497. Stop Being the Nice Girl

Isn’t it a good thing to be nice? Why would I tell you to stop being so nice? Well, I’m going to explain why being the nice girl might be creating problems for you now and in the future and minimizing the contribution that you have to give to the world. I even think it’s not what God wants for you. This is episode 497, Stop Being the Nice Girl.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Hey, everybody, before we dive into today’s podcast episode, I have a couple quick announcements, and you have to excuse the poor audio quality. I’m talking on my AirPods right now. I forgot to include these announcements when I recorded the full episode on my good mic. So you’re gonna get the great quality audio back in just a few minutes.

But for those of you who are coaches or thinking about becoming a coach and doing what I do in the world, creating your own business, making an impact, or using coaching in some other capacity, listen up, two things that are happening.

First of all, if you wanna be a coach, you’re gonna need to learn how to get clients. And for those of you that are already coaches, you know that marketing is a part of your job unless you work for another organization that gives you clients.

So it’s the beginning of the year. I want to help you create your marketing plan for the whole year because if you don’t have a plan, you’re spinning your wheels, stressing out, feeling overwhelmed, wondering what you should do, and probably doing less than you could do or nothing at all, if you’re like most coaches I know. And I don’t want you to be that coach. I want you to make an impact. I want you to go help people. I want us to get these tools into more people’s hands.

So I have put together a marketing bootcamp where I’m going to help you create your marketing plan for the whole year. You’re welcome. Go to JodyMoore.com/marketing. This will be a live zoom class where we’ll create your 2025 marketing plan. Make sure you have lots of clients to help. And it’s happening very soon and this is a one-time offer. So again, https://JodyMoore.com/marketing. You can register right now. If for some reason you can’t be there live, we’ll just send you out the replays and you can catch it that way. It’s jodymoore.com/marketing. 

Now, the second announcement I have is that I am going to be doing a coach training this year where I’m going to teach you how to coach the way I coach. We’re going to start from the very beginning. The basics of coaching. I’m going to give you clients to coach. I’m going to help you create your own coaching programs. Going to be amazing, but I will only be taking a small group. So if you want information about this, you’ll need to get onto the waitlist and you will be the first to get details. Head to JodyMoore.com/training to get on that waitlist. Again, that’s JodyMoore.com/training. I’ll see you soon.

What’s happening, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Better Than Happy. So delighted to talk to you about how and why I recommend you stop being the nice girl or guy. Hello guys, I see you out there. I’m glad you’re listening, but I’m gonna talk to the ladies and some of you need to hear this message as well.

I was talking recently to my friend, Kristin Andrus. You know Kristin Andrus, right? If you don’t know Kristin Andrus, you need to go find her online and follow her. She does amazing work in the space of nonprofit, impacting change, serving underserved populations, creating community, all kinds of amazing things, Kristin Andrus does. And she was telling me that her word for the year is expansion and that she feels like a lot of women are collapsing themselves, shrinking themselves, minimizing themselves, making themselves small. And that that does not serve those women or their families, their communities, or the world at large. And I couldn’t agree more.

And so as we were brainstorming some of the reasons why this is, one of the things I feel happens is that we’ve been trained to be nice girls. We are rewarded from a very young age and so are boys, like rewarded for being good, right? Be good, be nice, be polite, be kind, don’t be too loud, don’t be greedy or selfish, don’t brag, don’t rock the boat.

All of these things are things that we say in order to get people to settle down and be calm. And there are times when that’s useful. I get it. Kids are rowdy, right? And sometimes a little calming down. I’ve been known to say many of those things, if not all of them, myself. 

But at a certain point, being nice is not going to serve you. And I feel like with little boys, we expect that they will become kind of rowdy and that they’ll want to play sports or they may be loud and they may jump around and we – I feel like we have a higher tolerance of it with little boys than little girls. 

And also for whatever reason in our world today, we still have a lot of situations where a man speaking up and disagreeing is easier for people to hear and is more well accepted than a woman disagreeing and speaking up. And there’s all kinds of reasons for that I won’t get into today. 

What I want you to do is focus on the thing that you can control, which is not the world at large, not what other people say, but yourself. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. 

So I wrote this little blurb here that I wanna read with you first of all. When I say, stop being the nice girl, I wanna tell you what I mean by being nice. And the first problem is it’s dishonest. It’s not the truth, right? If I’m constantly or mostly monitoring myself, how I behave, what I say, in order to try to please the people around me, in order to try to not rock the boat, that is a lack of honesty. It’s a lack of integrity. It’s a lack of authenticity. It will prevent true connection. And it prevents that connection first and foremost with my own self, but then with everybody else as well. Not ideal, this level of dishonesty. 

