In this episode, I challenge the negative perception of “nice guys” in the men’s work world. The truth is, being a nice guy is an evolutionary leap in masculinity as it brings online kindness and sensitivity in men. It’s not about killing or getting rid of our nice guy, but instead is all about integrating him along with our power.
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All right, and welcome back. So today I want to talk about the fact that nice guys get a bad rap, particularly here in the men's work world that I'm so deeply a part of.
You know, there's a huge movement right now to kind of kill the nice guy, get rid of the nice guy, stop being the nice guy. And I want to disrupt that a little bit and really speak to the fact that in my opinion, it is actually way better to be a nice guy than a dick. And what do I mean by that? Well, I think nice guy, this collection of attributes and behaviors in which certain men prioritize other people above themselves and really emphasize safety in, in relating and connections, that's actually an evolutionary leap past what was the dominant type of man for a long time, which was fuck or kill.
Essentially, I'm gonna fuck you or I'm gonna kill you, and whatever helps me survive is the thing I most care about. And, you know, that's pretty crass, you know, blunt version of what I'm talking about here. But in my book, nice guy is actually a huge ev of masculinity in a sense where it starts to include the other. And in our growth and in our development, it's not that we want to get rid of the nice guy, it's that we want to hold the nice guy in our full context as a human being.
Meaning we don't want to prioritize this part of ourselves at the expense and neglect of other parts of ourselves. And I've done a lot of work with guys over the years and I'll tell you, I prefer to work with nice guys. I think it's much easier to take a nice guy and help him kind of find his power, find his balls, so to speak, show up with boundary, claiming what he wants, being a force of good in the world than it is to take a dick, someone who's just a self centered ass, and open their heart and actually get them to care about other people.
And so a lot of nice guys, you know, I'm a certified nice guy Coach, I know Dr. Glover, they feel this urgency that it's like, oh my God, I got to get rid of this, I got to solve this. And it's not about that. It's about not solving it, but evolving it. Right? We want to bring the baby back and not just throw out the bath water, so to speak. And the baby is. There is a certain amount of power and connection to ourselves and our desires and an ability to speak about what we want and move towards it as men.
And so, you know, if you're a nice guy, know that that is a great starting point. In my opinion, you're actually far ahead of the curve of where most men in human history have been. You, you have access to your heart, you have an ability to attune to the other. That is a good thing. We don't want to get rid of that. What we want to do is include the rest of you, include your power, your desire, your impulse, and marry it with your heart, with your openness, with your sensitivity, and put that in service of creating the most depth and connection and love and truth in your life and in the lives of people around you.
Nice guys have a really good starting point and they have a lot. They can bring online pretty easily the types of practices often I lead nice guys through, let's say, in retreats to get their wildness alive. You can do these things in minutes, and it can actually bring a lot of this energy back into the body in pretty profound ways. Teaching a man to be vulnerable, to open, to care about others, that's much harder to do.
I think it's the great developmental question that many of us don't know how to answer, which is, how do you get somebody that doesn't care about someone else to care about someone else? In my opinion, that's kind of the, the driving force of cultural and human development, in a sense. I don't know how to answer that question. What I do know is when someone does care about someone else, but they've been pushed around their whole lives, they haven't felt safe to express what they want or what they need, or they felt shame around their sexuality, or they've had no capacity to set boundaries before in their lives.
Those are skills we can pretty easily train and help bring online this full spectrum of a human being. You know, the, the evolutionary man in a in a sense, is a full spectrum human that has access to all parts of themselves, which include the heart. The kind of home of the nice guy, in my opinion. Doesn't mean we have to get rid of that part. We actually want even more of that part. But. But we want it married with our power, with our grounding, with our presence, with our desire and our clarity about what we want, what we see and what we want to move towards in life.
So if you are a nice guy, don't fret. Trust me when I say it is much better to be a nice guy than to be a dick. If you're interested in working with me around dating, relationships, or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary men. Apply.
