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The world needs more kindness right now: Confusing nice and kind is leaving us feeling empty
I was brought up as a nice girl. I was told to be nice to everyone. There were also the unspoken rules that nice meant to not speak your mind and to not offend everyone. Do not voice out your truth. Be polite and be remembered as a nice person.
Too often we hide ourselves because we are too afraid to be known as the bad one. We cannot stand being a dark cloud in someone’s day even though we mean no harm. I have been nice for too long.
Recently, I was working on a project with a manager who was very task-oriented, meaning he also had tunnel vision. I set up a task tracking sheet which I was meant to update regularly. It so happened that the senior leader changed the course of the project and I mentioned to the manager that I will be updating individual documents instead of the general tracker sheet.
Few days later, I got a curt message saying: ‘this tracker sheet has not been updated for days, did you not say you were gonna take care of it?’
I know that he was just stating facts but I could not stand the way he said it. The old me would have re-explained the situation with the senior…
