I learned a long time ago that one of the most important things we can do when faced with a difficult situation is “Say what you mean and what you mean, but don’t be mean when you say it.” Diane Albano’s The Art of Being Nice: Own Your Voice for Greater Power and Fulfillment takes that kind of advice and details all the places where things could go wrong as we walk the fine line between being nice and standing up for ourselves.
And Diane knows what it means to be too nice and to let people run over you. On the pages of The Art of Being Nice, she shares stories from her own life about how she learned to find her voice. She has also interviewed numerous women and men who shared their stories with her. As she points out at the beginning, “We all experienced the printed message of ‘being nice’ as children and the power, trappings and impact it had on us in adulthood. I have written this book for women and men who can relate to life. patterns of compromising their truth, their God-given talents and abilities, and minimizing the power to appropriate their voices for greater freedom and fulfillment. ” If you’ve ever felt that being kind has brought you misery many times, this is the book you need to turn things around. You will not become a baddie when you finish it, but you will learn to say no and to set limits in ways that make you happier and that the other person, if not happier, is wiser and knows that you should not cross the line. your.
The book is divided into twenty chapters that will help you develop your art until you become a master at it. Topics include: feeling heard and nurtured, telling the truth, forgiving yourself for decisions made, staying too long in the relationship, taking care of yourself first, and being brave and free.
Throughout, there will be aha moments for readers. One happened when Diane described one of her own aha moments. She states, “One moment I had was that being nice was a way of being in control. Suddenly being nice was not such an endearing quality. I realized that I would step up and take control to do things. things when I felt that others were not doing their own work or were not responsible. I was upset and frustrated by the lack of participation of others and I took charge. ” As a Type A personality, I’ve often found myself stuck in a situation where I felt like I had to take charge. This book will help you realize your other options and show you ways to handle such situations with tact and grace so that the burden does not fall on you completely and perhaps to realize that you are overdoing it and need not take charge at all. .
Diane also talks a lot about learning to listen to our intuition. He has worked extensively with Mary Morrissey through the Life Mastery Institute. Mary says that our intuition, the inner voice, is one of the six laws of the Universe. It is our internal guidance system that we often ignore. How often have we been in situations, like the one above, where we hear that voice telling us not to do something, not to get involved in a situation that makes us feel miserable, only to ignore it because we feel like we had to be nice? ? We can often avoid these difficult situations if we are only proactive by listening to our intuition first. Diane will teach you how to cultivate that awareness of your intuition.
Another of my great moments reading this book was when Diane asked, “Are you responsible for training people not to help you?” I admit that I have been guilty of that. I equated being nice sometimes with not being a nuisance. And at the same time, he wanted people to think he was strong, not weak, so he wouldn’t always ask for help. Not asking for help is one of those things I have learned to give up because it no longer serves me. Diane devotes an entire chapter to letting go of what doesn’t work for us, and a whole chapter to asking for help. Trust me; Just tackling these two lessons will make your life that much easier.
The chapters of the book end with questions to ponder that will help you solve your own problems to be kind and also strategies to work on so that you can improve on taking care of yourself, setting limits, and pursuing what will make you the happiest.
Ultimately, readers of The Art of Being Kind will gain insights and tools that will help them gain clarity, purpose, freedom, confidence, and courage. As Diane says, “Everyone deserves to be heard, respected and to know that they are more than enough.” And as Marianne Williamson is quoted in the book as saying, “And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.” People who have greater freedom and happiness have learned to listen to themselves without judging themselves or others. When we listen to ourselves and are clear about who we are and what we want, we can make the best decisions for ourselves in a way that allows us to remain polite without being a doormat.
