Ryan Hall wants you to be confident: “What You See Is What You Get.”
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There are few phrases in the English Language that I hate more than this. Every time I hear it, I feel like Fredo Corleone after Michael gives him the kiss of death in The Godfather II. It makes my skin crawl.
“You’re such a nice guy.”
Oh man, I can’t stand that! It’s like the kiss of death of my masculinity. It’s emasculating. It’s degrading.
Nice guys are innocent. Nice guys are harmless. Nice guys are inconsequential. Nice guys may not necessarily finish last, but we usually finish no better than the middle of the pack.
Nice guys get along and usually don’t cause trouble.
A good man can change the world.
I no longer strive to be a nice guy. I want to be a good man.
Can you think of any nice guys of history? Nice guys who truly made an impact on the world?
Take your time…I’ll be here…
That’s because you can’t. The men who leave the most important impact on the world are not nice guys. They’re good men! Was Martin Luther King a nice guy? Was Abraham Lincoln? Bill Gates? Nikola Tesla?
My point is this, good men change the world. Let’s stop being nice guys.
Why am I so against the nice guy? Why do nice guys make my blood boil so much?
The bane of the nice guy’s existence is the insatiable need to be liked. We want everybody to like us. We’ll sacrifice who we are in order to be liked by those in our lives. We forego who we are in order to get one more person to like us. And yes, I say “we” because I’m right in the middle of it
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The bane of the nice guy’s existence is the insatiable need to be liked. We want everybody to like us. We’ll sacrifice who we are in order to be liked by those in our lives. We forego who we are in order to get one more person to like us. And yes, I say “we” because I’m right in the middle of it.
I’ll never forget this one girlfriend I had. She started drifting away from me. Instead of letting her float, I turned on a serious charm offensive. Flowers, calls, letters – nothing worked. It was all in an effort to hang on to her by any means necessary.
But nothing worked. I’m glad nothing worked, actually. But nothing worked because it wasn’t from an authentic place. It was from a nice guy place and she could see right through it.
She was no idiot. I mean, she should have never left me, but she was no idiot.
My point is that she could see right through it. It was transparent. It was completely nice guy behavior and not from being a good man.
I notice when I’m really feeling authentic, that people are drawn to me. These are healthy, happy, complete, authentic people. But here’s the weirdest thing – when I’m in this place I’m even more likable.
Authenticity is one of the core pillars of being a good man and has become a capstone of my being. The best way to describe this way of being is by using a computer term.
WYSIWYG
No, Wizzy Wig isn’t a wizard in the Harry Potter books. No, it’s an acronym meaning “What You See Is What You Get.” When you’re WYSIWYG, you’re yourself. There’s no question about your motives, motivations, or intentions.
What you see is what you get.
I think the biggest difference between a nice guy and a good man is the way he approaches his being. Are you real? Authentic? Yourself? To me, that’s the key to being a good man
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I think the biggest difference between a nice guy and a good man is the way he approaches his being. Are you real? Authentic? Yourself? To me, that’s the key to being a good man.
I used to work at a tiny radio station in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I was 16 when I first started there. The station was essentially in a broom closet in a building in the middle of a pasture.
During the Canadian Football Leagues’ ill-fated attempted to expand into the United States, nearby Birmingham was the home of the Birmingham Barracudas for the 1995 season.
A poster of the Barracudas’ cheerleading squad was tacked to the door of the little broom closet studio. Most of the guys working at the little station group wrote crude and degrading messages on the poster. All but me. Now, I was only 18 at the time but I had a pretty good head on my shoulders. Someone asked me why I didn’t write anything on the poster.
“I respect them.” This was met with derision and ridicule. But I meant it.
A good man is loving and honest. A good man treats women with respect and integrity. A good man is real. A good man is himself.
We should all strive to be like Sting. In his classic song Englishman in New York, I think this line really embodies the good man. The real man. The authentic man. The human race, actually.
“Be yourself, no matter what they say.”
Be WYSIWYG. The world will thank you.
Photo by Jared