Men vs. Women: 6 Stereotypical Differences

For many years, I stayed out of the “men vs. women” debate, mainly because of my dad. He is an old man who grew up in a very patriarchal and chauvinistic society, yet is the most admirable example of gender equality.

My dad cooked, took care of the kids, helped us with our did homework, cleaned the house (inside and outside), brushed our hair, did arts and craft and was never ashamed of any of it. He had four daughters and one son and I thought he was fair and equal in his attitude to boys and girls.

In fact, my dad’s behavior cluttered my outlook on life in a way, because whenever I heard someone talking about the stereotypical man, I said, “This is not true, because my dad is different”. Now, I have to admit that I was wrong. There is something true about the stereotypes about men and my dad was the odd one out.

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Stop Verbalizing and Justifying Your Negative Feelings

As a life coach, I teach mindfulness. To me, mindfulness is observation of sensations, thoughts and emotions without judgment. Our conscious mind is in charge of 10% of our actions and our subconscious mind is in charge of 90%. Therefore, mindfulness is a simple and highly effective way to increase our awareness, overcome negative feelings and gain more control over our actions.

One basic tools used to reach high EQ is “Name the feeling”. Researchers have found that when people give a name to a hard feeling they have, their brain decreases the intensity of the feeling. Matthew D. Lieberman, professor of psychology and director of the UCLA Social Cognitive Neuroscience lab, has shown that simply labeling emotions reduced the activity of the amygdala, the brain’s center of emotional responses, which reduced fear. Naming emotions also increased activity in the pre-frontal cortex, the mind’s regulator.

Many people know this concept, but some of them take it too far, because not all verbalizing is healthy for us. Many people believe that if we name the “problem”, we are half-way into solving it. After working with many clients, I can tell you that almost 90% of them know what their problems are, but they are far from solving them.

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Mental Pain Shouldn’t Kill You. It Can Make You Stronger

The word depression projected onto a sad man's face

I have written before about emotional pain as a reaction to a perceived threat and our body’s way of telling us that something is wrong. Mental pain is not the enemy. It is the messenger. And it is very important not to kill it.

Many people will tell you that when you come out of the other side of pain, you feel stronger. I have learned the hard way that the fear of pain takes more energy than the pain itself. Worry is an example of it. When we worry, we experience mental pain from something negative we have imagined in our head. Yes, all in our head.

There are many techniques to turn mental pain into psychological strength and the more you use them, the less you feel the pain. I have gathered some of them here to share with you. All of them are proven and practical. I use them with my clients.

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Assertiveness: Successful Communication Summary

Middle-aged woman in a suit looking assertive

You can learn assertiveness skills at any stage of life and you can always improve them and gain more respect for yourself and others. In this post, I have gathered all of my assertiveness tips in one big list. I hope this summary will be useful for you and for your children and students.

If we create a society full of assertive people, we will not have conflicts and we will live with each other with respect, so pass this along to everyone you know.

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Vibrating Creamy Thoughts: My Birthday Present

I am celebrating my birthday tomorrow. Every year, on my birthday, I hold a reflection ceremony. It is like a stock take for the passing year. I hope to grow from the inside every year, like the rings of a tree. I hope to add learnings into my life that will make me stronger and happier. These realizations are my own birthday presents.

Some people say that change takes a long time. I disagree. Only the lead-up to the change takes time. The change itself is immediate.

This year, when I did my annual reflection, I realized I had an insightful quantum moment that changed my path. This profound moment was short. It only took one hour.

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Assertiveness: Know Your Rights

Assertive woman writing "I'll do it My Way"

So far, I have covered things that affect our ability to be assertive. This post adds some tips on how to know your rights, keep them and be assertive about them. I hope they will help you on your quest to develop your emotional intelligence and communicate with assertiveness.

When you are assertive, you express yourself with confidence without hurting others. You are firm, not a bully. You are clear, not manipulative. You are honest, not aggressive. Healthy communication is based on honesty, clarity and confidence.

First, you have to know your rights in every communication. It takes two to tango and when one has more rights than the other does, this will not be an assertive relationship. I suggest teaching kids these rights too and giving them opportunities to practice them.

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Assertiveness: Live by Your Own Standards

Faceless woman with a sign showing arrows pointing at the word CONFIDENCE

Assertiveness is a helpful skill in life, yet most people do not have it. They do not have it because they could not learn it at home or from anyone else except professionals. You see, the people who teach assertiveness must be very confident and not afraid that you might use assertiveness with them, and these people are hard to find.

Am I assertive all the time? No, not really. Sometimes, I choose avoidance or aggression, and every time I use them, I feel uncomfortable. They either hurt me or others, which is not very good. Still, I aim to use assertiveness in my communication with others and most of the time, I do.

Assertiveness requires confidence to express your own thoughts and feeling without fear and without the need, desire or intention to hurt anyone else. It is important to distinguish between having the intention to hurt and actually hurting someone else.

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The Optimistic Creed

Everybody in the world wants happiness. Ask around and you will see. Being optimistic is a way to reach happiness and if you want to go this way, you must first believe that it will take you to where you want to go.

When we talk happiness at my workshops, many people highlight the obstacles to happiness. They share stories of heartache, disappointment, frustration, failure and pain. For them, you can only be in a state of happiness when everything in life functions at a 100%. When I ask them, “What makes you happy?” they mostly list what needs not to happen, which shows a focus on the past and on avoiding pain.

When I draw their attention to this focus, they make a list of what needs to happen for them to be happy. This is better, but we quickly discover that one painful thing is enough for them to feel unhappy, but to feel happy, they need the whole list to happen at the same time. This way, they make sure that unhappiness is easy to reach and happiness is really hard.

When my clients understand that this is a problem, they usually ask, “Ronit, how do we change the formula?” and one of the best ways to do it is by practicing optimism.

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Assertiveness: Things You Should Keep to Yourself

Keeping things to yourself does not mean keeping them a secret. Assertiveness comes from confidence, while secrets come from fear. Sharing is expressing yourself confidently without reservation and without any pressure to convince others or justify your own thoughts and beliefs.

Here is a list of things you can keep to yourself or share selectively. If you are confident about them, you do not need validation, approval or to have the majority with you to hold them. If you want someone’s opinion, ask. If someone asks for your opinion, respect their choice not to accept it or to do whatever they want with it. If they disagree, do not like it or do not want to use it, it should not create any doubt in you. Some things are yours to keep and you can share them, but never with pressure. Pressure is not assertiveness.

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Assertiveness: Keeping Things Private

In order for us to be assertive, we need to create clear boundaries between us and other people. In the previous post about assertiveness, I explained that assertiveness is the ability to express our needs and desires without hurting others and that this skill is important, yet nobody learns it at school. In this post, I will describe the things we do (and should not do) that sacrifice our own best interest and let other people into our personal space.

In order to be assertive, we must understand that everyone is entitled to his or her own thoughts, beliefs and actions. At the same time, we do not have to accept them as applicable to us. We should always stick to the things that are important to us and take care of ourselves first.

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