An Excerpt from The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck and 4 Actions for Real Change
An excerpt from The Price of Nice by Amira Barger, published by Berrett-Koehler and longlisted for the 2025 Porchlight Business Book Awards in the Personal Development & Human Behavior category.
“It costs nothing to be nice!” What a travesty of logic. Niceness is not free—it comes at a steep price. It’s a velvet glove over an iron fist, stifling dissent, prioritizing comfort over progress, and conditioning us to accept the status quo. Niceness is one of the most insidious social constructs, keeping us compliant, silent, and complicit in inequity. If we don’t question it, we stay exactly where power wants us—agreeable, easy to manage, and stuck.
The Price of Nice is about breaking free. Amira Barger deconstructs our cultural obsession with niceness, exposes its hidden costs, and offers a practical framework for real change. With sharp analysis and personal insight, she helps readers disrupt the narratives that keep them stuck and reclaim their power.
Guided by four dimensions rooted in social psychology—think, feel, do, revisit—this book offers immediate, adaptable practices for creating change. Because breaking free isn’t only what you know—it’s what you do next.
If you're tired of “good enough,” this book will challenge you, change you, and call you to more.
The Price of Nice has been longlisted in the Personal Development & Human Behavior category of Porchlight Book Company's 2025 Business Books Awards. The excerpt below is adapted from the book's Preface.
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Trayvon Martin’s murder,1 and the aftermath that ensued, was the pivotal moment that opened my eyes. It wasn’t just another news story; it was a catalyst that transformed my understanding of the world. His death, though there had been so many before, jolted me to a level of alertness I had not previously experienced, bringing to mind questions I had not wrestled with nearly enough—questions that kept me up at night and gnawed at my sense of justice, morality, and peace.
At work the next day, Trayvon’s name was on everyone’s lips, the tragic details of his death igniting conversations that buzzed through the hallways. People were talking about the rallies planned in his honor. Many discussed the growing trend of wearing hoodies in solidarity—a simple, silent protest. I suppose I appreciated the gesture, but it just felt so… superficial.
Other colleagues questioned Trayvon’s actions, wondering aloud if he had “brought this on himself.” I stood there, stunned, as people I admired expressed beliefs I wouldn’t have imagined lurking beneath their polished, progressive exteriors. The callous disregard for the life of a seventeen-year-old boy, a child who’d simply gone to buy his little brother Skittles and iced tea, was too much. Yet, I found myself hesitating, a familiar nagging question tugging at my mind: If I speak up, will they think I’m not nice?
I was frustrated—with my colleagues, but also myself. I had the power and the tools to challenge those who blamed a child for his own murder, yet I stayed silent. It was the first time I considered what the price of nice was costing me. That realization set everything in motion.
I began asking the questions that plagued my mind, reexamining the beliefs I had accepted without challenge—a process that ultimately led to me writing this book. Why Trayvon? Why are people who look like me disproportionately dying? Why does this keep happening? Why don’t more people see this as their fight? Why do some march in solidarity but vote against our interests? And why, after all this time, are we still asking these same questions?
These weren’t rhetorical—they demanded answers and action. I sought out those who “got it”: disruptors, thinkers, and changemakers willing to ask hard questions and endure discomfort for real answers. They didn’t always look like me or share my background, but they saw the same broken systems and refused to accept them. And they led me to a difficult revelation: Nice is not the measure.
This truth resonates deeply with women in particular, a reflection of the ways we’ve been shaped by unspoken yet rigid societal expectations. Whenever I’ve shared it, the response has been immediate—an exhalation, a knowing “Yaaas!” It’s not something we were explicitly taught, but something we’ve lived, internalized, and carried. Niceness is woven into our worth; an expectation to shrink, smooth over, and silence ourselves—even at the cost of our authenticity and brilliance.
But don’t be fooled into assuming that this conditioning is limited to women. Spanning identities and generations, it’s a collective expectation that substitutes niceness for connection, courage, and conviction.
More than a personal habit, it’s a deeply ingrained social expectation. Dismantling it requires more than recognition; it demands transformation in how we think, feel, and act. My journey from conformity to courage, from nice to nerve, is proof of how deep and disruptive that shift can be.
