"Just be You!"

“Stop worrying about being nice, and just be you,” seems to be my mantra lately. The last few weeks have been fraught with synchronicity surrounding the issue of boundaries. Every time I inquire why people don’t communicate their distain surrounding obnoxious behavior or disregard for a persons space. I seem to get the same answer, “because I’m nice, I want them to think nice”. Instead they suffer through some blatantly rude and disrespectful behavior. The cost is high; they continue to be a victim of the same offending behavior, over and over.

Seems to me, being authentic doesn’t necessarily mean being a cruel, cantankerous individual. It may just indicate that you are a person who commands respect. Why would anyone tolerate being used, abused or invaded at the expense of being recognized as NICE?

Certainly you don’t have to give up your soul to a person, to retain the title of “NICE”.
During my years of being exploited, resentment built up, expelling antipathy, under the guise of contemptible humor, it released like a slow leak in a balloon.

People who are being NICE at the expense of being authentic are ripping themselves off and others too. No one really gets to know the genuine person, their needs or desires. Assumptions are automatically made about who you are, without caring how you really feel. The supposition is that you won’t squawk if someone takes advantage because you’re so nice. I personally hold people in high regard when they are kind, yet honest at expressing their boundaries and sharing their differences.

For the majority of my life I felt mediocre, resulting in my always over compensating for those feelings. Although my inferiority wasn’t always apparent to others, it was to my detriment when I mislaid my authentic self. Sadly I lost people along the way. I’ve set boundaries that have cost me plenty of turmoil. In the end though, I regained my self respect and drew good people to me. Conflicts were resolved with those who deemed our relationship worth it.
If someone is obnoxious and denigrates me, I try not to react on the defense, as I did in the past. Key word being, TRY not to! There are times when even I can’t keep my composure. For the most part though I courteously let them know that I find their behavior unacceptable. In some cases I change my own behavior to requisition a different result.
In doing a google search on boundaries I found a great article on self'>http://www.heart-2-heart.ca/men/page14.html/">self empowerment.
Affirming that boundaries are important to preserving our basic human rights.