Seriously, Stop Being a Doormat and Grow Some Teeth

When I told one of my friends that she can be mean sometimes, she looked surprised.

She couldn’t accept the identity of being ‘mean’ because she believed that her identity was ‘nice and polite’.

And somehow, ‘mean’ seemed, to her, the opposite of ‘nice and polite’. As if mean was bad and nice and polite was good. But unfortunately, this binary way of looking at the world isn’t helpful by any means because it perpetuates the struggle with bullying and exploitation.

A lot of people who are too nice get walked over because of their inability to be anything but nice –their inability to turn into dicks and toxic people when it takes.

And this inability –usually– comes from what we can refer to as the ‘moral block’.

This ‘moral block’ tells them that it is bad (or that it is morally wrong) to be anything but nice and polite.

And that’s the first obstacle which we need to overcome.

Is it actually bad to be mean?

It depends.

There are good mean people. And there are bad mean people.

And then there are people who are nice.

Those nice people usually are bullied and mistreated by the bad mean people.

Note that you have to differentiate between good and nice. Being nice doesn’t necessarily mean being good. Sometimes the greater good demands being mean, upsetting some people, and being perceived as an a*hole by some people.

And just as iron cuts iron, the only people who are capable of stopping those bad mean people are the good mean people — mainly because they are mean, too.

We are not living in a world where nice people can expect to be safe because they harm no one.

That is naivety.

You don’t get into the woods without weapons and assume that lions won’t attack you because you are not going to attack them.

You go out there with your weapons. You have your guns and your swords and your knives. You have them with you not to kill whatever that comes your way — you have them to protect yourself from whatever that might try to kill you.

And here is something more interesting:

When people know that you are strong and capable of defending yourself well, they are less likely to attack you or bully you.

Jordan Peterson explains this using a nice metaphor. “The reason that Harry Potter can withstand Voldemort is that he has got a piece of him,” he explains. “The way you keep the psychopath at bay is to develop the inner psychopath so that you know one when you see one,” he adds.

And he stresses that this should be merely one of your tools. He describes it as “full knowledge of evil.” And you use this knowledge to protect yourself from this evil.

But what happens if you don’t protect yourself from this evil?

What happens when you don’t stand up for yourself?

A lot of things. And none of which is good.

Your self-respect is going to be affected badly.

Your mind is observing whatever that is happening to you. And, more importantly, it’s observing how you respond to whatever that happens to you.

If it believes that there is timidity and weakness and meekness in the way you respond to those who hurt you, it’s going to give you a hard time.

Like it or hate it, you have to earn the respect of your own mind.

And hardly will your mind give you enough respect if you don’t stand up for yourself against bullies.

One of the harmful consequences of not standing up for yourself is anger, which turns into resentment and bitterness.

Nobody is happy being bullied and mistreated. Anger is the typical response. Even if you are not aware of it or try to deny its existence.

But this anger is suppressed and thus it turns into resentment and bitterness that beat the hell out of you.

And your mind will look down at you because having all this anger and vengeance inside of you means that you have something which you are unable to confront.

Being this bitter and resentful is dangerous.

This anger can build up and reach a point where you explode and do stupid things in a hasty way.

And depending on the personality, the angry and the resentful people may choose to express their anger in subtle ways that hurt innocent people.

For instance, they may choose people who are weaker than them and hurt them as a way of expressing their anger.

Or they may hurt the people who are close to them by subtly expressing their suppressed anger and resentment. That’s one of the reasons nice people can become dangerous. And I mean dangerous in a bad way.

Stop being a doormat, it hurts your soul

So, standing up for one’s self is important. However, it requires giving yourself permission to be mean.

It requires being mean and toxic when it takes — being able to be toxic and then controlling that and using it as a defense strategy.

It requires studying evil and developing your evil side so you can recognize evil and handle it.

And that’s not comfortable for many people who have been nice for their entire lives.

That’s uncomfortable for non-confronters and conflict haters. I know, from experience — I hate conflict as well and prefer to avoid confronting.

But it’s necessary.

And it doesn’t have to be comfortable.

In fact, trying to be comfortable all the time is a sign of immaturity. A large part of maturity is about accepting responsibility for your actions and handling the consequences.

And more often than not, accepting responsibility is uncomfortable and even painful.

But it’s obvious that it’s more fruitful to stand up for yourself despite the discomfort.

It’s not morally bad to do that as long as you have the good in mind.

In fact, it’s morally bad to let other people walk over you and sacrifice your own self-respect in the process while being bitter and resentful and on the verge of exploding and hurting not only yourself but whoever around you at the moment.

However, you need to make sure you give yourself the permission to be assertive when it takes.

Stop being nice all the time.

Nice is not always good.

You won’t beg someone who beats you to stop — you fight back.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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