Defining the word NICE

I have listened to many surfers tell me their stories and one of the things I have learned is that the surfers I coach are NICE people. They really are! They are friendly, kind and generous toward others. In many ways, they are people that I genuinely like and would consider having them as a friend, not a Facebook friend, a person that I would enjoy hanging out with. I like NICE people because they do care about the needs of others. That means that they would care about me and meet my needs. Who doesn’t want that quality in a friend?

The other thing that I have noticed about these NICE surfers is that they care too much about others. What do I mean by this statement? I mean they care more about serving others and their needs than they do meeting their own needs. They are “extreme” givers who almost always put others before themselves. This may be why there is the saying that says NICE gals/guys finish last. There may be some truth to this saying after all. NICE surfers are usually the ones who put others before themselves in everything, including their own healing.
NICE is an identity that surfers take on early in life as a result of being told usually by a parent to Be NICE. The surfer’s stories are often about their need to be NICE to a sibling, relative, friend or some other person who may be a stranger that they are meeting for the first time.
Where does this need to be NICE come from? It comes from the programming of others that have taught the surfer to be NICE. Often the programmers are the parents of the surfer. Who hasn’t been told by their parents to be NICE and share your toys? This directive sounds very positive and beneficial for harmony and peace and it is. These kinds of “golden rules” are certainly supportive of a peaceful and harmonious society. Most of us support that concept.

Can being NICE go too far though? I say YES it can and here is one surfer’s story that supports this belief. I had one surfer who told me her parents entertained in their home for their business and that they would allow this surfer to be at these social events if the surfer promised to be NICE. The surfer said that she would put on her happy face for the clients and entertain them with her singing and dancing. She was like Shirley Temple in those movies entertaining everyone for their pleasure, whether she wanted to do it or not. She was NICE to everyone and her reward was to be able to stay at the event. She could remain on condition that she was NICE and hospitable toward everyone. She became a regular performer at these social events. She said part of her enjoyed the attention and the applause from others that she received from the audience. This performance for others is how we begin to live our lives from the outside in. We find worth in ourselves through their approval of our performance. She also said another part of her felt like she was being used as a means to get her family business clients who attended these social events. She was a performer for others. People would request she do a certain dance or routine and she would do it for their pleasure. She was an object for the amusement of others. She was often visible to others and invisible to herself.

This surfer learned early on in her life how important it was for her to be NICE. The surfer made the connection of being NICE to a feeling called “love”. She was taught that the way for her to get love from others was through being NICE. This strong emotional connection of being NICE to receive love and acceptance from others is common amongst the surfers that I coach. The message that is sent is that love is earned based upon our actions to be deserving of it. Love is earned and deserved or it is undeserved based upon the surfer’s choices and actions.
The surfer then expanded her niceness to her life in other ways in order to get what she needed in the form of love and acceptance. She became a nice girlfriend to the guys she met and she became a person who pleased others out of fear of being rejected or abandoned. Her mother taught her this lesson as she observed her interacting with men and being NICE to them. She said her mother was quite the hostess and really knew how to treat people well. The surfer said her mother was very obedient and always did what she was told by her husband. She lived her life in his shadow and said YES to his needs first. The surfer said she never heard her mother say NO to her husband. Her mother was afraid of losing her husband’s love. It is really this fear of losing love that motivates surfers to be NICE more than anything else. It is the fear of loss or what today people call FOMO. (Fear Of Missing Out).

 

The surfer grew up and eventually married and she was NICE to her husband and he was initially nice toward her as well. She said her husband changed once she put on the wedding ring. He was no longer nice. He was controlling and abusive and didn’t want the surfer to go anywhere without his permission. She was trapped in a marriage that she couldn’t leave because she was taught to be submissive and obedient to her husband from her mother. That way of living was demonstrated to her by her mother as she grew up in it. She didn’t know any other way of living. It was her comfort zone and not surprising that she found a man similar to the one her mother married. She said she lived a life of fear of her husband because she never knew who was coming in the front door when he arrived. She would be NICE to avoid being yelled at or hit by him. She was trapped in her own identity of being NICE and she was being harmed by remaining in this identity. She was afraid to change because she didn’t know what other options were available to her at the time. She was afraid of being alone and not being loved. She was afraid of being rejected by her husband and cast out of the home. She chose to stay in what she was familiar with rather than take a chance and go out on her own. She feared the unknown. Her need to BE NICE is what prevented her from making a shift and leaving her husband. It also prevented her from hitting him over the head with a cast iron frying pan! She never stood up for herself. She didn’t know how to say No or Enough. She wasn’t enough for herself to be able to say it. She was still invisible.

This surfer’s SCRIPT of her identity of being a prisoner of her own being NICE is one of many I have heard from surfers. Another identity that goes along with this is VICTIM. The surfers who are NICE are often victims to their need to be NICE to others first and serve their needs over their own. The surfer chooses to be a VICTIM to their own NICENESS.

