“You Are Too Nice”: What Muay Thai Taught Me About People Pleasing and Confidence

Too nice. It sounds like a compliment. It is not always a compliment.

Being “too nice” has followed me around like a shadow. Too agreeable in meetings. Too quick to say yes when I meant no. Too willing to absorb other people’s frustration without pushing back. 

I smiled through things that deserved a response. I stayed quiet when I had something to say. I was polite almost to a fault, and somewhere along the way, that politeness stopped feeling like a virtue and almost like a hindrance. 

The confidence I carried in those years was borrowed. I was in sales. I got good at performing confidence, at knowing what it looked like on the outside and mimicking it well enough to fool most people. Maybe even myself, for stretches at a time. But faked confidence has a ceiling. 

Entering the world of Muay Thai

I started training Muay Thai at Easton Training Center in Denver, and I want to be clear: I did not walk in there expecting a life transformation. I walked in there because my good friend, Chandler, asked me to check it out. I said yes. And I do what I say I’m going to do. That’s it. No grand plan.

The first few weeks were humbling in the best possible way. Learning how to stand, how to move, how to throw a punch without looking like a baby deer learning to walk. 

There is a steep and slightly hilarious learning curve, and the coaches at Easton have a way of teaching that makes you feel capable even when you have absolutely no idea what you are doing.

You cannot fake your way through sparring.

And then came sparring after about one year of training.

I will be honest with you: The first time I sparred, I was nervous in a way that felt like a mild heart attack. Heart pounding before we even started. 

There is something about facing another person, knowing that contact is coming, that strips away every layer of performance you have built up. You cannot fake your way through sparring. Your body just responds.

The first time I sparred, I got a bloody nose. The second time, a bloody nose. The third time. The fourth time. I started to wonder if this was just going to be my personal trademark.

I thought about quitting, not loudly, but in that quiet way you do when something is hard and the easier road is right there next to you.

But I kept showing up.

[New to Sparring? Try These Tips]

Finding out what I’m made of

By the fifth session, something had shifted. The nervousness was still there at the edges, but underneath it was something different. Determination. 

I had been here before. I knew what was coming and I had survived it four times already. I walked into that fifth sparring session and I walked out without a bloody nose. Nothing dramatic happened. There was no highlight reel moment. It was just me, a little better than I had been the week before.

That small, quiet improvement cracked something open in me.

Because here is what nobody tells you about real confidence: It is not built in moments of ease. It is built in moments where you do not know how things are going to go, and you show up anyway. It is built by getting knocked down, sometimes literally, and getting back up because you genuinely have no other option. It is built in the accumulation of small hard things that you survived.

[Using Small Wins to Combat Negative Self Talk]

A truer kind of confidence

The confidence I have now is not the kind I used to perform. I did not read it in a book or learn it in a seminar. I got punched in the face and kept going. Somehow that changes you. 

You stop being so afraid of discomfort in the rest of your life because you have already shown yourself what you can handle. Saying a hard thing in a meeting does not feel so scary when you have literally been punched in the face. Setting a boundary with someone does not feel so impossible when you know what it feels like to hold your ground.

I am still a nice person. That part of me did not go anywhere and I would not want it to. But there is something behind it now. A foundation. When I am kind these days, it is because I want to be, not because I am afraid of what happens if I am not. That difference is everything. 

I walk with my eyes forward, chest up and shoulders back now. With confidence. 

Easton Training Center gave me something I did not know I was looking for. The coaches, the community, the culture of that gym showed me that growth is not always comfortable and that is exactly the point. 

Two and a half years in and I am still learning, still getting humbled, still showing up. Still occasionally getting hit in ways I did not see coming. And still working on my confidence every day. 

Turns out, that is kind of the whole deal. And I would not trade it for anything.

[How Martial Arts Changed My Life: Confidence + Community]