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I used to try and problem solve myself. I felt like I was too much for other people and I would get obsessed with the idea that if I just solved the problem that was me I would find the acceptance and love I wasn’t finding. Add on top of that a tendency to beat myself up when I didn’t get things exactly right and where all this left me was with the impossible task of trying to be what I thought someone else wanted…and becoming a nice guy in the process.
When you try to ”fix” yourself for other people you are rejecting who you are to fit what you think those people want from you. And you are harming yourself, telling yourself that you aren’t good as you are. You devalue who you are to try and become someone you don’t want to be. Eventually you’ll rebel against the person you are trying to please and against your own efforts.
That rebellion can take many forms but what I’ve observed is that it inevitably involves acting on things you desire without telling anyone what those desires are. Sometimes the desire can be something as simple going to the gym and not being honest about it. Sometimes it can be acting on something you want but you know goes against the agreements you’ve made. Regardless of what it is, the common issue is that a nice guy will act nice on the surface but not be a nice guy at all.
Unfortunately one of the reasons there are so many nice guys is because men have been told that there is something wrong with them. They are men and being a man is considered to be part of the problem. When a man consistently hears this he devalues himself. I know this because this was the experience I had as a kid. I was raised to loathe myself for being a man. I always felt like there was something wrong with me and felt a deep sense of shame for being a man. That deep sense of shame stopped me from embracing my masculinity and caused me to try and fix myself, even though there was nothing to fix, other than my nice guy tendencies.
Fortunately I had a moment of realization after I went through a really rough breakup. I realized that trying to please someone else and be accommodating all the time was harming me and I also realized I didn’t have a good relationship with my masculinity. I decided to buckle down and do the work of discovering what masculinity could really look like. It forced me to take ownership of my nice guy tendencies, to see who I really was and to recognize that my attempts to fix myself so I could fit in had only damaged me further.
When I stopped trying to fix myself and started discovering myself and what my own wants and needs were, without trying to minimize them, it changed my life. I began to validate myself as a person. I treated my own needs and wants as valuable and began to pursue them without apology to anyone else. I’m still on this journey and I may very well be on it for the rest of my life, but I’m no longer trying to fix myself and wishing I was someone else. I know who I am and I am finally proud to be a man.
If you can relate to this experience pick up The Men’s Quest and get started on changing your nice guy life into the life of being a fully embodied and empowered man
