by Dr. Aziz Gazipura
Please Note: Each book review is intended to provide an overview of the content and it’s main benefit to the reader. Though I recommend reading a book alongside following The Roadmap, I am in no way connected to the author or publisher or them to me or this website.
key elements
– In life it is essential to be true to yourself
– Being true to yourself requires knowing yourself and sometimes upsetting others
– The consequences of not being true to yourself can be devastating
– You are still a good person even if your’e “Not Nice”
why this book is worth reading
The previous three books on health hold a common thread of suggesting that to stay healthy we must look inside to find what we really want to do with our lives, what we like, and importantly, what we don’t like. Knowing the importance of learning about ourselves and putting this into action however are two very different propositions.
This book provides one of the most direct paths to finding who you are in the world and what you want. Follow through this book to question what in life you really like or don’t like. What do you do out of fear and what do you do for your own enjoyment? The answers may surprise you.
Gazipura has traveled this road already, both for himself and for many clients. He uses his own insights as well as psychological research to address the common behaviors we all find ourselves falling into too many times – living our lives to please others.
I first read this book because I was the epitome of the nice guy and it had already nearly killed me. Even if you don’t think of yourself as too Nice this book is still worth reading as a way of deepening your understanding of what you want in life and why you act as you do.
Nice
Gazipura gets to the nub of why we might want to be nice in chapter one, “At its core, being nice is about being liked by others by making everything smooth.” This, he is clear about, is really a defence mechanism. We have learned to be nice to actually get what we want – whether that to be liked or to be promoted or just generally given others approval.
It may work at times on a surface level, but it doesn’t really work however as we are too often not developing our true potential as we are too focused on what others want us to be, or to do for them.
But nice is good right, because the opposite of nice is…nasty? No. The opposite of being nice is to be authentic – to express yourself, respectfully, to seek in life what you value, to fight for what you believe in and go for what you want. Gazipura covers all this in chapter one. It is a blast of a chapter and ends with a “Nice Assessment” a selection of questions that will help you find where you are on the scale of niceness – which also shows you how much are you living a life that is true to your authentic self.
The Consequences of pretending
If you spending too much time being nice, then you are spending a lot of your life pretending. This can have dire consequences. Gazipura, in chapter five, describes five key signs to look our for in your life that may show you are being too nice.
1. Anxiety – are you rehearsing conversations in your head, trying to make sure you don’t say the “wrong” thing? Are you spending significant time worrying about what might go wrong in the future because you didn’t do things “right?”
2. Resentment & Rage – are you burying your resentment at situations and building up inner rage because you are being too nice to your boss/spouse/parents just so you don’t upset them? This will cause a high level of stress and burying this anger in itself, as seen already with Sarno, Rediger & Mate and in the next sign, is unhealthy.
3. Chronic Illness, Pain & Injury – as already explored, the influence of not addressing our inner anger, at putting others before ourselves to an excessive extent can have a high impact on our health. Gazipura had direct experience of this when diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis as a teenager. It was through inner work with the help of a Sarno influenced program that he was able to cure himself of this condition
4. Powerlessness – by being nice, we take away our power, we don’t know what we want because we are too focused on the wants of others. In life this often means we don’t go forward and chase our own goals.
5. Isolation – you might find that if you are isolated and lonely it is because you are struggling to make connections with others because you are not showing others who you really are. When others don’t see the real you then they feel at some level that you aren’t someone they want to be around, even if this may happen at an unconscious level.
Saying No
So, how do you stop being nice? A good place to start is to learn to say No. Throughout the book, Gazipura shows the many ways to put this into action, without your world blowing up, and addresses this specifically in chapter eleven. He shows you how to say no with apologising for it, and how to say no with appreciation and warmth.
In chapter eleven Gazipura also hones in on the fundamental fear behind all the fears of confrontation, upset, loss and judgement saying no brings up – the fundamental fear of abandonment. If you struggle to say no, then look inside, look at how you may feel that if you aren’t nice and say yes and please others, is this because you were taught as a child that this was the way to behave to get love and acceptance?
Boundaries
When discussing boundaries, Gazipura narrows in on how to extricate ourselves from the straitjacket of niceness. You have to find what you want and like and value. We will revisit values in The Happiness Trap. His counsel is – “You are not responsible for other people’s feelings.” because by taking responsibility for other’s feelings we try to mold ourselves to fit their expectations.
If you are struggling to establish boundaries, where your needs end and other’s needs begin, there is lots of help in chapter seven. Gazipura suggests we ask and answer these questions – What do you love? What do you hate? What do you believe? What’s great about you? What’s your purpose?
Remember, with questions such as these you don’t have to have perfect answers. No one is marking this or judging your performance. And your answers can change over time. The important lesson is to make choices and know these are your choices. These become your boundaries. Sometimes they are even contradictory – I love sugar and hate the dentist – but that’s okay, as we’ll see in No Bad Parts, it’s natural to have differences within ourselves.
being yourself
Though this book finishes with a 30 day action plan, I didn’t find this particulary necessary or helpful as the meat is in the message throughout the book. The final chapter before the action plan, chapter fourteen – “100% You!” is all about that authenticity, about being yourself, as the author puts it, “Bold Aunthenticity: Complete freedom and permission to be who you want to be without shame, guilt, fear or self-condemnation.”
If, like me, you have been skeptical of the advice – Just Be Yourself – this chapter will help you understand the deep truth within that adage. If it scares you to be yourself then you are afraid of what others will think of you. You think you won’t be understood, liked, respected, wanted. And… maybe you won’t, by some, because not everyone will get you. This is a healthy truth to learn. You don’t have to be for everyone, just be for yourself. And… there are enough of us that you will find others, your tribe, and you will be understood, liked, respected and wanted.
where i see this book in the roadmap
Another book for Stages Three and Four of The Roadmap. Not Nice though written primarily for that group of us who have learned to please others at the expense of our own needs, most of us do this at some level. By looking deep inside through our actions to see what we actually like or don’t like, we naturally question our childhood learning and how society says we should behave.
To progress along The Roadmap, beyond Stage Four, you must learn to say No – no to others demands; no to those parts of yourself that you know are only trying to protect you from the fear of being ostracized; no to actions that you are only doing in the hope they will take away fear.
You can use Not Nice & the next three books The Happiness Trap, No Bad Parts & Self-Therapy to help you work on what you really care about in the world and in this way help work through and overcome many of the challenges in your life.