Be Nice!

After hearing your mother tell you that multiple times as you head out the door for school or to play, you would think that this much spoken phrase would have made some impact on us as adults. Yet, we see daily examples of individuals doing just the opposite. So why didn't this one piece of motherly advice not stick? Why can't we be nice to everyone all the time?

I believe it is a couple of things. First, we are so busy trying to get everything done in the few hours during work or afterwards that we feel that anything that slows us down or gets in our way gives us the right to be upset or angry. The other reason is we don't think before we open our mouths. Perhaps it's been a rough day at work or a stressful day of being with the kids and something happens or someone talks to us and we don't think before we respond. Sure enough we say it! That biting retort that some how justifies how we feel at the moment. The vocalization of how we are feeling at being inconvenienced.

You know that you don't like it when someone isn't nice to you or says something that you feel "Hey, I don't deserve that!" Perhaps someone says a nasty thing to you and it hurts your feelings. Did you think about that when you did it? Perhaps we need to slow down and not take things so personal. Traffic snarls happen. People will cut you off because they are in a hurry or they just didn't see you. Take a deep breath and relax and perhaps you will find that motherly advice slipping back into that hurried brain of yours and remember to just "Be Nice!"