Before you start, it’s important to understand what being assertive means. Psychologists define assertiveness as being able to express yourself effectively and stand up for your point of view while respecting the rights and beliefs of others, while maintaining control of one’s emotions (APA.org). The basis of assertiveness is mutual respect and honesty. Assertive communicators are straightforward and know how to set and maintain healthy boundaries. Their relationships value and promote trust.
If you’re serious about living an authentic life and succeeding in reaching your goals, learning to be assertive is crucial. It’s one of the soft-skills that are needed to lead and survive in the workplace.
Think about how you feel about your life right now: Are you satisfied with your personal and professional situation? Are you conflict avoidant? Do you worry about what other people think of you? Do you tend to over-do and give to others but then get angry that you did?
If you’re not happy with where you are now, the good news is that assertiveness is a habit that can be learned just like any other. With practice and commitment, you can change your mindset and live a life more aligned with your true values and aspirations.
Try these
tips for introducing a more assertive approach into your life:
Decide
what your priorities are and stick to them.
Work
out your individual boundaries i.e. what
you will/will not accept from others or do for others
Develop
a positive open posture and look people in the eye when you speak to them.
Use
positive ‘I’ statements about how you’re feeling instead of blaming or finding
fault with the other person. Be especially wary of feeling tempted to say words
such as: ‘you always’ ‘you never’ ‘you should or you must’
Get
comfortable with saying ‘no’ to things you don’t want to or can’t do. Keep it
simple and non-emotive and don’t feel you need to add an excuse or explanation.
Only
use ‘sorry’ when it’s appropriate for the situation. You don’t need to
apologize for saying no.
Offer
alternative suggestions to proposals you don’t like.
Look
for compromises and negotiate on them
Be
honest and direct about your feelings, thoughts, and intentions.
Consider
writing a script for a situation that feels awkward. Rehearse being confident.
Try to keep
your focus on the impact of the situation and finding a way to work together to
find a mutually satisfying solution, which is where negotiation comes in to
play; there is always a workable solution. Agreeing to disagree and learning to
walk away from a situation will bring you inner peace.
Above all, being assertive means staying in your power,
accepting that you have control over how you approach the situation and your
feelings about it. Assertiveness won’t get you everything you want all the
time, but you will feel in control and deal much better with situations that
would have previously been stressful.
Being surrounded by people with a negative attitude isn’t fun. No matter what happens, for some reason, these people are able to see the worst in every situation. It’s almost as if they are challenged to find something to complain about. Negativity is like a disease that can spread like wildfire. Soon, others will start seeing the negative in situations as well.
But, what if the complainer is you?
Being
stuck in negative thinking is stressful. Not just mentally, but physically and
emotionally, too.
How
do you change? How do you stop the negative thinking? Is it even possible?
Many people ask these questions. There is an answer, but it takes work. It means changing how you look at the world around you, but also how you see yourself.
The first thing to understand is this: positive thinking does not mean that every time something bad happens you feel good about it. It means having a solution-oriented perspective. It means that when you are presented with a problem you want to find a solution, not complain because you have a problem. The brain will focus on what it is fed so if it is negative, then negative is all that is seen.
This begs the question, is it possible to change this way of thinking? A resounding ‘Yes!” is the answer. It will take some work; in fact, developing a new habit can take anywhere from 60 days to a year. The hard part is unlearning old behavior, implementing the new, and then practicing for it to ‘stick,’ voila – new way of thinking.
If
you’re ready to work a bit on yourself, here are 6 steps you can take to become
a positive thinker:
Look for the Positive
Life is
challenging. Other people do things that harm us, we get ill, economic
downturns can cause us to lose our jobs, and more. Looking for the positive can
be difficult. It takes practice and if you don’t make it a part of your everyday way of thinking, you will lose the skill.
When
you have a strong negative reaction to something, take a breath, a deep breath.
Calm that reaction so that you know your mind is unaffected. The point is to
not dwell on the feeling but to focus on what can be done. Look for a solution.
Ask what you can do about it and then do it. When the situation has passed, we can often
look back and see how we could have handled ourselves differently – do this now
with past situations and look for the positive, look for when you could have
asked yourself what the solution might be. This way you can begin to see
current challenges differently and practice looking for solutions. This will
help you to respond more positively, instead of just reacting to the negative
and complaining because you think you have no control.
Maintain a Gratitude Journal
Make
journaling an everyday habit, whether it
is first thing in the morning or one of the last things you do each evening.
Using your smartphone or a pen and notepad, write about all that you are
grateful for. Look over your day and recall the experiences you had that you
are grateful for, including things you appreciate about yourself. This simple habit will help you recognize the
positive things that are happening your life and help you see the positive in
situations much faster.