Now, I’m not saying we just say everything we want to say. I’m going to talk about that in just a minute, but we want to become more honest. Honesty is always the best policy, as they say, right? The second reason this is a problem, I think, is it keeps you playing small.

I believe that we have so many women who have so many skills, ideas, dreams, interests, solutions, And some of those are very obvious to the women, things that they could do or create or be. And some of them are hidden within these women and they’re not quite aware of them yet, but they have the potential to create solutions and things that we desperately need in our world. But as long as we’re going to keep being nice, we’re going to play small and the rest of us in the world are not going to get the benefit of your genius, whatever your genius is, and genius shows up in all kinds of forms, but we don’t get the full benefit of that if you’re just trying to be nice, right?

Third problem, it builds resentment within us. Anytime you are feeling resentful, it is not because of what anyone else is doing or not doing. That’s the way we describe it. I’m just resentful because I have to do everything around the house. I’m resentful because nobody appreciates what I do. I’m resentful because I chose to stay home and raise these kids instead of pursuing my career and I really still have dreams and desires around my career. That is not what creates resentment. What creates resentment is what’s happening in our minds. It’s us not being there for us. It’s us choosing to be nice, right? Instead of choosing to be authentic. Choosing to tell the truth. Builds resentment.

Fourth reason, it minimizes the impact we can make in the world. Nobody who’s made a significant impact has done it while pleasing all the people around them. Nobody who’s contributed something significant and good has done it, everyone applauding. That’s just not the way of it, right? To make an impact, you have to stir the pot a little bit sometimes. Not intentionally, that just is the way of it as we make change. People tend to not like change.

Man, this becomes apparent the more people follow you. So I have people say things to me that I can’t even believe. Like, hey, Jody, I wish you would go back to your short hair. Don’t forget the reason we fell in love with you. I’m like, what? You fell in love with me because of my short hair? And if I want my hair longer, you don’t love me anymore? That’s okay. People have a hard time with change. I’m just saying.

Okay, fifth and final reason being the nice girl is a problem. It won’t be possible to be the nice girl if you’re going to fulfill your potential. Every single one of us has amazing potential. And I’m not sure that fulfilled potential is the right phrase because it makes it sound like there’s a done point that we could achieve in this life. And I don’t believe that’s true, but maybe we should say, live into your potential, maximize the amount of your potential that you can live into in this life. That is not going to be possible if you’re being nice. You’re going to be playing at less than your full potential.

And I think we can all agree that our world could use a lot of help right now. And I believe a lot of women have a lot to contribute, but we’re going to have to stop being so nice.

Okay, so I’m going to give you three reasons why we stay stuck in this nice girl mode and tell you what I recommend that you do about it. So first one is that we don’t actually know what we want. If you don’t know what you want, it will be much harder to get it. 

Okay, now what we want is not just about simple things. I’m not just talking about maybe you want more money, maybe you wanna go on a nice vacation, maybe you want to build a business, maybe you want to get your nails done. Those things count, those are part of it, but there are also a lot of other wants that you have that are more complicated, and frankly, more interesting probably. And the better you get in touch with your wants, the better you’re going to be at speaking up for what you want and going after what you want. Right?

Now, this is an important caveat I want to make. Just because you become aware of your wants doesn’t mean you have to go after all of them. Okay? I think some of us, especially women, are afraid to be in touch with their wants or desires to open themselves up to knowing what they want because once they discover it and admit to themselves that they want that, they think it means they should go do something about it or else they feel bad and beat themselves up if they don’t. I do not want you to do that, my friend. That’s not what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is have a relationship with your wants and your desires. Get to know them, be open to hearing them and to understanding them. Because odds are there will come a time in your life when you will need to turn to your wants and desires to make decisions about how you’re going to spend your time or your efforts or your resources. And if you haven’t been fostering a relationship with them, it’s going to be challenging to do.

I want you to imagine that you have a friend that you’ve been in touch with, and then suddenly that friend moves away or you move away, and you lose touch and you don’t talk to each other for a very long time. And suddenly one day you need something, and that friend happens to have the resources or connections or something that could help you with your problem. 

Are you going to feel comfortable just calling that friend out of the blue? Now there are some kind of friendships that can endure that kind of time, right? And that kind of distance and disconnection. But for the most part, our relationships need nurturing. And I wouldn’t feel comfortable just calling and asking a friend for a big favor who I hadn’t reached out to see how they were doing, kept in touch with them, tried to stay somewhat connected to them over the years. Right?

So this is how it works with our wants and desires. We have wants and desires. We’re very good at understanding them when we’re kids. We talk about them all the time. We constantly try to get what we want. And then we get older and we learn how to manage ourselves and how to consider others and how to be more appropriate. And that’s a very good thing. 

But at some point, especially women tend to then at some point abandon their relationship with their own desires in the name of taking care of families, raising kids, all the things that we do that are great things to do. Just don’t abandon your relationship with your desires.

