If I wanted to STOP being a nice guy in 2026. I'd do this. l EP. 61 l

 If I wanted to stop being a Nice Guy in 2026, this is exactly where I’d start. 

After coaching almost 500 men, I’ve seen one pattern show up over and over again:
 men don’t get stuck because they’re weak, broken, or incapable — they get stuck because they’re reactive, unclear, and led by outdated survival strategies they don’t even realise are running them. 

In this episode of the Be Better Podcast, I break down the exact framework I would follow to evolve out of Nice Guy patterns — without swinging to the other extreme, becoming aggressive, or trying to fake confidence. 

We cover why nervous system regulation is the true foundation of change, how Nice Guy behaviour is not who you are but a part of you, and why identity-based language keeps men trapped in the same loops year after year. 

You’ll learn: 

• Why fight, flight, and freeze responses sabotage communication and leadership
• How Nice Guy traits form as protective strategies — and why they outlive their usefulness
• Why unsaid expectations destroy attraction, intimacy, and trust
• How “doing things for love” turns into covert contracts and resentment
• Why slowing down on purpose increases masculine presence and emotional attunement
• How outsourcing decisions kills polarity and erodes self-respect
• Why trying to do this alone keeps you stuck — no matter how many books or podcasts you consume
• And why execution, not more information, is what actually changes your life

This episode isn’t about becoming dominant or confrontational.
 It’s about becoming grounded, self-led, and internally regulated — so you can lead your life, your relationship, and yourself with clarity.

If you’ve ever said “I know what I should do, but in the moment I just react” — this episode will connect the dots.
 
Don’t be sorry.
Be better.

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Looking to fast track your growth with personalised support or a guided system to help you evolve out of the nice guy, rebuild your energy, presence, intimacy & become the grounded masculine man you are capable of, apply below. 

Apply HERE 

If you're a married business owner who keeps defending, withdrawing, or walking on eggshells every time things get tense at home 

I'm running a free 90-minute live workshop called The Married Man Update. 

I'll show you exactly why it keeps happening AND what to do about it.  

Join HERE

Transcript

Harrison Orr (00:01.71)
If I wanted to stop being a nice guy in 2026, this is exactly what I would do.

Harrison Orr (00:08.654)
You're listening to the Be Better podcast. I'm Harrison All. After coaching almost 500 men, one truth stands out. Your marriage, business and peace of mind all hinge on one thing, how grounded you are as a man.

So with the 2025 coming to a close, I have been reflecting on my journey on the grounded man method, the resources, the man, the transformations in there. And I know around this time of year, everyone, first of all, they start to switch off and then they start to kick into maybe a bit of reflection, but then also maybe a bit of, okay, what do I want to be different next year? How do I want to grow? What's my direction?

desired outcomes, whether it's in business, personal, relationship, which will all depend on the season of life that you're in right now. But if being a nice guy, if your relationship, if your personal journey is what you've identified as the biggest...

ROI opportunity, the biggest linchpin to having the life, the resources, the relationship, the business, the being the man that you ultimately want to be, then perfect. Because I'm to walk you through the exact steps that I would take in 2026 if I wanted to evolve out of the nice guy and where I would start. Because I know it can be super overwhelming with so many books, approaches, resources, all the things out there, and it gets real fucking confusing. So the absolute

first thing I would do and this is you could say that this is the first thing that I would do for just about anything not just a nice guy related but the first absolute non-negotiable must do is regulate my nervous system if you are reactive

Harrison Orr (01:58.262)
And to be clear, when I say reactive, I don't just mean, you you have a short fuse, so you get angry real quickly and easily, but going blank, like going numb and just freezing every time there's a hint of emotion, conflict, pressure, that is being reactive as well. So when we talk about being reactive from a nervous system standpoint, you've got fight, flight, freeze, there's a couple others, but those are the main ones that most people act with. Either you fight, right? Either physically or-

Or verbally, you get defensive, you justify, you try to argue the other person's point. Flight, you try to run away, which you might just over apologize. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just agree to silence that argument, that emotion down, because you don't feel comfortable handling it. And then just get the hell out of there. Or freeze, right? Your mind will just go blank and you're like a deer in headlights. You don't know what to say.

