Assertiveness

Imagine telling a significant role model in your life something new and exciting. An idea or event that has stimulated you both mentally and physically. It can be anything from trying out for a dramatic play, joining a sports team, beginning a new career, starting a new marriage, losing weight, developing a new outlook, changing your image, or continuing your education. Instead of receiving an encouraging comment, what you hear instead is: “That’s ridiculous,” “You’re always daydreaming,” or “You’ll never make anything out of yourself.”
Negative statements such as the ones mentioned above can create fear of failure and fear of rejection within a person. This situation can leave an individual on the receiving end feeling helpless. Negative attitudes create barriers toward individual accomplishment. The implicit, or unspoken message, is: “Whatever gave you the idea that you are motivated enough?.”
Do you remember a time when you or a friend finally made the team but the coach left you sitting on the bench? What kinds of feelings did you experience? Humiliation? Insecurity? What will it take for you to get off of the bench and become the athlete, the person, you truly want to become. What’s preventing you from speaking up and letting the coach know that you’re one terrific person, and given the chance you’ll prove just how unstoppable you really can become.
Sitting on the bench, and not asserting yourself, is like being in a play without acting out the part. Do you go through life without getting involved one-hundred percent? Maybe it’s because you believe you might fail, or even succeed, at what you set out to accomplish. Do you set yourself up for failure and sabotage your success by telling yourself that you can’t perform well? Is it possible that you allow unproductive and negative vocabulary to dominate your thoughts? Negative self-talk takes away your motivation and is an inner barrier that must be eliminated.
Here are three ways to overcome fear of success:
1. Continually tell yourself that you welcome challenges. Stand ready and willing to challenge yourself to your maximum capacity. Move forward in your communication by deleting all negative self-talk.
2. Believe that whatever you set out to accomplish, you will give it one-hundred percent. Stop providing excuses to blame yourself, becoming disempowered from achieving your goals and increasing your self-esteem. Believe that your “pride of accomplishment” motivates you to eliminate all the “shoulds,” “oughts,” and “musts,” from your vocabulary.
3. Be the best you can. Continually “see” yourself in an evolving way. Stretch every mental, emotional, and physical fiber within you. Believe and feel that you are one dynamite, ecstatic, and powerful person. Remember, your beliefs impact the way you feel and act.

Have you ever thought why it is so challenging to create happiness and be successful in life? Here are twelve basic traits and values that could help you as an individual towards achieving happiness & success whether it is at your workplace or in your overall life.

1.  Know yourself

The most important thing is to know your strengths and weaknesses as well as your opportunities and threats in order to face the challenges around you. Know your priorities and focus on them to avoid interruptions in achieving productivity and success. You need to accept the reality about yourself before you manage yourself and the people around you. Be aware of your potential and uniqueness as this will help you move forward in life. Write down all the key points about your strengths, opportunities, priorities, potential and uniqueness as well as your achievements to keep yourself on track. Also list your weaknesses, threats and interruptions to decide which of these your need to overcome or find solutions for.

  2.  Self-confidence

Self-confidence is the most valuable trait and it’s necessary to practice this to bring faith in yourself and your abilities. There will be people in your surrounding that may have inadequacies to understand and appreciate you. However it may not be necessary react or response to these neither should you be demoralized or sad about what others think about you as this will affect your self-confidence. Remember you can’t satisfy everyone out there. In fact these could be accepted positively as an input to help you do better or make necessary changes without affecting your self-confidence. Self-confidence will be required to help you overcome your weaknesses.

3. Self responsible

Responsibility is a highly regarded value. This means that you should be responsible for your own actions, and if you have decided on something, then you should head on with it and be willing to manage the consequences or any adverse effects that arise. However reassess the actions and make necessary decisions on changes to prevent further undesired consequences.

4. Assertive

Being assertive is necessary. You have to be firm with your own priorities and approach. Highlight or stress your points clearly, yet flexible and open to new things. Assertiveness should be practiced with self-confidence and responsibility.

