How to Be Ruthless (As a Nice Person)

Sometimes fate conspires to bring a topic to the front porch of your mind. Over the last few weeks the topic has been “niceness”. More specifically, being too nice. So what does it mean to be too nice? It includes the following: letting people get away with too much, being taken advantage of, getting walked all over and not standing up for yourself. Even small instances of this kind can metastasise if they happen frequently enough. You become a person who doesn’t get what they want, let alone what they deserve, from life. In a word — weakness. Other words get cited first, but when you burrow down to its nucleus, that’s what festers there.

When people describe themselves as too nice they’ll shoehorn in some hidden implications. You must take a knife to these rationalisations. The first is that if they were to stop being so nice, they’d have success. More money, power, influence, better boundaries and so on. The second is that they’re too much of a good person to be harsh or ruthless. There is a saintly veil of victimhood to this mindset. They are martyrs sacrificing their own desires at the altar of niceness. In my view ruthlessness is essential in life. Many virtues rank higher than it, sure, but its position is nonetheless unchallengeable.

Let’s get into it then. Here’s how to be ruthless as a nice person.