The Story Behind It
To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough.” ~ Edith Eva Eger
By BHOOMI DIWA
The idea of the blog came when somebody pointed out that being a woman when a woman tries to be assertive, they are labelled while assertiveness is one of the important communication skills which is being taught by many personality developments coaches. But you do not get good responses when you ask people about assertiveness. This is because a lot of dictionaries has equated assertiveness to aggressiveness. Clarity and directness are synonyms for assertiveness while bluntness and rudeness are synonyms of aggression.
Strangely Assertiveness is more about understanding what one wants in a way that respects the rights and feelings of other people. Assertiveness is learning not to say yes to what you do not want to do. In short, we have 3 different kinds of behaviour in this world- Aggressive, -Passive , – Assertive
Generally, we use some variations of each behaviour. We are generally aware when somebody is pushing forward aggressively and when somebody is a passive and trying to avoid conflict at a cost that people can walk all over them. But assertiveness is the middle part where you respect your own and other person’s wishes, feelings and rights. Developing healthy boundaries help you to be true to yourself and this way you will be able happy and you can bring positive energy to the room. In the world when you are made to feel guilty when you say no, saying yes comes naturally to you. Especially in the culture of hierarchical culture, saying No is out of the question. Let’s see what are the repercussions of saying yes when you want to say Yes. Assume I do what I don’t want to bake a cake just to please you I say yes, even if I bake I will cascade negative energy at my home for saying yes for working on things I am not ready and calling out you the names. Instead of externalizing the feelings, we have with saying yes, let’s focus on learning to say yes. I recently learnt that if you are not ready for anything don’t say yes because the energy you bring to any place is your responsibility. Don’t respect but learn to say No when you can’t.
“Once you have a major success with assertiveness, you learn that it’s a much healthier path than being a doormat to the insensitive folks. You gain respect for yourself, have more time for your priorities, and develop authentic and healthier relationships.” ~ Doreen Virtue
This anxiety can’t be removed just by saying because more or
less everyone knows what it brings to say yes. Maybe because provoking is the biggest bait you receive to your assertiveness. To defend ourselves we tend to respond to provoking comments, as soon as we master the art of not reacting but responding with clearly stating our needs, again and again, we move away from their trap.
At the end with assertiveness there comes less of the need to be acceptable to others and more of a sense of being comfortable in accepting ourselves.
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