All of those can be extremely frustrating as a reaction. I've definitely been in the freeze more often than not before I started doing all this work. And it was extremely frustrating.

Like it would happen with bosses or people that I respected, like people that I looked up to. And as soon as I tried to have a conversation with them, my intellect would go through the floor. would freeze, I would just couldn't recall a single thing. And then I get to the end of the conversation, I'm thinking, they think I'm such a fucking idiot. Like couldn't remember anything, could barely articulate a sentence.

And then the same thing would happen in my relationship. Anytime there was some criticism or some feedback or some accountability or just heightened emotion of any sort, I would just go into freeze mode.

Harrison Orr (03:48.879)
The best I could, the best other option other than just freezing was often either a justification trying to preserve my ego and image. Neither of which are very conducive to having a healthy, not just relationship, but level of communication. Imagine trying to bring something up to someone and they just freeze or they justify. You're just like, come on, man. just own it. You and I both know that you did the thing or that you forgot the thing. Like we don't need a 20 page essay on the reasons

why or anything else, just fucking own it. So that is the first thing I would learn to regulate my nervous system because from that level as well, if we're always in that fight, flight or freeze mode, it's going to make it very hard to actually change any of our behaviors because like you've experienced, that reaction is instantaneous.

Like it's not like you think something and then it responds like it has put you in that state before you've even thought about anything before you even have a chance to argue with it, to control it, to change it. You're already physically, physiologically in that fight flight freeze mode. And it makes it very hard to then.

change your behavior from that state. That's why maybe you've been in the situation before where you say like, I know what I need to do, but it comes to the moment and I just freeze or I react the exact same way. Yeah, because more information won't help you in changing your behavior in those moments. Only regulating your nervous system to create enough space between the stimulus and your response is what will enable that change. You could even go

into being in that fight flight freeze mode is not very conducive to rewiring neural pathways within your brain because it's designed to keep you alive and as long as that response still keeps keeping you alive which you're here and listening so it has it's going to be very hard to override that when we're able to slow things down then we can change that behavior and rewire that neural pathway so that's another side note for you

Harrison Orr (06:00.782)
So the first thing, regulate your nervous system. I would regulate my nervous system, I should say. The second piece, if I wanted to stop being a nice guy in 2026, is I would change my internal language. So I would stop saying, I'm a nice guy, or I avoid conflict, or I don't set boundaries, or I'm not confident, or I am anxious, or I have anxiety. Like all these I statements that I've taken on as a part of my identity.

When we take something on as part of our identity, it sticks, right? Because we've now identified with it. So it now holds a special place in our heart as who I am. Because if I then strip away all these things which I've said that I am, what's left? I don't know. And that's scary, right? The uncertainty of what is left. Is there anything left? I don't know. That becomes very scary.

So people often use this in the health space, right? When they're talking about reframing an unfit person's language and internal talk, right? Especially, you may have heard your wife say, I'm so fat or like, I'm fat.

The counter to that is, okay, you are not fat. Like you still have muscle and water and organs and skin and hair and all these other components that make you up. You have fat, but you are not fat. In the same way that you have a big toe, you are not a big toe, right? Same kind of concept here.

in that you have nice guy parts, but you are not a nice guy, right? Because we want to create that separation. And I'm gonna go into this in a future podcast, breaking down the parts of the nice guy. But as an overview, essentially, you are not a nice guy. A part of you is a nice guy. And a nice guy is just a collection of certain traits, like avoiding conflict, people pleasing, lacking boundaries, your covert contracts, you know, doing things to gain

Harrison Orr (08:03.376)
external love, validation and approval. And so when we can start to create that separation in the language that we use, instead of saying, I am a nice guy, we can say, a part of me is a nice guy. A part of me wants to avoid this conflict or this hard conversation. A part of me wants to say yes to be liked by this person. And

When we create that, just like we created the space with our nervous system between the stimulus and the response, we now start to create the space between our identity and these parts. And that is very important the further you get down this journey in addressing these parts, where they came from and actually healing them so that from the core, you can lead yourself as an adult, not from these nice guy parts. And...