Why I Fight
In 2012, I also became a mother, and suddenly, I wasn’t just navigating the world for myself. I was raising a daughter in a society that would demand she “sit pretty” and “play nice.” The weight of that responsibility was transformative. I knew I couldn’t accept the world I’d been handed without fighting for a better one—for her, for me, for all of us.
I was quickly becoming someone I’d been taught to be terrified of: an outspoken feminist, a skeptic, a truth-teller. One of those women who were not well-behaved, who would not go quietly. One of those women I used to snicker and talk about, who I’d thought were crazy. One of those women who had the nerve to expect more. Who demanded that others live up to the values they claimed to hold. I studied and quoted James Baldwin, bell hooks, and Malcolm X, among others. Radicals. I thought often of Zora Neale Hurston’s words: “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”2
This shift wasn’t about abandoning who I was; it was about becoming who I had the potential to be. It was about living a life uninterrupted in which the cost of silence is far greater than the risk of speaking out. That’s why I’m here. Not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve lived the questions.
This transformation didn’t happen overnight. It was a slow reckoning with my own complicity in maintaining the status quo. My journey from snickering in the background to standing on the front lines was one of unlearning, confronting my fears, and accepting the discomfort of being too much in a world that thrives on keeping people in their place.
But breaking free from niceness isn’t just personal—it’s a collective responsibility. Niceness isn’t harmless; it’s a system of unchallenged control. It avoids confrontation and stalls progress. To dismantle its grip, we must first name it for what it is. If we’re not willing to speak truth to power, then what’s the fucking point?
Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself
Many of my childhood memories are rooted in the evangelical Christian church where my parents were ministers. On Sunday mornings, I was often tasked with standing at the front doors—always smiling, polite, and offering a warm handshake. The instructions for being a greeter were simple: Hand each person a program and say, “Hello, I’m Amira, it’s nice to meet you.”
That program laid out precisely what to expect during the service—when to sit, when to stand, when to sing, and how we would all engage with one another. It was a guide to making sure that everything flowed smoothly, that everyone was comfortable, and that nothing would disrupt the order of things.
Much like how I was oriented into church life, employees in corporate America are welcomed with their own kind of program—an onboarding checklist, a values statement, a cultural playbook. They’re taught the spoken and unspoken rules, like what to say in meetings, how to show enthusiasm without rocking the boat, and how to fit in without standing out too much. The goal is the same: comfort, cohesion, predictability. But over time, that kind of program doesn’t just shape behavior. It shapes belief. And sometimes, it asks us to trade authenticity for acceptance.3
Today, my operating instructions are different. Today, it’s about being a force for disruption, for shaking up the systems that keep inequity alive. Not only that, but I’m ripping up the old program. Because progress is about replacing what is with what can be.
I want you to know that, in writing this, I have strived to present to you my most uninterrupted self. I am a biracial woman of Black/Chamoru heritage; a disabled, cisgender, heterosexual, Virgo, agnostic, communications executive, writer, professor, and parent. These are dimensions from which I view the world—intersections that have shaped my life and work. You will find personal stories from my life here, as well as wisdom I’ve gleaned from others. None of us walk this journey alone. Some content is necessarily academic in nature, and some of it is interspersed with pop culture references. Some of it is serious business, and some of it (I hope) you will find humorous. As you’ve already read, there will be language that some might deem unsavory. Sorry, not sorry.
This book is an open invitation to the people willing to take part with me in the uncomfortable conversations of fundamental transformation and radical reimagining—to embrace the chaos that comes from challenging entrenched systems. It’s time to pierce the facade that has engendered our complacency for far too long. To those who would accept that invitation, as you move through these pages, I encourage you to rethink how
you’ve been conditioned to engage with the world, rewrite the program, and cultivate a new greeting.
“Hello, I’m Amira—I’m here to shatter the mask of nice.”
Care to join me?
Excerpted from The Price of Nice: Why Comfort Keeps Us Stuck and 4 Actions for Real Change by Amira Barger, published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Copyright © 2025 by Amira Barger. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Amira Barger is the award-winning executive vice president of communications and head of DEI advisory at Edelman, one of the largest communications and public relations firms in the world. She is also a professor at California State University, East Bay, teaching marketing, communications, and change management. She holds a BA in marketing from Vanguard University and an MBA from LeTourneau University, and she has received DEI certifications from Cornell University, University of South Florida, and SDS Global Enterprises Inc. She currently resides in Benicia, California.