5. Wisdom and respect for others

It is important to practice wisdom in your actions and decisions. Be prepared for all reactions and feedback. Handle them with care and wisdom and show respect to other’s opinion and feelings. Complaints are part of any system, so learn to manage them without being intimidated. We can’t satisfy everyone but can do our best within our capacity.

6. Manage conflicts well

Conflicts could also arise, therefore be prepared to listen to all parties. Do not make decision by listening to just one party. Have an open discussion or a personal one depending on the situation in order to handle the conflict.

7. Problem-solving

Address a problem and come up with appropriate solutions. Take into consideration all necessary factors around you. If you leave a problem unattended, you may build-up more problems and create a tensed situation. Seek expert advice if necessary by having a mentor or going for counseling when necessary.

8. Self-pride

It is good to be proud of yourself as if could boost your self-esteem and self-confidence, however do not be arrogant.

9. Continuous learning and improvement

Enhance your knowledge, skills and abilities as they are important as a key to happiness and success. Practice continuous learning and take necessary steps to improve yourself.

10. Having a variety of skills

Having a good mix of interpersonal, technical & management skills is important to solve problems, make decisions, carry out your duties and deal with everyone around you. There are various ways of achieving these perhaps through relevant training and practice, mentoring, reading or perhaps through seminars/courses.

11. Keep fit & healthy

It is very important to keep fit and healthy to avoid stress. Take up activities that help you exercise like dancing, yoga or playing games. Keeping fit benefits in many ways; it takes care of all the systems in your body such as improving your blood circulation, prevents from digestive problems and provides you with mental strength and abilities to perform your duties and other daily chores. Through your activities you may also find friends.

12. Balance your life

It’s necessary to balance your life with many things. Have some activities of your interest that could bring you fun and joy e.g. camping, writing and joining clubs and societies. This will also help you to network, communicate, learn, share as well as vent your feelings, ideas and thoughts. Being a workaholic may not be good and could create unhappiness and stress with your personal relationships and affect your overall quality of life. So do take a break or find time to relax to avoid buildup of pressure and lethargy that would affect your productivity, satisfaction and happiness.

One of the most essential skills needed in handling people and situations is assertiveness. You are assertive if you are clear in letting others know about your expectations without any anxiety or hesitation. This is one area of development to be focused on when coaching executives. Many in management sectors confuse ‘assertiveness’ with ‘aggressiveness.’

What are some of the differences between assertiveness and aggressiveness?

If you are assertive you ask people of what you want directly and openly. There is an air of reassurance and confident around you at all times. While you do ask for your wants and preferences, you make sure to respect other people’s rights and you do not expect others to know what is on your mind without expressing yourself.

If you are aggressive you try to get what you want in someway or the other and you may often cause bad feelings in others. You may resort to different tactics – request, beg, entice, persuade, manipulate or threaten as your means to get what you want. In the process you do not respect other’s rights or feelings. You do not even look into situations that may get both sides what they want, such as win-win situations.

Aggressive behavior might help one to achieve immediate or short-term results but the longer outcome is a steady decline in performance due to unpopularity and non- cooperation from others who are often victims of aggressive or bullying behavior. With the result the aggressive person ends up being over stressed and depressed. Mr. Aggressive is often not supported by his colleagues and is therefore unable to reach his goals in his career.

Mr. Assertive is able to lead, direct and motivate without much of huff and puff. Since he already is clear about what he wants and is able to convince others without hurting their sentiments and feelings he is popular among employees and he gets good cooperation from his colleagues.

An assertive person is able to give unequivocal direction and leadership through his positive motivational messages to his team members. As a result he is able to achieve his goals sooner and rises up the corporate ladder easily. Body language is an important factor of assertiveness. You could keep the following in mind if you would like to develop assertiveness:

A warm smile or a friendly expression shows respect to your listener

Maintaining eye contact shows that you are actively listening to the other person

A relaxed and straight stance should be adopted during communications

Your hands should be kept in an open position to show candidness.

Assertiveness in appropriate situations is bound to win you friends and supporters in your career and in society.       