With that space, we allow choice rather than default behaviors, which is essentially where these parts have kicked in because that's the system that they've been running this entire time. Now the third thing that I would do is to remove expectations from everything that I do. I would either remove, I would remove unset expectations.

If I'm doing something with an expectation, I'm going to communicate that to the person before I do the thing that I'm wanting something in return for, but I would remove all unsaid expectations. So before helping, before speaking, before giving or doing something for anyone else, simply asking myself, why am I doing this? Am I doing it because I want to?

Or am I hoping for approval, for affection or for validation because of this action?

Harrison Orr (09:57.455)
Nice guy energy, those nice guy parts always want something in return. Now, especially in our relationship, that's what creates the neediness and the pressure. That's why she gets the ick of like, what do you want from me now? Like, why are you doing this? When she can sense that, oh, every time he runs me a bath and gives me a foot rub, he wants sex. Every time he does this, he wants that. it's like, it's manipulation.

It's using her, right? And that's why she senses that and starts to retreat and get distant because it feels very transactional. It doesn't feel like you're doing it because you want to. Like you're not doing it because you want to, you just want to make her feel good. You just want her to relax. You just want to give for a change. It's always reciprocal. Like I'll do this for you, you do that for me. And that's why it feels off. But when you can give from a place of

zero expectations. Not only do you not have the stress, the pressure, like the tabs that you inevitably keep on people of what you've done for everybody else, it actually feels a hell of a lot better. Like just for you to be able to give something and go, that's it. I just wanted to do that because it makes me feel good for my own selfish reasons.

That change alone will free up so much of your mental capacity and your own emotional energy as well.

when we don't have these unsaid expectations of what everybody else is gonna do for us. Because we start using people when you do it like that, you're constantly scanning for, okay, if I do this, what can they do for me? Well, how they gonna pay me back? And that transactional energy is not helpful. What I would also start to look into as well is if I noticed that there was something that I was wanting more from,

Harrison Orr (11:56.961)
in these interactions, like I notice that, okay, I'm wanting more validation, validation, validation, or approval, you know, in these things that I was doing. I would look at why I haven't been able to provide that for myself. Why do I feel the need to externalize this and have to get it from an external source? Why do I feel that I can't create that for myself? And I decide that I'm valid.

I decide that I'm worthy of approval, that I'm just worthy full stop. Then we start to go these layers deeper because one fundamental understanding of truly addressing these nice guy parts is that it's not just more stuff to do.

Like you could pick any of these traits apart and say, okay, well to avoid conflict, this is how you work on that. To be more confident, this is how you do that. To stop saying yes when you wanna say no, start doing this. And you can find traits and hacks to address all of them individually, but they'll ultimately just be another mask until you address where they came from.

And that's when this underlying energy actually starts to shift. Because especially as a nice guy, even if you have all the scripts, you say the right things, you do the right things, but it's coming from that nice guy neediness covert contract energy, it feels off. That's the sleazy salesman type energy. The guy that's got commission breath, that he said the right things. He's got a product or a service that you know you want and you're like,

This guy is just, he's just off, he's just sleazy, like I don't trust him, I don't want to, like I get the ick. That's what nice guy energy gives off when we try to keep those agendas hidden without being transparent and just either dismantling them or just owning them. And the fourth thing that I would do is slow down on purpose.

Harrison Orr (14:08.268)
Now I don't mean slow down as in get lazy, get complacent and just kick your feet up. I mean being able to slow my breathing, slow my responses, slow my movements down from a place of intention and power. Because when you get anxious, when we get fearful, our body wants to move.

our heart rate elevates, our blood starts pumping, the tension starts to build, especially if you go into that anger that raises the cortisol, even testosterone, and then you're just full of hormones and things that you wanna move, keep going, keep going, keep going. But when you can slow down.