Otherwise, this is why I see so many women whose kids leave the house, right? Kids are raised and out of the house, not that we’re done being a parent ever, different kind of parenting with adult children, right? But not taking up your day-to-day routine and the same kind of energy and time and attention that it used to. And they feel totally lost, totally abandoned, totally confused, totally purposeless. It’s not that you’re purposeless.

It’s not that you’re lost. You have just as much purpose and capacity for joy and fulfillment as you did when you were raising your kids. But you’re gonna have to reconnect with your wants and desires if you hadn’t paid attention to them for the last however many years you were raising kids.

So how do we do this? I recommend that you get yourself a really nice journal or a cute notebook or something and just keep it by your bedside or wherever you’re going to implement this practice. And I would do some journaling. I’m going to commit to this this year myself to be more consistent. I’m pretty good at paying attention to my wants and desires, but I think I could take it up a notch. And so I’m in a journal on a journal prompt once a week.

And I’m gonna just put prompts at the top of my page, like what are three words I want people to use to describe me? What limiting beliefs am I ready to release? What hobbies or activities bring me joy and how can I make more time for them? What have I always wanted to try but I haven’t?

If I had unlimited courage, what bold step would I take next? How can I align my daily life more closely with my long-term vision? What do I want to feel every day and what changes can I make to support that? How do I react to setbacks and how can I build greater resilience? 

What habits do I want to create? What are my fears and how can I work through them? What do I need to forgive myself for? Who or what do I need to let go of? How do I want to contribute to my community or the world? What small steps can I take today to create a life I love? How do I want to make an impact on the world? Et cetera.

So if you’re in The Lab, I have 52 journal prompts I’m going to go ahead and give you if you want to participate with me this year. And of course, you don’t have to use these. You can make up your own, but just get in touch with what you want.

My favorite journal prompt of all time, which I should add to this list, is just this one. What do I really, really, really, really, really want? Just put that on the top of a page and see what comes up. You could do that same one every week, all year. And I guarantee your connection with your wants and desires would be entirely different than it is today.

All right, the second reason we stay stuck in nice girl mode is that nobody taught us the skill of kind candor. Okay, this is a term that I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk. He teaches that this is one of the values that he has in his organization, in his company, for his team. Kind candor. Okay?

To be candid means we’re direct and honest and we tell the whole truth. But kind candor means we do it with kindness. Okay? So here’s what I mean.

Let’s imagine that somebody has asked me to watch their kids, and I just feel really overwhelmed and stressed and that I have a lot going on. And I don’t love watching kids, to be honest. And so saying yes to that is me people pleasing. I could say yes because I’m afraid to say no and I feel like I should and all of that nice girl stuff, right? But I’m going to be resentful. It’s not very honest. It’s not me living into the potential that I have, right?

So it’s hard to say no because it feels so mean. So rather than just say, no, I’m sorry, I can’t watch your kids. Like people love to say no as a complete sentence. And it is, right? And the idea behind that is that you don’t have to give an excuse. You don’t have to, sometimes that’s appropriate. But in most cases, it’s not very kind to not give some explanation.

But you don’t have to make up a lie. That’s the next thing we do is then we just make up a little bit of a white lie, right? And I’m not saying you have to do that either. I’m saying tell the whole truth. Be candid about the whole picture.

So part of the truth is that you just don’t have it in you to watch those kids that day. Or I don’t have it in me to watch those kids, your kids this day, right? But there’s more to the truth than that. The other part of the truth is the kindest part that we don’t need to leave out. It sounds like this. I am so sorry. I feel terrible. I wish I could watch your kids. I desperately want to help you. I love you. I adore you.

I hope that you’ll ask me for favors again in the future because I would love to do you favors. But the truth is, I feel like if I say yes to this, I’m going to be resentful and I’m not going to be able to do it from the right energy because of where my life is at right now, where my head is at. And so I feel like I need to say no. That’s the whole truth. That’s called kind candor, right? And this applies in, of course, a whole bunch of settings.

But when you can tell the whole truth, it’s much kinder than just partial truths, but it’s going to be necessary if you’re going to stop being the nice girl. If you’re going to stop being a doormat and stop having people walk all over you, it’s going to sound messy and complicated and confusing. It might include sentences like, this is really hard for me to say, and it might be hard for you to hear. But I care so much about you. I want to be really honest with you. Our relationship matters so much to me. I want to be honest and direct.

It might include things like, I really hope that this doesn’t hurt you or offend you or make you mad. On the other hand, if it does, I’m here for it. I love you. You get to feel however you want to feel. Just know it’s not my intention that you feel upset at the end of this. These are all kind statements that are true. Don’t say them unless they’re true, but they often are true in these difficult situations.

