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It is the ability to express yourself and your rights without violating the rights of others. It is appropriately a direct, open and honest communication which is self enhancing and expressive. Acting assertively will allow you to feel self confident and will generally gain you the respect of your peers and friends. It can increase individual’s chances for honest relationships and help you to feel better about their self and self control in every day situation. This in turn will improve decision making ability and possibly chances of getting what one really want from life.
Assertiveness basically means the ability to express ones thoughts and feelings in a way that clearly states the needs and keeps the lines of communication open with the other. However before one can comfortably express needs they must believe that they have a legitimate right to have those needs. All individuals have following rights
- The right to decide how to lead their life includes pursuing own goals, dreams and establishing own priorities.
- The right to have their own values, beliefs, opinions and emotions and the right to respect them.
- The right to tell others how one wish to be treated.
- The right to express oneself and to say no I don’t know and I don’t understand.
- One has the right to take time to formulate ideas before expressing.
- The right to ask for information or help.
Many people feel, attending to legitimate needs and their assisting rights, is being selfish. Selfishness means being concerned about only ones rights without regarding the others. Hence being assertive is not being selfish.
Assertiveness is also mistaken as ‘Aggressiveness’. Aggressiveness means expressing one’s rights at the expense of degrading or humiliating others.
What assertiveness will not do? Asserting oneself will neither necessarily guarantee fair treatment by others, nor it will solve all personal problems or guarantee that others will be assertive and not aggressive. However lack of assertiveness is certainly one of the reasons for conflicts.
Specific techniques for assertiveness:
- Be as specific and clear as possible about what one wants.
- Be direct; deliver the message to the person whom it is intended.
- Ask for feedback, encourage others to be clear, direct and specific in their feedback.
Learning to become more assertive
If anyone want to be more assertive they should use assertive skills selectively. It is simply not saying verbally to others, but how one communicates non-verbally too such as gestures, eye contact, facial expression and posture. It takes time and practice as well as willingness to accept one’s mistakes to reach the goal of acting assertively.
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