There is a term around the part of the northwest United States where I live that some of you may not have heard before. I’ve heard it a few times: “Northwest Nice.”
The people of the Pacific Northwest have a reputation as a culture to appear calm, sort of cool….friendly but not too friendly, soft-spoken, and generally creative, introverted, distant, contained, not too much overt passion….and “nice”.
Northwest Nice is kind of hard to pin down…It is not always meant as a compliment when you scratch the surface.
What it means is that people in this region of the world are sometimes “too” nice.
They open their doors to door-to-door sales, political canvasers, people asking for donations, and a high percentage of us say “yes” just to get the solicitor to leave.
Northwest Nice means you don’t reeeeally know what people are thinking. They might have a smile on their face but on the inside be thinking “get me outta here!!” or “what an idiot!”
….because it’s more important to appear “nice” than like those Rude East Coasters!
I bring up this generalization about this area of the world and how we behave because, well…..that used to be me.
My automatic conditioning was to be friendly, open, to smile, be pleasant, and avoid conflict. I really don’t think I’ll ever enjoy a debate or start yelling at someone on the street. It’s just not me, for whatever reason.
I could attack myself for being this way, for not saying “no” when I really meant it in the past, for being pleasant in many circumstances that others would go ballistic in.
In my former life as someone who had bulimic episodes, a couple of years of starving and over-exercising, drinking to black-outs and smoking cigarettes, on the outside I was SUPER NICE, and appeared calm.
But inside, I was a turmoil of conflict. And if you think about it…all those behaviors really are not all that “nice”, even if I’m the only one in the room. They were not kind to me. They were the results of being terrified to tell the truth and terrified of my own thinking!
Criticizing myself about being too nice doesn’t work all that well either. The
thing that works the best of all is to see what is going on in my mind when I’m being “northwest nice” and question if what I’m thinking is really true.
What’s the worst that could happen if I’m really truly myself, really honest? Not
trying to be different than I am or trying to channel a bold, loud, sassy New York reaction when it’s not natural?
Now I find that I feel so much less afraid of people. I may have to think about their requests, or get a sense of them as I spend time with them, and I may notice I feel nervous, frustrated, anxious, bored…and then I tell the truth.
I feel so much more genuine from doing The Work. And if I get scared in my interactions with someone, I can question my thoughts.
I do get scared, I do want to be “northwest nice” to avoid conflict, I do get sad…but when these feelings come along I have The Work. And what d’ya know….no more unkind and not-so-nice behavior goes on in secret in my life outside of the view of the public. No black-out drinking, no smoking, no binge-eating, no over-exercising, no self-hate.
I feel kind to myself inside, and this feels REAL. Byron Katie says that what you are is “love”. This is your natural state of being.
This means catching yourself when you’re being mean to YOU. Including criticizing yourself for being “too nice”.
Love, Grace