I’m going to let you into a secret: I’m not a very nice
person.
Now, before you start with platitudes and denials, let me
elaborate a little. Firstly, I am incredibly lazy. There is not a single shred
of me that would rather get up on a Sunday to mark students' work than stay in
bed. On break duty, I’d much rather mill around the central courtyard than pace
the corridors and my gym kit has wallowed for the last three weeks in the
passenger seat of my car (and yet I will loudly tell anyone who listens I’m a
devotee of yoga).
But, it gets worse. When I’m tired, I’m mardy*, with my best
mates after a glass of wine I’ve been known to make some seriously bitchy comments, and when people like my teaching ideas on
Twitter I feel a twinge of hubris which left unchecked could easily develop
into full blown narcissism.
Earlier this week a few people weren’t desperately nice to
me online. But that didn’t make me feel shocked or surprised. I get it.
Because, remember, I’m not nice either.
What does surprise me is that, unlike me, many of these people
don’t seem to want to do something about their lack of ‘niceness’.
Now, I’m not talking about being Kate Middleton ‘nice’. God
help me. No, my version of nice isn’t Victoria spongecake, Daniel Buble, or a
photo of a baby next to one of those bloody annoying ‘2 weeks old today’ cards.
To me, being ‘nice’ first and foremost means being kind. In
other words, ensuring whatever you want to say or do doesn’t make others feel
less crappy than it really needs to. When my mum was an RE teacher she had twenty
versions of the ‘golden rule’ – treat others how you want to be treated – from
different religions emblazoned on the walls of her classroom. As a happy
atheist, I too think it’s a pretty good marker for whether your actions are kind
and decent.
By my definition, being a ‘nice’ person also means trying
really damn hard to have empathy with others and then using it to inform your opinions
and reactions: particularly when you don’t agree with someone. Part of this has
got to mean that the idea of having ‘a decent sense of humour’ is rewritten to mean
‘having a sense of humour with decency’.
So, how do you stop yourself laughing at blonde jokes, Ricky
Gervais’ ‘Life’s too short’, or (ahem) the gender pay gap? I think Daniel
Goleman has the answer.
When I read Goleman’s work on ‘emotional intelligence’ for
the first time last year (the book having been gifted to me by someone who has
EQ in bucket loads) it made me see that, rather than being slave to some innate
‘personality’, we have agency and choice when it comes to reactions that we
otherwise see as instinctual.
Crucially – and this is also an increasingly important idea
for me in my teaching– we can hardwire new impulses through conscious
repetition that forms new habits.
In other words, you can
make yourself nicer.
Goleman explains that emotional intelligence and the
resulting behaviours can be changed by seeking out experiences that allow us to
practise the aspect we want to develop and then getting constructive feedback
on our progress. It’s arguably why really good friends will tell you when you’ve
pissed them off, are blowing your own trumpet, or being a bitch. They want a
nice friend and by flagging up when you’re not so nice it’s helping you learn
better habits.
Goleman made me see that I may not be a nice person all of
the time. But, by seeking out opportunities to be kinder and more empathetic I
will steadily grow these aspects of myself. I’d like to think that’s what prompted
me to pick up my phone on Tuesday morning when I saw someone not being so kind
or showing empathy to 50% of the population.
In conclusion, there’s no excuse not to be ‘nice’ and I
wonder if Piers Morgan has any really good friends.**
* Southerners, read ‘moody
without good cause’.
** In my defence, I did
say I was bitchy after a glass of wine.
