and a self-determined life as individuals in order to really and truly be attractive partners on equal footing.

Those who recognize clichés here are absolutely right. But as always, they contain a grain of truth. Nobody likes a life partner at his side who constantly runs the risk of self-sacrifice on an altar of niceness before their earthly life in cozy togetherness has even begun. A halo indeed makes us less sexy than 2 horns and a cloven hoof.

Today’s Conclusion: In search of mediocrity

We want to be liked and we don't want to make this world even more heartless and cold than it already is. But do we really have to fall by the wayside ourselves to do so? It's sad and it's a real indictment of humanity. But if we want to win in life and achieve our goals, the following applies when it comes to being nice: Less is more. That's it for today.