Say “I Get To”
A
small change in how you talk to yourself about your daily life will go a long
way toward helping you become a positive thinker. One of these is the simple
phrase “I have to do this”. You say it every time you do something you don’t
want to do, putting your mind into the negative. For instance, “I have to go to
work” can feel overly negative, especially when there is a project you don’t
look forward to working on.
Replace
the “I have to” with “I get to”. This way of thinking allows you to see and
appreciate the positive points of the mundane, daily things you do. “I get to
go to work” can be expanded on at any time to include “I get to go to work and
finish that project that has been annoying me” or “I get to go to work to
finish that project so I can work on something new.” Another example could be “I
get to go to the grocery and buy the stuff I need to make my favorite dinner”.
As you can see, within a short time this simple change of thinking will help
you feel more positively about your day.
No Problems, Only Challenges
Much
like changing the word have with get,
when you have a problem you can instead say you have a challenge. When you have
a problem, it’s usually something that is broken and almost always something
that is negative. Your subconscious connection with the word is what is
creating the negativity. By using the word challenge you open your mind to see
solutions.
Understand That You Have Control
Nothing that happens to us is good or bad, positive or negative until we assign that attitude to it. You have the ability to control how you see the situation and to understand what you can do about it. When you choose to respond, rather than react, with a positive attitude that asks “What can I do now?” “What can be done about this now?” “Does this really apply to my life now?” you are in control of your thoughts and your actions. Neuroscience says that we need 3 positive thoughts to override one negative – doing this action will help you control your thoughts and actions. It puts you in problem-solving mode for how you will deal with any situation.
Positive Self-Talk Only
Have
you listened to what you say to yourself each day? If you said the same thing
to someone else, would it make them feel better or worse? When you catch
yourself saying something negative you need to stop, take a breath, and instead
say something positive. Ever say “I’m such an idiot!” under your breath? Stop.
Now say “That’s not true. Sometimes I do smart things like XXX” and then list a
couple of examples to remind yourself of what you are capable of. Find a way to laugh at yourself and the
situation as it will diminish any negative feelings you have around the
situation while releasing dopamine, our happy chemical which gives your more
positive feelings.
There
you have it. 6 steps to become a positive thinker. Don’t be discouraged,
however, if you find this to be more challenging than you expected. You are
learning, so that means you will make mistakes. If you need a reminder or ‘catch’
yourself when making a negative statement, write down (or tick off) every time you have a
negative, or have an accountability partner to remind you. You will soon see
that it won’t take long before your awareness is raised and you will work on
the steps above.
Be
kind to yourself during this process, as change is not easy. Shrug it off and
keep at it because you will be happier which, in turn, will spread that positivity
around.
There is absolutely no way for you to be successful and reach your goals until you accept who you are. You have to like yourself and what you do before anyone else will.
The world detects how you feel about yourself and often simply shares the opinion you have about who you are. It is said that what you put out is what you attract; so, if you are not kind and compassionate to yourself, then you will be coming from a low level of vibration which will show up in all areas of your life, especially in your work.
When you are at a lower level, stress and anxiety are free to creep in which can lead to a host of mental, physical, and emotional troubles. Productivity and time management decline, behavioral issues may arise (i.e. irritability, conflict, etc.), and disengagement to some level occurs.
But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Whether you realize it or not, you do have control over your thoughts and actions so you step into your greatness. You must be yourself and free yourself in the process.
You are an individual who is unique. Your talents and abilities, you intelligence and interests, you opinions and tastes, make you who you are. There is no need to hide a part of yourself or alter a part of yourself for the sake of conformity. True success is about freedom and all truly successful people are individualists who have, more or less, accepted and glorified who they are. You should do the same.
At the same time, being yourself does not mean glorying in mediocrity. You need to be the very best version of yourself possible. This means that you have to work at being you.
You have to put the time into self-improvement. If you want to be great, you have to take daily actions that lead you there. Acceptance is not an excuse for laziness, cowardice or fear. Life is a privilege. It is a gift.
The gift and the privilege of life is that you get to be yourself, the best self you can possibly be. Use the gift; take advantage of the privilege that you’ve been given every day. Take time to breathe, to plan, to visualize, and to work on becoming the best version of you so you become great.
“To increase your effectiveness, make your emotions subordinate to your commitments” (Brian Koslow)
Don’t squander the chance. Let your own unique light shine forth. This is the light that will illuminate the path to real success in life. It will also be the light that attracts other people to you and shines the way to greatness.
