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.
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.
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.
In the last post about the paradox of expectations, I explained how unmet expectations can bring lots of misery to life when we do not understand them properly. Today, I will explore additional aspects of expectations and what happens to us when our expectations are not met.
Many people think that expectations are part of their identity. They expect so much of themselves that they believe this gives them the “right” to expect the same from others. I am sure that if you examine the definition of arrogance (“having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities”), you will see someone who expects a lot from themselves and from others as arrogant. Thinking highly of yourself is great, but expecting others to fulfill your expectations is not!
Most people care a lot about what others think about them. They are in the approval trap and have the disease to please. It is very hard to be assertive and to take care of your own interests when you are busy pleasing others. It may be easier when you are young, but it becomes more complicated during the teenage years, when you realize that that some of the expectations of those around you contradict others.
More people find the pain we experience from unmet expectations unbearable. They think that life is hard when things do not happen the way they expect them to. But this is only because they believe life is supposed to work as they expect.
My life changed when I was a teenager. I was in the middle of 10th Grade when the school counselor gave me a letter telling me that since I had too many failures in my report card, I would not be able to stay for 11th Grade.
There was nothing special about it. I counted the days to the end of the year, so I would not have to go to school anymore. I hated school with every cell of my body. I was looking forward to the end of it.
The change happened when there was a contradiction between what I wanted and how it felt. You see, I wanted to leave school at the end of 10th Grade anyway, but it just did not feel right.
This inner conflict was a very big quantum moment in my life. It made me wonder, “How was it possible to get what you want and still be unhappy about it?” It is a big question. Have you ever asked yourself this? I suggest you do!
In my kids’ assessments, I often need to discover what motivates the kids, so I play wizard games with them.
I believe that wanting is the essence of life. This is the battery that keeps us moving. I know that many parents tell their kids that life is not about what they want, when they really want to say that in life, we do not always get what we want. This is true, but I think they are making a mistake. Life is all about wanting.
Even in Buddhism, the intention or desire is what starts everything. Without it, we do nothing at all. We do not think, do not feel, do not do, do not move, do not connect and do not even search for happiness and good life. Without wanting, life has not meaning.
What do you want?
This is a simple question and your answer reveals a lot about you. I teach my clients to ask themselves this question from time to time and answer it.
When people ask me to summarize my studies, I say they were all about how the brain works. The first four years focused on how to use this knowledge to stimulate learning. Later on, I learned how to work with the subconscious mind to avoid misery and have more success and more happiness.
Learning about the brain is a never-ending quest. There is much research in the world about the brain and its functions in health, in success, in relationships, in learning and in everyday life. Over the years, I have tried to share my learning about the brain and its functions through this blog, especially in relation to parenting and education.
Why parenting and education? Because these two areas are very close to my heart. Since you are reading this, you probably care about them too.
Today, I would like to share some insight that is very important in parenting and in education. I want to tell you how the conscious and the subconscious minds work. Specifically, I want to tell you about how the subconscious mind deals with humor.
I think that teachers have a social responsibility. Teaching is all about making a difference in the world by inspiring children to be the best they can be. Being in education myself, I often think of my role as that of a social activist.
You see, teaching is the best way to make the ripple continue. I have a social responsibility to give my students the tools to build this world. And to live in it in peace and harmony, with themselves, with the land they live, on and with others. This way, they will continue this cycle with everyone they meet in their life.
Making a difference is on the agenda of everyone who considers becoming a teacher. It’s part of the job description nobody ever reads before embarking on their teaching adventure, but everyone totally understands within a very short time of teaching.
I grew up in a poor family. We were five children, my mom left home early in the morning and my dad was the town postman and when he finished his first job, he worked a second job as a handyman. “Money cannot buy happiness” was my parents’ motto.
Only later on, when I started making a lot of money as student, I realized that poor people come up with these beliefs about money to justify their lack of money and they disconnect money and happiness to give their life a better meaning. What my parents really meant was that we could be happy in many ways and money was not a condition to happiness. I agree with that.
Money brings an enormous feeling of happiness if you use it to … give.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School checked the connection between spending money and happiness and they found out amazing things that are important for all happiness seekers to know.
In one experiment, they gave students $5 or $20 and asked half of them to spend it on themselves and the other half to spend it on others. One group was taking the money and enjoying it, while the other was giving it to someone else to enjoy.
What they found was that the “givers” were significantly happier at the end of the day. So money can buy you happiness if you use it to make someone else happy.
In Parenting is Teaching, not Preaching, I explained why kids resent parents who take too long to explain things and why a relationship based on lecturing your kids is not healthy and makes the kids just not listen to you.
Today, I share five tips that will make the communication and cooperation at home better for you and show you how to switch your parenting from preaching to teaching.
1. No Pink Elephants
Parents are used to telling their kids what not to do. The words “don’t”, “stop” and “no” are very common in the parenting vocabulary. Unfortunately, using them only makes the child do more of what you are trying to stop. Read Beware of Pink Elephants for more.
Rather than telling your kids what not to do, tell them what you want them to do and notice how their behavior changes dramatically.
Read How to Switch Your Parenting from Preaching to Teaching »
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