Again, we're creating more spaciousness here between stimulus and response, between stimulus and identity or parts of us stepping forward. And from this place, we choose how we respond. We can be intentional with the words that we use, with how we interact with our next behaviors or our next move. And when you can create that, especially in your relationship, you can actually

increase your level of attunement to your wife or to your partner. Now especially your female partner.

not always, actually very rarely, is it going to be a logical solution or logical move that is required on your part if she's frustrated, emotional, like, you in this piece of conflict. Very often, it's an emotional need that she wants met, right? That she wants to be heard. She doesn't need a solution from you. She just wants to be hugged. She doesn't need a solution from you. But...

Harrison Orr (15:58.455)
if you don't have the space.

to create, to feel into that attunement into what she needs, then you'll keep trying to solve all her problems that she doesn't want you to solve. And that's why you end up in a position where either the argument escalates, she just throws her hands in the air and says, you're not even fucking listening. I don't even know why I bother. And you're just left as confused because you told me the thing and I gave you a solution and now you don't want it. Like, what do you mean? I was listening. And then you just feel like a baffled idiot.

because that's not what she wanted from you in that moment. But unless you can stop being so reactive and slow things down and create that space, you'll never be able to navigate those from a place of emotion and attunement. It'll always come from problem solving, reactive, I need to prove my worth type of energy, which is not what she's coming to you for. Now the fifth piece, I would stop outsourcing my authority.

I used to do this all the time and now I look back at it and I want to go back and just like throat punch myself because of how how pathetic this made me look must have made me look and how I feel about myself at that time and this is the I don't care whatever you want totally up to you babe I don't mind the the nonchalant the like struggling to make a decision type energy

because what we think if the other person gets their way, then they'll like us, but they'll be happy. Now that I've been aware of this, it actually seems the exact opposite. Like if you're asking someone, think about it from a logical standpoint, if you're asking someone like, hey, what do you like? What's your, you know, what flavor do you want? What do you want for dinner? What do you wanna do on the weekend? Like asking you for genuine input.

Harrison Orr (17:53.943)
and you just say, don't care up to you. Little bit frustrating, isn't it? Because you genuinely wanna know, like, what do you like? And that lack of confidence in making a decision, that lack of, yeah, for lack of a better word, confidence to make that decision because we're afraid of getting it wrong, afraid that...

the other person won't like what we have to say, won't like our suggestion, won't like what we want to do. It creates more distance, more negative cold distance than it does connection.

Again, I used to think that if I just said, yeah, whatever you want. And I said yes to everything to my wife and gave her everything that I thought she wanted, that she would be happy. Because how could she not? You've got everything you want. You've got a man that says yes to everything. Like, isn't that what you want in life? Turns out that is very far from the truth. And there's probably some men hearing that and thinking, yeah, I can relate to that. I tried that method and it doesn't work. Yeah. And so...

Again, from a nice guy standpoint, the pendulum does not need to swing the other way and say like, okay, I need to say no to everything and just be a domineering asshole to put her in her place. Is that what she really wants then? No. But having an opinion, being able to make a decision is a masculine trait.

If we forfeit that ability to make a decision, that falls onto her, which means she has to step into her masculine. And now she's the one making decisions. She's the one leading and either we attempt to stay in our masculine and we just have two head butts or we drop into it. Like the man drops into his feminine and now the polarity is all off and everybody's where they don't want to be. And it feels like shit. So I would stop outsourcing my authority.

Harrison Orr (19:48.057)
learn to be comfortable making decisions, learn to accept that I'm gonna get it wrong, I'm gonna make mistakes. But again, that's part of the journey of being human. It's narcissistic, arrogant to believe that you will never get anything wrong.

That's one of the most common nice guy traits is trying to pretend or make everyone believe that you are perfect, that you are a good man, that you don't have any faults or flaws. And so we bury them so deep, but I promise other people can see them because they see them in themselves and they know that you're a human. So get comfortable making decisions. Start with the little ones.

Hey, this is what we're gonna have for dinner. How's that feel for you? Just notice how that feels, that level of direction.

