Stop trying to be nice. Do this instead.

Buddhist advice for navigating the messiness of human affairs

As kids, many of us, when competing for scarce resources such as toys, were chided with the following words, “Be nice!” Niceness has become, in many places, a cultural norm. “Minnesota Nice,” for example. But according to the legendary meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg, niceness is the wrong goal.

Nice lives on the surface: pleasing people, avoiding discomfort. The wiser alternative, she says, is kindness. Which can resemble niceness, but is not the same animal. In fact, confusing the two might be making you miserable.

Kindness can actually look fierce. As Sharon puts it, you can come from a genuinely compassionate place and still set a hard boundary, say no, be strong. As she says, being kind “doesn’t consign us to being a doormat.”

So how can you actually practice this? Here are three tips from Sharon:

Swap your accusations for “I” language. Next time you’re about to tell someone “you’re reckless and you never listen,” try the deeper truth instead: “I was hoping to feel closer to you, and I felt disappointed.” This isn’t a softer, nicer version of the jab. It’s more honest — it’s the actual thing going on inside you — and it tends to land without starting a war. That’s kind doing the work nice can’t.

Before a hard conversation, ask what you actually want. Sharon suggests pausing to check your real motive: Do I want to be helpful? Do I want a resolution? Or — her words — do I want to “grind them into dust”? Niceness skips this question and just smooths things over. Kindness can deliver something hard, but only once you’re honest about why you’re saying it.

When you catch yourself blowing it, drop the shame. This is the one I need to hear over and over again. When you misspeak or put your foot in your mouth as I frequently do, the instinct is to spiral into “I’m a bad person,” but Sharon quotes the researcher Eve Ekman: the mind filled with shame cannot learn. The Jedi move is to notice the pattern with curiosity instead of a verdict — that’s being kind to yourself, which turns out to be the whole game.

None of this is about becoming a saint who never says the wrong thing. I still mess it up constantly. But once you can feel the gap between kind and nice, it’s hard to unsee — and it changes how you talk to the people you actually care about.

If you want to get better at the conversations you’re having all day every day, listen to my conversation with Sharon Salzberg.

This summer, we have an amazing opportunity to actually practice with Sharon. She is leading an an 8-week series covering the entire Eightfold Path — the Buddha’s 2,500-year-old, hyper-practical operating system for living a good life without losing your mind. Each week: a short teaching, a guided meditation, and a live Q&A with Sharon. It kicked off yesterday but all of the sessions are available on-demand and will be happening every Sunday through August 30th. Sign up and start a trial on the 10% with Dan Harris app to check it out.

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Tickets for the next Meditation Party are available here! Jeff Warren, Sebene Selassie, and I are doing another version of our annual retreat this Oct. 16-18. It’s at the Omega Institute in upstate NY. Think four big sessions of meditation, conversation, and Q&A—with plenty of free time to hike the 240-acre campus, play some pickleball, shoot hoops, or just relax by the lake. You can also drop into yoga or tai chi classes, and on Saturday night there’s even a dance party (totally optional, I promise).

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