So nobody taught you that skill, maybe. That’s okay, though, because you’re an adult now. So you can learn it yourself. How do we learn a skill? We just practice saying it. Just practice it. And we’re going to get it wrong and fumble over it at first and that’s okay. But you’ll get better the longer you do it. Kind candor. Love that from Gary Vaynerchuk.

Okay, the third reason that we stay stuck in nice girl mode when it doesn’t serve us, we have it backwards when it comes to emotional ownership and result responsibility. Let’s just call it result responsibility. Because your result can be how you’re feeling. It can be all kinds of things. It can be how your life turns out.

It can be what your money looks like, your weight. It can be your experience of any given circumstance at any given time. A lot of things go in the category of results in the work that I do as a coach. But we have it backwards when it comes to result responsibility.

Here’s what I mean by that. We think that other people are creating our results, like those people made me angry, they hurt my feelings, they’re the reason I’m resentful, I can’t go after what I want because of the person I’m married to, because of the amount of time I have, et cetera. So we blame things or people or circumstances outside of us for our results. And we think that we are responsible for other people’s results.

We say things like, if I was just a better mom, this probably wouldn’t be happening. Or I feel like it’s wrong for me to make that choice when these people are gonna have to sacrifice because of it. Listen, I’m not saying you wouldn’t want to consider other people. I want you to be considerate of other people. That’s gonna go into your decision-making.

Because if we go back up to number one and not paying attention to what we want, one of the things that we want is for people to feel happy, is for people to be taken care of, is for people’s needs to be met. We desperately want the people around us, especially that we feel responsible for, to be happy and successful and well-rounded, et cetera. Okay? That comes into play when we make decisions. We consider other people. We just don’t need to be taking responsibility for other people.

Here’s what I mean. Maybe you feel like it would be really awesome for your mental health and it’s just something that you want to do. You don’t even have to have a reason by the way. Just wanting to do something is reason enough if it really speaks to you and you feel like it’s the right time. Maybe you want to go get certified as a yoga instructor. I don’t know. I just made that up.

Okay, then what’s that gonna mean? It’s gonna mean some time that you need to put in. It’s gonna maybe mean some money. So that means time and money taken away from something else in your life. And are all the people in your life gonna love that? Maybe not, maybe not.

So that’s something to consider. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to do though, right? Your job is not to make everyone happy all the time. Have you noticed that’s not even possible? Your job is to make decisions considering and understanding and knowing that your wants and desires matter. They are the roadmap to your best life and your biggest contribution and living your potential. And if that means sometimes that some of the family has to make some sacrifices, I think that’s not only okay, I think it’s actually really good for everyone, right?

And so if they’re gonna be miserable, that’s theirs to own. That is their result that they’re creating. Because they could also make sacrifices and not be miserable. That is an option. And I’m not saying it’s wrong if they choose misery or they just are unaware that there’s any other option. That’s okay. We’re not judging them for it. We consider it. We understand that we have some influence in people’s lives, but we take more responsibility for ourselves, our emotions, our contribution, our journey, our lives, and less for the people around you.

Now I get it, when you’ve got babies and toddlers that are 100% dependent on you, that’s harder to do. I get it, but I’m telling you, it won’t be long before they wanna do things on their own and before they’re much more independent. And even when they’re little, sometimes staying with a babysitter, even if they don’t want to is appropriate, right?

So stay in touch with what you want. Have a close knit relationship with your wants. Practice the skill of kind candor because you’re going to have to tell the truth more often. You’re going to have to say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. And you’re going to have to speak up when you’re confused or you disagree.

I want you to do that. Even if it’s not about something you want. You might be on a committee, you might have a church calling, maybe it’s in ward council, maybe it’s, I don’t know, wherever it is that you notice you want to say something, you have an opinion, you have insight you want to share. Stop being the nice girl. Speak up, do it with kindness. But remember, you are responsible for your emotions. They may not always react the way we wish they would.

They may not say the right thing. Okay? That’s okay. You’re not responsible for their results, but you are 100% responsible for yours. And by the way, it’s also okay if you don’t always create the most ideal result for yourself.

If you let it get to you, if you let it hurt your feelings, if you feel sensitive and take it personally and all the things that we know you don’t have to do, we can work on that, but you might do it at times, especially in the beginning if this is new for you. And that’s okay too.

Just know that what you get to focus on is creating a different result for yourself and put less focus on trying to manipulate the results of others. Are you with me my friend?

Stop being the nice girl. What’s better than being nice? Being honest, being open, being brave, playing big, creating where you feel called to create, learning and growing, true connection in your relationships, serving because you want to, having compassion for others, loving yourself, living your purpose, having a positive influence, and leaving the world better than you found it. Who’s with me?

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: jodymoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s jodymoore.com/freecoaching.