"Terminal Niceness"There's an epidemic of it - especially in the middle classes.
It's where you believe the persona that you project onto the world and deny any feeling, thought or belief that doesn't fit.
You have to be nice, have a nice partner, nice kids, shop in nice shops, live in nice areas, drive a nice car......
In transactional analysis, they divide our selves into three parts:
The Parent - a recording of all the things our parents said to us
The Adult - the part of us who makes choices based on evaluating the evidence provided
The Child - the spontaneous, often precocious part of us that just wants to have fun and hear yes to everything they want.
It appears to me that "Nice" comes from the parent.
"Terminal Niceness" comes from having an unexamined parent influencing your thoughts - in other words, you are not aware that your choices are coming from that part of your self.
The adult's job is to make a decision about the recording from the parent and the hedonistic self centred demands from the child. The adult needs to be able to put "niceness" into perspective. The Parent was always concerned about the child fitting in - therefore "niceness" was only a strategy to enable the child to survive with other people - society.
There comes a stage in human development where the individual needs to identify this as a mere strategy, not a preferred way of being. Jesus wasn't nice all the time - just ask the money changers on the temple steps!
So, if you keep finding yourself being "Nice" all the time, it would behove you to review this, simply in order for you to discover what is authentic for you as an individual.
......I'd hate to have "Nice Guy" written on my tombstone!
Ugly Betty might be nice, but she is also authentic!
- Funny how the Latinos love her!!
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