How to Be Nice to People

1. Try to notice when you feel the need to be unkind to someone.

If it’s too late and you’ve already said something mean, then complete the following steps anyway and you might learn something for next time. It might also give you an opportunity to apologize to the person you’ve been unkind to—“I know I was angry about what you’ve done, but I shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m sorry. ”

2. Ask yourself why you are feeling an urge to be unkind.

Is it because you’ve had a bad morning, or because you’re feeling hurt or insecure? Is it because the other person has said something that has made you angry or upset?

3. If you want to be unkind because you’ve been hurt or you’re feeling insecure, then acknowledge the part of you that feels hurt.

Try to deal with this without taking it out on somebody else. Be kind to yourself.

4. If you want to be unkind because the other person has said something horrible to you, then you can do two things:

Try to make sense of why you feel so hurt. Did what the person said to you have a grain of truth in it, or are you afraid that it might? Is this why it upset you or made you angry?
Remember that the other person is fighting their own hard battle. They might have had their own terrible morning/week/life. You’re just unlucky that they’re taking it out on you. If what they’ve said to you doesn’t feel personal any more, it will have much less power to affect you.
A final note: I don’t think that being kind to everyone means that we have to be a push-over. If someone is behaving horribly, we don’t have to put up with it.
We need to remove ourselves from the situation, or report their behavior to someone else, or find some other way of looking after ourselves.
My boss’s behavior wasn’t OK. He did speak to me like I was five years old, and if I could go back in time I’d tell him calmly that I didn’t appreciate the way he spoke to me like that in front of my group, and that next time I’d prefer him to take me aside and let me know I’d done something wrong in a calmer voice.
But I think of him differently now. He was a horrible boss. But he was also a human being, struggling to get through life with all his insecurities and fears and problems. He was fighting his own hard battle.
He also deserved my kindness.