Break Free from Toxic Niceness & Thrive

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Discover the radical truth that's holding back your leadership potential: niceness is merely fear dressed up in lipstick. In this provocative deep dive, we explore why your pattern of people-pleasing, though well-intended, is secretly sabotaging your growth.

Ever wondered why you're exhausted, resentful, or hitting a ceiling in your business growth? The answer may lie in your inability to disappoint others. Through powerful distinctions between being "nice" versus being "kind," this episode unpacks how overgiving and excessive agreeableness are draining your energy and limiting your impact. When you're constantly saying "yes" to everyone else, you're saying "no" to yourself and your potential.

Leadership requires courage to rock the boat, to express your full essence without dimming your light. True kindness begins with self-honoring—filling your own cup first so you can give from overflow rather than depletion. We explore why setting boundaries, though uncomfortable, is the gateway to earning respect as a leader rather than being seen as merely "agreeable."

For high-achieving entrepreneurs and professionals struggling with burnout and stagnation, this message offers a liberating pathway forward. Breaking the niceness addiction isn't easy—some relationships may shift as you change your patterns—but the rewards are transformative. By redirecting your energy inward first, you'll discover reserves of creativity and leadership capacity you never knew existed.

Ready to stop being nice and start being kind? Subscribe, leave a comment about which boundary you're setting first, or apply for the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator if you're ready to transform this pattern for good. Your leadership journey begins with kindness to yourself.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You were not born to be nice.
You were born to lead.
Niceness is fear dressed up inlipstick.
Welcome to the show leaders.
Today we are talking about stopbeing nice.
I want you to stop being nice.

(00:23):
There comes a point where wehave to stop being nice and we

(00:59):
have to change that to kindness,to change that to kindness, and
, ideally, we need to start withbeing kind to ourselves.
This is what we are talkingabout today.

(01:20):
If this resonates with you,give me a hand up, even though I
can't see you Put your hand up.
I know this is going toresonate with a lot of people
because the clients that Iattract are some of the most
brilliant clients on the planet,some of the most brilliant
creators, leaders, professionals, and yet many of them struggle

(01:41):
with being nice because, again,that's what they needed to be at
a certain point in their life.
But that pattern is going tohinder your growth.
One way it's going to hinderyour growth is often, when we
have a need to be nice, we havea lack of boundaries, which

(02:06):
means we say yes to a lot ofthings that we don't want to say
yes to, that we do not have thetime for.
That is not beneficial for usto say yes to.
Let me remind you that if it'snot beneficial for you, it's not
really going to be beneficialfor the other person, even
though it seems like it will.

(02:27):
Because what happens when wekeep saying yes, when we don't
want to say yes, is resentment.
Resentment starts to build andresentment is like a parasite to
relationships.
I want to read you thedefinition of nice and I want to

(02:51):
read you the definition of kind, which is what we want to move
into.
We want to move into kindness.
The definition, based on whatwe looked at in the dictionary,
is nice pleasant, agreeable,satisfactory, good-natured,

(03:18):
polite, socially acceptable orpleasing in manner.
This is what the energy ofniceness, the definition of kind
, is having or showing afriendly, generous and

(03:38):
considerate nature, of a helpfulnature marked by benevolence or
compassion.
Kind is about inner character,it's about values, it's about
who you are and who you'rechoosing to be moment to moment.

(04:02):
Moment to moment, niceness iswanting something.
It is doing something in hopesof getting something back, even
if it's simply acknowledgement.
Kindness comes from a deep,intrinsic human place that I

(04:26):
believe the majority of humanbeings on this planet have.
Niceness comes in a performance.
The problem with this is whenwe have a pattern of being nice,
going against what we trulywant being agreeable for the
sake of agreement or not wantingconflict we start to build up

(04:51):
resentment and imagine how theenergy, the emotion of
resentment is going to hinderyour growth in your business and
in your career.
We do not want to continue thepattern of being nice.
It's okay if you've been in apattern of niceness for a long

(05:14):
time.
Some people have been in it fordecades.
When I was a teenager, I hadthis pattern of always wanting
to say okay to people, notwanting to say no and disappoint
a person.
There was a part of me thatfeared if I said no, the person
would leave.

(05:34):
I kept saying yes to doingcertain things or being a part
of certain things.
I didn't want to be a part ofit.
A lot of those times what I didwas I completely ghosted the
person.
I'd say yes to an opportunityand then, when it was time to go
, I wouldn't answer my phone.
This was long before textingcame in.

(05:58):
This is rotary phone days.
There was no texting.
I would not answer the phoneand sometimes I would even take
the phone off the hook and itwould.
The person thought thatsomething happened, they would
have to go to the voicemail.
This is not a healthy pattern.
This is not a pattern we wantto be in.
Part of my journey shifting thiswas to really acknowledge how

(06:23):
do I want to show up as a humanbeing.
I know that I cannot continuebeing agreeable, going with the
flow, being the one who'seasygoing.
I started to feel inside of methat I am not expressing

(06:44):
anything that I need.
I'm not asking for what I need.
I'm not telling people what Ineed, I'm being the nice one,
going along with whatever.
What does this build?
This builds resentment.
It also in our business or inour career, in our work.

(07:06):
If we keep playing the niceperson, the yes person.
One, we're not acknowledgingour boundaries.
That can lead to resentment.
It can also lead to burnout.
Two, if we are not fullyexpressing ourselves because we
are scared of rocking the boator offending someone, we are

(07:32):
keeping our essence from theworld.
The world needs what we have togive, and when you are addicted
to niceness, you will dim yourlight.
You cannot lead if you areafraid to disappoint.

(07:53):
You're a leader.
You are meant to rock the boat.

