How learning to be assertive improved my existence

Have you heard of the word assertive? What about aggressive and passive? Those three words come together in a topic that is widely researched in the field of modern psychology.

Being assertive means being able to stand up for yourself or others and share your views and understandings. This is a way of communication in which you respect the view of others without sacrificing your beliefs and voice (being passive) or without the need of aggressiveness in order to have your voice heard (being aggressive).

This year brought us all a lot of uncertainty and changes, to which I found hard to adapt, without working on my mental health. I came across this topic when I was looking for strategies and mechanisms to rebuild my self-confidence and bring positivity in my life.

When I learned about it, I found that if I know how to be assertive in all aspects of my life, I will be able to improve my wellbeing . Having a strategy that allows me to stay true to myself without disrespecting me (when passive) or others (when aggressive), could potentially help me gain confidence in my communication with everyone and control my emotions.

Sounds great, but from my experience it wasn’t easy to adopt this strategy and transform it into a mechanism. What happened was that in the moments I had to actually use it, my emotions were stronger than me. They took control over the situation and the outcome was either passive or aggressive behaviour, depending on the leading emotion. I started thinking ,,How can I take the control back?’’. I came to realise that in order to achieve my goal I had to train myself.

OK, but creating hypothetical situation wasn’t bringing real emotions, so I couldn’t actually control anything. After a bit of thought on it I realised that I can use my real experiences for self-reflection.

Every day or night, every time I had a bit of spare time, after a conversation or the next day, I started reflecting on what had happened. I would take any conversation or any situation of contact with someone and contemplate on it. How did I managed the situation, what emotions took over me, was I aggressive, assertive or passive, what it gave me, what was the outcome, how the oponent persieved me. Every question that comes to mind is helpful.

The next step was to think about what the situation and the outcome would’ve been if I took another approach. I will explain exactly how the process happens in this period of self-reflection.

So, let’s take an example. I get up in the morning and want to take a shower. I’m also running late. My partner, mom or someone is heading to the shower at the same time. The conversation has three main ways in which it can go.

I can choose the passive side, see them and say something like ,, Oh, are going for a shower? Yeah, go I’m fine’’ or something similar in which I suppress my feelings and needs.

I can see the aggressive side and do something like ,, Stop, I will take a shower before you’’. In this case I don’t even have to slam the door in order for the action to be aggressive. The fact that the other person has no idea what is going on can create different types of negativity because of my disrespectful approach.

The third way could be something like ,, Good morning, are you going for a shower? Actually I’m running a bit late, so can I go first or can you please be quick?’’ In this case you defend your needs and believes, but you still respect that the person has a choice and that he/she might have another point of view. You also give a type of solution to the situation.

Please note that we can go on and on about ways the story can be different. We are only talking about yourself and the control on your side. Whatever the other person chooses as a response or way of acting or talking, could never take anything from you if you know how to control yourself.

So, I’m already in the shower (what a pleasure) and I use a minute of my time to think about what I did and what could’ve been different. Which one of the approaches could bring me what.

With time I became more self-aware and I started automatically implement assertiveness in every occasion, conversation and situation. I regained a lot of my confidence and I actually got so much more respect and admirations from everyone in life.

Everything we do in life requires from us to start from somewhere, to actually get the action done. You might need to do small steps, but always believe that what you do today will change who you are tomorrow.