Assertiveness is an important skill. Your life is enjoyable, however unfortunately, it’s also vastly misconstrued. The challenge to remain assertive is difficult. Have you ever tried to make your beliefs known, while still maintaining peace and understanding instead of aggressiveness?

Assertive people often come off as rude or controlling. In reality, the idea stems generally from people don’t like to be told what to do or how to do something. The trick is in learning how to stand up for yourself without making others feel imposed upon.

You choose whether or not you say something you mean without being mean. A fine dance between assertive and pushy helps you learn how and when to state what you want, get your point across, and leave with dignity intact.

The first step to assertiveness is to own the mistakes we have made, seek to mend the damage, and take full accountability over personal feelings and responses. Once we do this, life changes. We are free.

You can develop the assertive skill with a little know-how and good ole fashioned practice. Give the following tips a go and see if you learn to properly assert yourself:

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Choose your words carefully.

If you have demonstrated passivity in relationships, with your family, or with your co-workers the road to assertiveness is going to feel tough. If you’ve taken the passive road, you’ll have to practice standing up for what you think is essential.

Start with the simple battles where you assert yourself without too much stress: Choosing a restaurant to eat at, what kind of coffee you want. The easy steps help develop the ability to know what to say and when to say it. Small triumphs result is confidence. Remember, assertiveness is not control, its asking for what you need or want, in a respectful way, while still considering the feelings of others.

Think about the different ways your words can be interpreted. Everyone’s story comes with a personal twist, so your words might bring about something unrelated. Go easy with presenting your case.

Another way to process what you want to convey is to write the words down. Take the time to read them back to yourself. Doing so aloud helps you hear how the words might sound. Sometimes how we say something makes more sense than what we actually say.

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Develop good listening skills.

The talent of assertiveness takes great communication skills. Remember communication has two sides — speaking and listening. We have one mouth and two ears for a reason. Know when to quiet down and when to speak up.

The other important aspect of listening means to slow your thinking down. Stop the process of deduction: Don’t listen to reply, listen to understand. Paraphrase what you think you understand, and ask for clarification. If you get some dynamic connections, fantastic. If not, ask them open-ended questions to get them sharing.

Truly listening helps you clearly understand the situation at hand. When you follow up with thoughtful and assertive speech, others are more likely to value your opinion.

Stop the personalization trap.

The art of assertiveness is a balance. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are or you’ve done everything correct, another person may still take what you say wrong. Respectful communication comes from allowing another person to disagree with you, or feel slighted.

Check your intentions. Learn how to brush off comments, which don’t matter in the big picture. You cannot repair every issue, and no response to negativity is much better than over-talking and causing more trouble by over-explaining why we said or did what we felt essential.

Stop the process of deduction: Don’t listen to reply, listen to understand.

Stay humble.

When we remain humble during times of resistance to a newfound assertiveness, we win over the people who are quick-tempered. Sometimes, the time frame from when we start demonstrating humbleness versus ego-centered, may delay the changes in others.

The successful testimony to change is long-term, consistent growth. One way to stay humble is to avoid bragging about yourself. Even if your brag session is in a joking manner, it may come off as arrogant, which creates walls between people we care about, or even people we want to connect with.

One author describes his journey from ego-dominated to humble-spirited when he realized how change takes place and we grow only when we stop pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion.

Ryan Holiday, a young writer, author, and businessman scaled corporate ladders, landed in depression, and built himself back up. His book, The Ego Is The Enemy is highly recommended for anyone who wants to put the ego in its place and mature into a balanced individual.

Show confidence.

People enjoy being led by people who ooze confidence. If you’re going to be assertive and take charge, show the confidence to back it up. People will sense your lack of confidence (fake stands out), so give yourself permission to feel good about yourself and your accomplishments.

Confidence is not the same thing as arrogance. Confidence emits a strong determination. Whereas arrogance, boasts of control and bias. There are three positives shifts you can make to become more confident.

1. Body language is essential. To demonstrate confidence, you’ll carry yourself with a stronger focus. If a person walks with a slouch, they emit a different signal. It’s one of weakness or insecurity. When someone stands upright, they shake your hand without wavering, and make a normal, healthy eye contact.
2. Positivity increases confidence. Think positive means to change your focus when you feel negative. It means you accept the negative, and refuse to let it change you. Direct your focus and you’ll be able to direct your energy. A powerful concept if you think about it.
3. A continuous growth mindset sets you up for consistent confidence. So, if you feel as if you have failed you don’t let it keep you down for long. The beauty of growth is to accept failure as a stepping stone to progress.

Handle negative issues quickly.

When a problem shows up, deal with it right away. If we let the issue build up, we lose opportunity to become assertive. The trait of assertiveness is developed every single time we resist negative self-talk alongside negative issues.

Develop a strategy to reduce impact of negativity by showing kindness and respect. People will remember you when you take the time to instill kindness behind your words and actions. People will remember if you linger on problems, or if you face them with negativity.

Alongside the negative, we might rise up with some feelings of superiority. Remember, you are a human, not angelic. At times, you might feel superior in a situation where you’re being assertive. While the thoughts arise, remind yourself to step down, and into humanity again. Empathy goes much farther than force. Be careful to avoid acting rudely.

Apologize for mistakes.

Along with humanness comes the mistakes. You are not free from mistakes. They will happen. However, how you embrace the mistakes will demonstrate an assertive characteristic. If you make a mistake while in the spotlight, as embarrassing as it is, you can act appropriately and apologize. People will remember your behaviors when you show assertive, direct, and honest apologies.

To make an apology, one needs to come from the direction of honest integrity. State what you feel about whatever it is you need to be assertive about. For instance, say, “I feel upset when you forget to talk to me during the day.” rather than to state: “You make me so angry when you ignore me.”

We cannot blame others for our mistakes or any feelings we encounter. The first step to assertiveness is to own the mistakes we have made, seek to mend the damage, and take full accountability over personal feelings and responses. Once we do this, life changes. We are free.

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In closing, we need to remember how assertiveness skills develop over time:

Remember that the skill of assertiveness is something that develops over time. As overwhelming as change is, trying to take drastic changes isn’t easy. Do the best you can to explore new ways to talk and share, rather than jump into changes. Test the waters by choosing change in incremental steps. Plan your assertive battles.

Use clarity when you think, and develop changes gradually. The gradual changes encourage others to believe in you. It’s a huge deal for someone to accept your new found assertiveness. However, stick to the script and you’ll find others growing respect for you. You’ll be new and approved, and therefore you’ll gain connections.

~Just a thought by Pamela

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This post was previously published on Change Your Mind Change Your Life.

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