Correction, I was Derek Zoolander with the flowing long hair and crooked nose of Hansel. I was a male model!
OK, so maybe I wasn’t exactly a Mark Wahlberg – or a Fabio. But hey, I certainly had my share of modeling – just like 90 percent of all males in Manila. How a gangly, parrot-nosed, unchiseled, semi-pimply, reed-thin guy like me ever got into modeling is still beyond me. I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but at 24 I was still undergoing puberty. By some strange stroke of luck, I somehow managed to get the attention of designers. I actually walked the catwalk in some fashion shows with legendary models Tweety de Leon, Bea Recto and Myrza Sison. And believe it or not, some radical-thinking apparel companies even got me to be the model for their print ads. Talk about unorthodox marketing!
Anyway, I’ll let you in on a secret. A lot of my friends know this already but for the readers out there who are neither my relatives nor my personal friends (all three of you), I want to tell you that I actually got into modeling via a contest. That’s right, I was a candidate in a modeling competition. I won’t elaborate on how I got in there, suffice it to say, a friend of mine named Ginger pushed me to fill up this form one lazy summer afternoon and the rest is history.
I’m not going to talk about my modeling career here, otherwise this article would be done in two sentences. But I would like to talk about the award I got during the finals night of the competition. Do you know what I won that night? The Mr. Friendly Award. Yes, folks. I was voted "the friendliest guy" in the bunch. You might say that’s not such a bad award. It’s not – if I had joined a Mr. Congeniality Contest. But I was in a modeling contest, for Pete’s sake! Which makes it like winning the Cleanest Car Award in a Formula One race, you know what I mean? It just didn’t feel special. It was like a consolation prize. I accepted the award with a wide grin on my face but you could tell from my eyes that I was embarrassed. Thankfully, the night didn’t turn out all that bad. I did manage to get into the top 5. Hooray, hooray. But when I got home that night, I couldn’t help but wonder why they even bothered to give a Mr. Friendship Award. No one cares about that; people remember only the winners of the main prize, never the Mr. Nice Guys.
A few days after that contest, I got together with my friend and fellow contestant Anna Gonzalez and she told me, "You know, I voted for you as Mr. Friendship. Most of us did. You’re really Mr. Nice Guy. Everyone in the group likes you."
After that conversation, I had a different feeling about my Mr. Friendship Award. I realized that the award meant something to my fellow candidates, that people do take note of your behavior and attitude towards them.
Over the years, a lot of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and partners have bestowed on me the moniker "Mr. Nice Guy." As to whether it is deserved or undeserved, I am not really sure. A friend of mine from Cebu, Dr. Henry Yu, calls me Mr. Nice Guy as if it was my real name. And he bases this purely on the way I write. Thanks, doc!
But you know, it’s hard for me to admit that I’m a nice guy. It’s like being good. I can’t say I am good. Just like everyone else, I know my faults and there are some things in this world that piss me off or make me blow my top. I guess I just don’t show it as often or as quickly as most people do. Perhaps I have a longer fuse but I do have a limit when it comes to my patience, and yes, I do have a nasty side. I guess the difference between me and a lot of people lies in the fact that I do make a conscious effort to ensure that the Mr. Nasty Guy in me remains subdued – until called to duty.
But first, let me delve on the Mr. Nice Guy in me. I guess it’s really the way I am. I was probably born on the right side of the hospital bed. And over the years, I’ve kinda mastered my emotions and I make a conscious effort to ensure that I don’t get too swayed by how I feel. If there’s one thing that I have discovered over the years of being in the corporate world, it’s this – emotions can be a bad barometer to determine how and why you should act a certain way. Most conflicts in the world, including in the world of business, are brought about by the flare of emotions more than anything else. So my theory is that the more you keep your emotions in check, the nicer you become.
Of course, we all have different levels of control. Some people are really more predisposed to be nicer than others. In that respect, I think I am lucky. Some people are predisposed to be nasty but have developed a way to control their Mr. Nasty Side and then there are those who haven’t. These are the worst kinds.
That’s why I really find it such a huge compliment when people tell me I am nice. Personally, I think it is a gift from heaven because in this day and age its tough to be nice. There are a lot of things in this world that make "being nice" a major challenge. For example, no matter how nice you try to be to everyone, you know that there will still be people who will backbite you and spread rumors about you. They question your motives for being nice. Worse, they might even say that you’re being nice just for show and you’re just faking it. Also, there are really abusive people in the world who take advantage of nice people. Personally, I have encountered people who have abused my niceness.
There are people who worked for me in the past who took full advantage of my forgiving nature. They just kept on transgressing and violating my policies over and over again. And I just kept allowing it. Until I finally I got fed up and I confronted them. After I gave a piece of my mind, without even saying goodbye or thanking me, they just left – but not without doing something bad first. The first one stole a cell phone, while the other one spread nasty rumors about my family. In a way, I almost regret being nice to them in the first place.
And that’s really where I draw the line. All things being equal, it is always better to be nice than to be nasty, aggressive, and abrasive. All things being equal, a nice guy will have a better chance to get the deal done than someone who is mean and antagonistic.
However, you can also be too nice to a fault. And that’s where you have to be careful. If people trample on you or throw their weight around you knowing that you will not lift a finger, that’s not good. Because when push comes to shove, when you have to stand by your principles and for what you believe is right, your niceness might very well be the one thing that will compel you to just sit back and be non-confrontational, to take the more peaceful position. And that’s not always a good thing. If a colleague, for example, insists on a course of action that is against the company’s vision and mission, and you know it but you won’t do anything about it, you would have done your company a disfavor.
My perfect example for this is Christ. Oftentimes, our picture of Christ is the meek, humble prophet who was always nice and giving. But hey, when He needed to be firm, boy, He was firm! Remember the time He drove all those vendors from the temple because they had turned it into a marketplace? He certainly wasn’t sugar and spice and everything nice in that scene. And in a way, He needed to show his anger to show that what those vendors were doing was wrong. Did He make a point!
The long and short of it is this: it’s always best to be nice. That is how we ought to be because that is how we want people to be when we are around them. But never allow niceness to compromise your principles and ideals. When you are being pushed around, it’s always good to stand your ground and allow Mr. Nasty to come out, but only to make your point. In the end, Mr. Nice Guy (or Girl) should always come back and take over the controls again.
Have a nice day!