Hey, I was thinking this, this would be cool to do on the weekend. We can leave here at this time and have this and do, do, do, What do you think? Oh, sorry. How does that feel? Yeah. It's direction. It's option. They still have the opportunity to say, no, I don't feel like that. I'd rather do this, whatever. But you keep navigating that with direction, with forward momentum instead of fine, whatever you want up to you. don't care. That type of submissive energy that is not attractive for most women. And then number six.

This is second last one for day. I would stop trying to do it on my own. I used to think that if I listened to enough podcasts, if I read enough books, if I consumed enough information that I could just figure it out on my own, but it will get you so far. Right? I'm sure given long enough and the right resources, it will get you a certain

Harrison Orr (21:37.699)
way down this journey.

But there is always that level of doubt for most people. If you're doing it on your own, am I doing the right thing? Is this the right order of things? You know, I'm feeling this way. Is this part of the journey? Am I doing it wrong? It also leaves so many gaps for uncertainty. So many gaps for, you know, shiny toy syndrome, right? You think, okay, cool. This is what I need to do now. And then two weeks later, this new shiny object or course or approach comes up on Instagram.

No, that's what I need to do because now it's promised you to get you faster results with less the time and less of the thing that you hate doing. And now you go and do that thing for two weeks. And then the other thing for a couple of weeks. And then the other thing. And sure, most of them would probably get you further along, but being inconsistent with any of them will guarantee you that you get nowhere.

But when you're not doing it on your own, when you either work with someone that has done it for themselves and helped other men do it, or at the very least have a circle of high caliber men that you can lean on to be challenged and for accountability, then you can...

stop hiding behind your own bullshit. Right? Like we do, we, when I say we as in humans do mental gymnastics around everything. Like, so if there's people that can justify killing another human for basically no reason because of their ethnicity or their religion, I can promise you it's not hard for you to do mental gymnastics around why you don't need to do the thing today. Right? Or justify why you said yes when you want to say no.

Harrison Orr (23:18.306)
why you didn't own that thing when you know in plain day that you should have and everything else because that's what we're good at. We're good at protecting our ego, keeping ourselves safe. When you have that group on that, that challenge and I don't mean challenges in like, know, to put you down and from a negative standpoint, but challenge in, I see what the direction you're going. I see the potential in you. I see what you're trying to accomplish. And right now that story that you're telling yourself is fucking bullshit.

Harrison Orr (23:50.349)
and you know it. I'm not calling you out, I'm calling you forward because I can see that you're better than that and I want to help you raise out of the stories and the shit that you're telling yourself so that you can be the better version of you that you're here to be. Not enough men have people in their life that can challenge them and hold them to that level of standard. If you take nothing else from this.

podcast, your interactions with me at all, I highly implore you to find at least one, if not a group of men that can fit that container for you. It will do more for your mental health, more for your growth, more for literally everything in your life than I dare say anything else would. Everyone hears this, hears the saying, rolls their eyes, but doesn't do anything about it. You are the average of the top five people you spend your time with.

the people that you sit with, the people that you talk to, the people that you message, the people that you interact with, you are the average of those people. And so if you don't have people that you can share your hard truth with, that you can be that level of direct, that you can allow them to challenge you and actually take it on board without getting dismissive or bum hurt, then you're only doing yourself a disservice.

And especially when you have these challenges as you're growing, if you don't have that circle, where do you take those challenges to? Probably your wife. And does she need to hear some of these challenges? No. Like she wants to know how you're feeling and like what's going on in you, in your space. But she wants the end outcome of there was a problem, I got it sorted, this is what I'm doing and done.

Okay, cool. I can relax knowing that he's resourceful and that he's got a sort of, he'll take care of it, whatever. But bringing that emotional problem to her is like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm feeling this and this and this. And she becomes that emotional support person. It just weakens that polarity. When you've got a group.