Releasing the BITCH

My role as the coach is to invite the surfer to explore other identities that the surfer could take on to shift away from this identity of being NICE. One surfer told me that she could become a BITCH. She said she heard the term used before in her life and it had very negative connotations to it. I said to the surfer that her healing is RADICAL and it is connected to her shifting the way she sees herself differently from being a VICTIM. I told the surfer to give herself permission to see herself in any way she wanted for her healing. The surfer recognized this need to change and she said she would make an effort to be more Bitchy. I told her to explore different identities like being a BITCH and see what happens. She said she would give it a go. She had been with a younger man who was using her for her money and she was continuously giving him loans that she knew he wasn’t going to pay back. She wanted to learn how to say NO to this man for his request for more money. She wanted to create for herself a new identity. She chose to become a BITCH. I knew that she would have to make a RADICAL shift and she did the next time he showed up at her door. He asked to stay overnight and she said NO in her bitchiest voice she could find within her. She stood up to the man and told him to go away. In addition, she told him that he had to pay her back the money she had loaned him. She even gave him a payment plan to follow for him to pay her back. She told him that she will expect the first payment within the month. She meant business when she said it because he heard her speak for the first time in this new identity. She had changed dramatically from the last time he had visited and he was not prepared to meet such a powerful warrior when he came to her door. She was different and she knew it because she felt it. “The healing is in the feeling” is what I say as a coach to the surfers. Her willingness to change herself first is what empowered her to be so strong and powerful with this man who had been taking advantage of her. No more of that! She was done being NICE and she liked how she felt about herself in this new bitchy identity. She was no longer a prisoner to her old identity of being NICE. She was a warrior NOW. (Noticing One’s Worth) She wasn’t going to be NICE any longer. No more NICE gal for her. She is embracing a new identity and she is promoting her healing in this new identity of being a BITCH.

I tell surfers all of the time that healing is RADICAL because it means moving away from their comfort zone which is connected to their own values and beliefs about everything. This includes how surfers value words like BITCH. One of the definitions for the word BITCH is a selfish person. Selfish is often viewed as a bad word similar to the word BITCH. I remember this song from the nineties by Meredith Brooks about a woman who was going through her own transformation in her life and she described herself as a bitch to empower herself. It is this self-empowerment that is the most important for any surfer to heal. I call this the ME (My Empowerment) first. It doesn’t matter to me as the coach how the surfer wants to identify with themselves differently as long as it works for the surfer. It is all about the ME First approach that promotes the surfer’s healing.

This ME first approach is considered selfish and it is. It is RADICAL because it goes against the programming of others. It is a reframing of the “golden rule” of serving others first to serve ME first. It is considered a threat to say such a thing because our society’s moral fabric is based upon serving others first. This RADICAL concept is heresy and should be discouraged if not allowed to be spoken or written. I say to those who are concerned to hold their disdain and judgment. This RADICAL approach doesn’t exclude anyone from the process. It simply reframes it in a way that the surfer is now included in it. Previously, the surfer was left out of it by their own SCRIPT (Staying Caught Repeatedly In Their Own Trauma). It is no different than the instructions the airline attendant gives to all passengers to put the oxygen mask over their face first. I haven’t heard anyone protest against those instructions. The surfer can now breathe fully and from a place of abundance help others in a whole new way. The surfer now breathes first and then helps others. The surfer is learning to love herself first and to know that she is WORTHY over deserving of love. Love begins with choosing to love herself first out of being selfish. She has learned how to give herself a fish first before taking care of and feeding others.

Setting our LIMITATIONS

I had a minister’s wife who was NICE and she was a people pleaser who always put the needs of others in front of her own needs. She was so generous that she would bake pies even when she didn’t feel well. She wasn’t unlike other surfers who did things for others to the point of being exhausted and eventually becoming sick. She was also taught that her love was earned based upon her willingness to serve. She couldn’t stop baking pies because she had received much praise from others for her acts of service. She too was afraid of losing what she thought was love for these generous acts. I told her that she had to get RADICAL and make some changes in the way she saw herself. I told her before she left she would say to me that she was selfish. She said that would be a challenge for her because the word selfish was just as bad of a word as saying bitch would be for another person. I knew SELFISH was her BITCH word. She really had to get out of her own way of how she viewed the word selfish as wrong and sinful in order for her to change. Eight weeks later she sat in front of me and told me she was SELFISH and she smiled as she said it. It wasn’t a smile of discomfort and disagreement as it had been before. This was a genuine BIG smile of change and confidence in her ability and willingness to say it in front of me and herself. She was a changed woman who wasn’t going to bake thirty pies every year for the church. She said she might bake one pie or no pies depending on how she felt about it. She said Me first in my life from now on. That is what SELFISH means putting ME ( My Empowerment) first ahead of the needs of others.

If the word BITCH is too strong or doesn’t resonate with surfers, then they can choose other identities as well. They can choose whatever identity works for their healing. My invitation to surfers is to be RADICAL and take on a new and different identity that may feel weird, uncomfortable or even unacceptable at first like BITCH.
Healing is about getting out of the familiar and comfortable and taking on new identities that are strange and unfamiliar to the surfer. The surfer is willing to take a risk and be something Radically different from their norm. This choice is what promotes their shift from being a sole (stuck on limiting expectations) survivor to a SOUL (Soaring On Unlimited Love) thriver. Surviving simply isn’t enough to heal. THRIVING is the choice a surfer wants to make to heal from the inside out in MBS. For one surfer, switching her identity from being NICE to a BITCH was the transformation she wanted for herself to heal. She felt powerful when she learned how to say NO to others and YES to herself. She has made the RADICAL shift to living inside out, not outside in because that is where LOVE really begins.