*Note, To Develop a Millionaire Consciousness, go to:

www.millionaireconsciousness.com      

Thanks

Thomas S Fisher

WHAT ASSERTIVENESS IS, BEING ASSERTIVE, ASSERTING TO INFLUENCE.(Based on author’s site www.geocities.com/assertv)

To be assertive is important. How to assert oneself can be learnt. Easy is assertiveness.

Assertiveness is getting what one wants. Assertiveness pays and is easy. To be assertive is to know how to get what one wants. How to assert oneself, be assertive, confuses many. Many interested in assertiveness want to be assertive but can’t assert themselves. Assertiveness is valued. Assertive people succeed. And, anyone can learn assertiveness.

Some attend personal development courses on assertiveness. Most, read books on assertiveness. They want learn assertiveness, how to be assertive. But they get subjected to a psychological analysis of assertiveness. They get confused about assertiveness. Attempts of many at assertiveness backfire. Some are laughed at if they try to be assertive. Being assertive is not an inherent quality. Assertive people were not born so. One can learn how to assert oneself. One can learn assertiveness. To be assertive is not difficult.

Assertiveness in business, asserting oneself privately, is getting what one wants. That is asserting, being assertive. This explains what assertiveness is and how to be assertive.

Assertiveness is the knowledge of advantageously agreeing or disagreeing with another, motivating and acceptably influencing in one’s favour. Those who are not assertive can be exploited. Assertive people often can not be. Being assertive is asking for something from another, in a specific and clear way, directly, and getting it. Being assertive is, simply, that. Assertiveness is noting more.

Asserting is communicating well. Assertiveness, being assertive, is about how one communicates. Many are hopeless in asserting themselves. People usually use two ways, or fret between them, which are not asserting. Asserting oneself, the way of the assertive, is different.

Few are people who are assertive. Many are not even simply aggressive or passive, but in a limbo. To be assertive one need not be aggressive or passive, but simply know how to be assertive.

If one is not assertive, whether aggressive or passive, one has no, or hardly any, control over how one’s treatment in relationships. An unassertive person is in a no-win situation: if one is aggressive, one does not get co-operation, tries being passive; if one is passive, one faces exploitation, tries being aggressive; when one fails in asserting oneself, one gets considered a bully or meek. One becomes a pushover or disagreeable, people become uncooperative, one gets treated so always, feels frustrated and inadequate. Not so, if one learns assertiveness, to be advantageously agreeable, assertive.

Assertiveness begins with an important but simple realisation. Anyone can be assertive. Anyone can be assertive.

One needs only to ponder on this, to be assertive: We are passive or aggressive indirectly or directly. If we are not assertive, we sit at the desk to write something, silently suffering the loud noise of the television the kid/s are watching while we are trying to concentrate; or we visibly and exaggeratedly scratch our head, hoping the kid/s will notice and lower the sound, or we visibly and exaggeratedly bang the pen on the desk and loudly exclaim ‘Oh, this is difficult!’ hoping the message will get through; or we yell ‘Hey, turn that off!’ That is innocence of assertiveness, not knowing how to be assertive. You aren’t saying clearly and directly, reasonably, what you want.

Say what you want clearly and directly, and reasonably. On assertiveness one can be one’s own teacher and experiment; say, instead: “Turn the sound down a little, please -I have some work to do and I need to concentrate…” People will be more co-operative than one would expect, one will get what one wants. That is being assertive.

Assertiveness, the realisation needed for assertion, to be assertive is simple. One’s being ignored, or resented, is to do with assertion: People have neither the time, nor necessarily the interest, to guess what one wants; they ignore the passive and also the aggressive.

Assertiveness is communicating advantageously. Asserting oneself is knowing how to be considerately polite, direct, specific and clear.

It is psychological: people love to be considered worthy to be asked if it is something social, like to be avoided waste of time if it something formal. Knowing and doing so is assertiveness -that is being assertive.

If you want to be assertive and get what you want, try that -that is all there is to assertiveness.The author has a website at: www.geocities.com/eoa_uk