Ask Angela: Nice Advice

Have questions? Angela Haupt connects with experts and shares their words of wisdom.

Angela Haupt is a health and wellness editor at TIME. She talks with experts about readers’ problems, then writes articles to share what she learns. Here, she addresses a question about being nice in difficult conditions.

It’s important to be nice, but it’s not always easy. How can I be nice even when it’s hard?

When you’re a toddler, you’re taught that being nice means saying please and taking turns. As you grow up, you learn that the world is a bit more complex. Being nice isn’t as simple as it used to be.

Though it isn’t always easy, there are big benefits to being nice—and not just for the recipient. Emiliana Simon-Thomas is a science director at the University of California. She points out that people love the “warm glow” of knowing they’ve improved someone’s day. Plus, having nice interactions “is a way to feel like you belong,” she says. “We feel like we belong in [the] community, as opposed to walking around and feeling sharp or edgy or grumpy.”

For these reasons and others, it’s important to be nice, even when it isn’t your first instinct. “There’s always an opportunity to do or say something that is uplifting,” Simon-Thomas says. Here are some tips.

Show that you’re listening.

One way to be nice is to pay attention. “We have to actually put in effort to listen,” says Amanda Cooper, who works in the department of communication at the University of Connecticut. Don’t multitask. Even if you think you can clean out your backpack while listening to a classmate talk, they might not agree.

Find something you have in common.

Look for something familiar in every person you meet. Simon-Thomas says to ask yourself “if there’s a way to think, ‘That’s something that happens for me, too,’ or ‘I can relate,’ or ‘I admire that.’” The answer is probably yes. So it might not be so hard to be nice, even to a person who seemed very different or unkind at first.

Share your smile, and mean it!

Smiling at someone is a “very simple, core way to be nice,” Simon-Thomas says. But there’s an important rule: It has to be genuine. Fake smiles don’t cut it.

Use people’s names.

Cooper once met an important scholar. A year later, she met him again. He said, “Hey, Amanda, how are you?” “I was so blown away that he knew my name,” she says. “When we call someone by name, we cue to them, ‘Hey, I know who you are—I see you.’”

If you have a question you’d like Angela to answer, send it to tfkeditors@time.com.