Do you ever wake up and feel brain fog? The night before, you set for this day and the goals you want to achieve but, suddenly, you feel foggy as if you can’t move. You know you want to work on them but, for some reason, you don’t know what to do, lest have the desire.
I’ve been there more than I care to admit. So, why does this occur? There can be several explanations but the basic one is that an unconscious thought arose and thwarted you. To understand some basic facts from neuroscience, the thought(s) that arose released some chemicals, particularly cortisol, which goes immediately to the prefrontal cortex or the executive function of the brain.
This, then, puts you into a threat state and we can almost feel paralyzed from taking any action. Because it feels threatening, it’s easier to stay right where you are – in the comfort of your daily actions and life.
Essentially, change is what is leading to the fog – moving from what you know to what you don’t know. So what is the answer? How do you move forward to your goals and this uncharted territory?
There are several steps that I have found that should help you, too:
Be aware of your feelings, and then dig into your thoughts – feelings are going to be known but it all starts with the thoughts. When you feel that flutter in the stomach, irritability, anger, sadness, etc, that is when you want to stop, breathe, and then check into any thoughts you are having. Writing them down helps to identify and capture them.
Take a pause – breathe, yawn, stretch, stand up; all of these will calm your mind and body so you can focus on the issue at hand.
Self-talk – as strange as it sounds, self-talk can snap you out of the fog state. Reasoning with yourself and stating positives helps with motivation, as do positive affirmations. I have found this very helpful to dispute any negative thoughts I am having.
Ensure your daily goals are written – it’s not enough to keep them in your head with all the millions of other thoughts you are having. Writing them makes them real, so then you can identify specific actions to take. I find fulfillment in crossing off those steps as I get them done.
Use the 5-Second Rule – if you haven’t heard of it, the 5-Second Rule was developed by Mel Robbins and is a way to circumvent the pause so you take immediate action. I used it today to get up an hour earlier and walk before I started my day; it sounded so good last night but not so much this morning. However, I made the statement to get out of bed and counted 5-4-3-2-1 and immediately stood up. I did take that walk.
I hope these steps are useful for you. Our brains can be a hindrance or we can use them to their fullest. You can train your brain for more positivity and productivity. It all starts with the intention and then action.
What’s stopping you from taking action? Is it fear? Perhaps you’re waiting for the right break instead of making your opportunities in life? Or maybe you believe you’re not smart or talented enough? These negative beliefs are holding you back.
There’s a reason why so many intelligent people fail. They tend to overthink everything and are often afraid to take risks. Negative experiences in the past can come flooding back in the present when one is not ready, or prepared for them. These beliefs result in procrastination and avoidance, which only lead to more negativity and inaction
If that’s your case, here are four powerful reasons to become an action-taker:
Get Rid of Doubts
If you don’t take action, you’ll keep wondering What if? You will struggle with self-doubt and question your decisions. The woulda- coulda- shoulda’s will eat you alive. Taking action builds experience and boosts your confidence. It also allows you to discover new resources and information that will contribute to your success.
Your Time Is Limited
Steve Jobs once said that remembering you’re going to die is the best way to stop thinking you have something to lose. Your time on this earth is limited. You never know what’s going to happen a month or a year from now on.
You might never get a second chance to rent that perfect office space in your area, go to that meeting you’ve been postponing for weeks, or apply for your dream job. Take action today! Don’t settle for anything less than you deserve!
One Thing Leads to Another
Getting started is often the hardest yet the most important step to success. No matter your plans, you must take action to bring them to life. Stop overthinking the decision as brain chemicals hit the executive function in the brain, stopping you in your tracks. Using principles such as Kaizen, where you start with the least threatening action and work your way to the next step and the next, will subvert those chemicals so your fears don’t arise.
Once you make that first step, everything else will fall into place. It may or may not work out as you hope, but it will lead to something new. Think of it as an opportunity to grow and learn.
Let’s say you want to apply for a job that sounds perfect for you, but you know you aren’t quite qualified enough. Yes, it’s scary to apply, but what’s really at stake? Even if you don’t get the job, you’ll get practice interviewing for your dream job. You’ll also get feedback on what you need to focus on to get a similar job in the future. When you start taking action, you get results.
Develop Your Skills
Whether your projects succeed or fail, there’s always a chance to learn new things. Taking action will help develop your skills, leading to greater confidence. Be sure to write down these new skills to capture them while celebrating this new learning.
The next time you want to take action on a dream, you’ll feel better prepared and have more experience. On top of that, you’ll approach things from a new perspective and confidence and won’t repeat the same mistakes in the future.