Harrison Orr (25:48.503)
or a network of those high caliber men that can challenge you, that can hold you to that, you now get to bring just the refined version of you to your partner. And that's the power in having those type of men in your life. And then this is the final one, final one for today. I would train this instead of trying to think my way out of it. I would prioritize execution and implementation

over more consumption. Not more courses, not more resources or information, just consume, consume, consume. I will be focusing on what are the actions that I'm going to take.

What are the things that I'm going to tangibly change in my life? Where I spend my time, where I spend my money, where I show up differently, my behaviors that I'm gonna change. What am I actually changing in this journey, in this development? Because I've met plenty of very smart men who have labels for everything. They can label their attachment style, their wives, they can say that they're this type of nice guy, they can say all their traumas and their wounds, all these different things, but they're still reactive anytime.

when there's a hint of emotion. They're still needy and anxious little boys as soon as she doesn't answer her phone. They're still going into that survival pattern because they're so logic, like so driven by their mind and unable to make the changes when it matters and drop down into their body and be present because they've so over intellectualized everything.

And so, like I said, the fundamental understanding of these things, amazing. But more and more understanding will not change your reality. Only execution and action will start to change your reality. Most people need accountability, need guidance in that space. So that's why having those men or having a mentor or a coach or someone to support you in that space becomes hyper useful, because you don't have to use the guesswork. But either way, take action.

Harrison Orr (27:54.337)
action on this, even if it's small and track it too. Like if there's something that you're specific on, on changing, highly recommend just keeping a journal of this is what I'm changing. This is my, know, if you're doing it on your own, this is my theory, right? That if I do these actions, this will change this. Okay, cool. Now I'm to create a log. How often am I going to do it? What's the frequency? Is it weekly? Is it daily? Is it by daily? What is it? Okay. Now I can track it. Yes or no. Every single time that I set up.

I would do it then at the end of a week or month, whatever. How do I feel? How am I in relation to the thing that I said I was hoping to achieve? And then you can look at it from the standpoint of, okay, have I been consistent enough to prove or disprove this belief, this approach?

If you haven't been consistent enough, cool, it's got nothing to with the plan at this point. It's just, haven't done it enough times. It's just a consistency piece. Again, accountability and having someone or people that you have to show up to really helps that. If you have done the thing, if you got the result, amazing, hypothesis proven, you made some progress. If not, okay, maybe that approach isn't exactly what you need. And that's where we're going into this deep work, having that.

that guide or that person there becomes hyper helpful because your parts will try to keep you in this space because they're trying to protect you. Right? We have a might have differing ways we want the way we want to live our life now because they were constructed when they were when we were just a kid. But overall, they still want to protect us. So that's what I would be doing. Just to briefly summarize before we wrap this up.

If I want to evolve out of the nice guy and just be ultimately even just be less of a nice guy, but ideally not be a nice guy in 2026. First of all, I'd regulate my nervous system. Second of all, I would change my internal language from I am a nice guy to part of me is a nice guy. Third, I'd remove expectations from everything that I do. Do it from a place of love, not for love. Four, I would slow down on purpose, slow my breath, slow my movements, be intentional about

Harrison Orr (30:09.252)
out what I do, what I say. Number five, I would stop outsourcing my authority. Stop saying, I don't care, whatever you want, totally up to you. I don't mind. Make a decision, be proactive and remove, I don't know from your vocabulary. Six, I stopped trying to do it on my own. Get the support crew, get the coach, get the mentor, get someone who has been there, done that, someone to hold me as I navigate that space so that I don't fall back into old patterns and don't create

some new story or bullshit of why I need to keep running the same pattern that is clearly not working. And number seven, take action. Stop consuming more information, prioritize the execution and the action over everything else, and then you'll get tangible feedback as to if this approach is working or if you need to go and see someone else or take a different approach. So with that.

That's exactly my framework, I would be stepping into for 2026 if I wanted to evolve out of the nice guy. That's all exactly what we do inside the grounded man method. If you like, that sounds confusing. I don't want to have to remember all that. I just want someone to guide me through exactly what to do. Reach out. If that's you, we can have a chat to see if you're a fit. Otherwise, you've now got the game plan. Don't be sorry, be better. And I'll see you guys next time.