(08:20):
The boat is supposed to rockinefor yourself what it means to
be nice Because you have adefinition that is somehow
benefiting you, or else youwouldn't keep doing it.
There is a part of you that iscontinuing the pattern because

(08:42):
there is a part of you that isbenefiting from it.
For me, what continued thispattern of niceness and over
giving what is happening is youare benefiting from being nice.
For me, the way that I wasbenefiting from being nice was

(09:04):
the part of me, my inner child,who wanted to be loved and
accepted and a part of a group.
I kept going along with themotions not asking for much
being nice, not asking for muchbeing nice and Tala got to the

(09:28):
place where I realized this isnot sustainable.
Yes, this is giving my innerchild a sense of belonging, but
it's not a real sense ofbelonging Because, in a lot of
those cases, as soon as Istarted asking for something, as
soon as I started to speak upand say what I wanted, a lot of

(09:49):
those people left.
A lot of those people didn'twant to give me anything.
They were benefiting from myniceness.
They were benefiting from mebeing super agreeable.
Have you ever had this?
Hands up Again.
I can't see you.
If you're putting your hands up, put it up, acknowledge it for
yourself.
If you're ready to end thispattern, give me a yes, give me

(10:14):
a yes, yes, yes, lisa, I amready to end this pattern
because it is not serving me.
It's exhausting.
I am also not benefiting fromit financially, career-wise.
My business is not growing.
I am stalling everything in mylife because of being overly
agreeable by being the nice one.

(10:37):
You know what else changed whenI stopped being nice and I
started being kind, got a lotmore respect, people respected
me a lot more.
They looked at me as a leader.
When you are being overly niceand agreeable, you are seen as

(10:59):
someone who is nice andagreeable.
You are not seen as a leader.
Leaders are kind, good leaders,kind and compassionate and
generous.
If you are overgiving, beingover agreeable, saying yes to
everything that you don't wantto do, saying yes to everything

(11:24):
that you don't want to do, howcan you be in a place of
overflow to be generous andcompassionate and kind?
You won't be, you won't be orbe tired, you'll be resentful,
you'll be burnt out.
It is not sustainable.
It is not what we want.
We got to cut that out.
Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
We want to be kind.
We want to change our narrative.

(11:46):
I work with leaders,entrepreneurs, artists.
A lot of them are six, sevenfigure business owners and they
still have the challenge ofbeing over agreeable and over
nice.
When we change the narrative tobe kind, what happens is they

(12:09):
start getting all this energyback.
Because before we can changeand be nice to other people,
before we can change and be kindto other people, we first need
to start being kind to us.
That's where the change starts.
And when we are being nice toeveryone in our phone book I

(12:39):
just aged myself because I don'teven think people have phone
books anymore If you're beingnice to everyone in your contact
list, you don't have the timeand space to be kind to yourself
.
You don't have the bandwidth tobe kind to yourself.
But to change this pattern,that's where it needs to begin.

(13:00):
Let me tell you if you thinkyou've achieved a certain level
of success, wait, wait until youstart taking that energy back.
You start pouring that energyinto you.
You have an overflow.
Everything changes from thatplace because you now have the

(13:21):
energy, the flow, the bandwidthto be kind, to be generous, to
give, because you have alreadyfilled your cup and your cup is
overflowing.
We cannot give from a cup thatdried out years ago.
There is nothing more to give.
You are running on fumes.

(13:43):
This is why everything iscapped.
This is why you feel exhausted.
This is why you don't want toanswer the phone or you don't
want to go out with certainpeople or tell people certain
things, because you're afraidthey're going to ask for
something and you are going tohave to say yes, we need to turn

(14:03):
the energy back on ourselves.
One of the things I want you tobe aware of when we start
turning the energy on ourselvesand being kind, is you will have
people in your life who saythings like you've changed, and

(14:25):
I want you to look at them andsay back.
That is the point.
We are here to change andexpand and learn and grow and
feed ourselves so we can feedothers.
We are not here to depleteourselves and give, give, give,

(14:46):
give, give.
I know there's a lot of peopleonline who get offended when
someone says they're taking timeoff to tamper themselves and
give to themselves.
There are people who getoffended when you sell your
services, when you don't giveeverything away for free.

(15:10):
These are not the people youare here to impact.
You are here to impact peoplethat are meant to be guided by
your leadership.
Whatever that looks like, whenyou turn the energy back on
yourself to change thesepatterns, you are going to get

(15:33):
some people that don't like it,because they've been benefiting
from you and your niceness.
That's okay.
It's part of the journey.
It's part of shifting thenarrative and letting go of the

(15:53):
identity of I'm the nice girl orI'm the nice guy or I'm the
nice leader to I'm the leaderand I'm pouring into myself.
Right now, I'm in a season ofsaying no.
I'm in a season of settingboundaries so I can be at a

(16:15):
place where I start giving fromoverflow.
This is the work we're doing.
Let me know if this resonates.
Send me a message on Instagram.
Let me know the boundary thatyou're put in place.
Let me know the first stepyou're due to start being kind
to yourself.
If you are interested in goingdeeper in this, head on over to

(16:36):
my website or go into thedescription.
If you're watching this onYouTube and book a Power Play.
Call If you are interested injoining us in the Magnetic
Leadership Accelerator, where wetalk a lot about boundaries and
we talk a lot aboutself-honoring and pouring into

(16:57):
ourselves so we can then expressourselves fully into the world
and the world can benefit fromyou being in the full expression
of you, sharing and giving fromoverflow.
Applications are open.
You can head on over to thedescription and apply.

(17:18):
Leader, I love you, as always.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for listening.
If you're listening or you'rewatching this on YouTube, I
would love for you to subscribe.
I love you, I appreciate youand, as always, let's stay
connected.