How Can I Be More Assertive?

[Simona Ctin]

Hi guys! I've been watching for a while Leo's videos and I'm really impressed about his work and how it can be applied in real life.I came to the conclusion that I need to be more assertive and I'd like to know what the first steps would be in order to accomplish that.Thank you!

[Clay]

I think one of the several ways to becoming a more assertive individual is to say "no" more. Friends, family, and peers may pull you in all sorts of directions. If you have firm beliefs and know what you want, you can respectfully decline the offers that steer you away from your directed path, and accept the ones that align with it.

[Simona Ctin]

Thank you very much for your opinion

[Arthur M]

i've dramatically changed in the past 2 years and sometimes me being confident and assertive is mistaken as cockiness...well the problem is I really do not care how others take it. Am not doing that to impress, it is for myself.

Anyways if I can share something from that difficult process is 1st before you can express assertion towards others you obviously need some degree of self confidence. So i would start there. Leo has a couple of vids up revolving around self-confidence. Also another vid i think goes well with that process is on how to stop caring about what people think. Sometimes occasions to practice what you learn won't show up, and when they do you are not mentally prepared to apply what you've learned. Trigger situations that are uncomfortable yourself and act upon them as a confident and assertive individual. Start with minor things like during a doctor appointment, not getting some discount promised at the store, disagreeing with peers during a conversation...oh and the basic eye contact goes a long way. Eventually when crazy situations arise and you have to be assertive, you will be ready. I hope you find what works for you. 

[Simona Ctin]

Thank you Arthur. Today i watched "how to stop caring about what people think" and I will focus more on how to build self confidence.From what I understood assertiveness means persistency. So that would mean that you do what you have to do in order to achieve your task, goal, need etc.Am I right?

Edited February 23, 2016 by Simona Ctin

[Aldo Marchand]

@Arthur M @Simona Ctin @Clay Curl @Simona Ctin

(Suggestion here)

I've wrote 6 books and composed/ recorded centens of musics with this technique:

 

1) Choose to focus on what you really like and believe it will make difference into de future.

2) Build plans and strategies to organize a way that will help turning your mini goals into big dreams.

 

[Simona Ctin]

Really appreciate your advice

[Arthur M]

@Simona Ctin You can be persistent without being assertive; It is more like a balance point around passive-aggressive behavior , standing up for yourself and your values while taking into consideration  other people's rights, needs, opinion ....But ultimately it is a honest course of action independent of external thoughts. Check multiple definitions from diff. dictionaries and stack similarities.

[Simona Ctin]

Yeah, I'll defintely do that

Edited February 23, 2016 by Simona Ctin

[Simona Ctin]

@Arthur M How did you increase your self-esteem?

[Arthur M]

By being more authentic. When you start acting yourself and speaking what is on your mind with spontaneity and with minimum filters, your self esteem just tags along. You would think people will judge you for it, and yes they do but trust me, even as recent as yesterday a friend of mine told me that she wished she could just act as freely as I do.

Know how one might wear different facades when around strangers, around close friends, around colleagues or family or by themselves? Yea..be that unique authentic version of yourself when alone in all situations. Smile when something dumb happens, bad jokes, do not act happy if you are not really happy, tell someone if they did something wrong, dont say sorry if you arent really sorry, you know, just betruthful and.....human if that makes sense

Edited February 23, 2016 by Arthur M

[Simona Ctin]

@Arthur M Yeah It makes sense. I'll dig deeper in this matter 

Edited February 23, 2016 by Simona Ctin

[Cookiesliyr]

just remember, making behavioral changes take a lot of time and practice, and human soul\body will resist that for some reasons at first, we as humans have complex defensive survival mechanisms that can even make you ill to stop you from doing something that you are really not comfortable with, even when you see the matter logically harmless, like touching a cat, telling the troth to someone you fear his anger, force yourself to go out when you don't feel like it, your body can do a lot of weird things to prevent what you want.

so don't try to fix everything in your life at once and fast, take your problems one at a time and slowly. keeping up a progress over the time to reach your goal is more important than solving it as fast as possible, trying to solve any big issue or making huge changes can't be done immediately, except in movies or something ...

Edited February 23, 2016 by Cookiesliyr

[Thomas]

The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem by Dr Nathaniel Branden is an absolute must read, do not be deceived by the title and making an assumption that self-esteem doesn't directly correlates with being assertive.
The definition and comprehending what self-esteem is and is not will help or even solve entirely the problem with Your lack of assertiveness.
I can't emphasize enough how important is to DO exercises from this book.

Quote

Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. It is confidence in the efficacy of our mind, in our ability to think. By extension, it is confidence in our ability to learn, make appropriate choices and decisions, and respond effectively to change. It is also the experience that success, achievement, fulfillment – happiness – are right and natural for us. The survival-value of such confidence is obvious; so is the danger when it is missing.”

Self-esteem is not the euphoria or buoyancy that may be temporarily induced by a drug, a compliment, or a love affair. It is not an illusion or hallucination. If it is not grounded in reality, if it is not built over time through the appropriate operation of mind, it is not self-esteem.

The root of our need for self-esteem is the need for a consciousness to learn to trust itself. And the root of the need to learn such trust is the fact that consciousness is volitional: we have the choice to think or not to think. We control the switch that turns consciousness brighter or dimmer. We are not rational — that is, reality-focused — automatically. This means that whether we learn to operate our mind in such a way as to make ourselves appropriate to life is ultimately a function of our choices.

Do we strive for consciousness or for its opposite? For rationality or its opposite? For coherence and clarity or their opposite? For truth or its opposite?

The more you surrender to the fear of someone's disapproval, the more you lose face in your own eyes, and the more desperate you become for someone's approval. Within you is a void that should have been filled by self-esteem. When you attempt to fill it with the approval of others instead, the void grows deeper and the hunger for acceptance and approval grows stronger. The only solution is to summon the courage to honor your own judgment, frightening though that may be in the beginning.
~Nathaniel Branden

Edited February 23, 2016 by Thomas

[Simona Ctin]

@Cookiesliyr @Thomas Thank you for your replies and for the suggestions. Helps a lot