BE ASSERTIVE – be in control

We are put together by a lot of things; some we are breastfed with, some are drilled into us from early on, some we take to heart by the power of experience and some we ignorantly neglect and/or discard. Among the many things we should be: respectful, considered, appreciative, caring, honest, trustworthy and fair; these and many more are character building-blocks telling the world around us who we are; or are not. On top of my list, you ask? Being assertive – and I am not one bit wishy-washy about that.

To me an assertive person is one who is self-assured, confident, and communicative, which automatically creates a healthy level of self-esteem. And all this without any form of aggression, neither physically nor mentally; the ultimate way of being in control.

When we are not assertive in our relationships with people around us, we pretty much let them control us – so we must ask ourselves if that’s what we want. The control balance in our society as a whole or in whatever smaller groups is that there is a heck of a lot more followers than leaders – a huge load more.

But this is not the type of assertiveness I’m looking for; the assertiveness I’m promoting is the assertiveness we can all achieve on a personal level – you and I, seriously.

Walking the dog the other day, I ran into a friend of mine (coached him soccer many years ago). Let’s call him Michael to protect his privacy (though his real name is Alberta Schwartswold and he lives here in Santa Rosa). Unfortunately I have a tendency to talk “parent” to younger-than-me people; Michael got a bit of that. I had heard that he was pursuing a career change and asked him what he was doing about it. He told me that he had submitted an application for a job that he was interested in. He also told me that a friend of his knew the HR person and would put a “good” word in for him, to hopefully make the odds better concerning getting hired. In my grand wisdom I rolled my eyes and shook my head while making that irritating ‘clicking’ sound with my tongue (and in that order).

“Michael, YOU must do the follow up; trust nobody but yourself and YOU go after the HR person or whoever would do the hiring”. One of the things I have somewhat lived by: ‘You want it done well – do it yourself’ (for the most part…)

Applying assertiveness in a situation like this, include submitting the application and then follow up with a phone-call the next day to make sure the application ended up with the person who can do something about it. And then ask when a decision could be expected to come forth, etc. That is being assertive – being in control.

She looked cute and stunning. I thought about how much I would like to invite her on a date – I thought about it a lot. Perhaps I would run into her by chance – and then I’ll ask her out – perhaps. And that would go on forever till she married somebody else – and then I’d go: ‘oh well; can’t win them all’. No you won’t win anything if you don’t assert yourself. 

Life is also about taking chances, so we take one of those chances by approaching her and say: ‘I think you are beautiful and I also think that you are probably a nice and fun person, so I decided to ask if you would go out with me?’ And then you’ll get to know yes or no - on the spot. For the most part you will get ‘sure, that would be nice’ answers more so than you’ll be shot down. The simple reason is that assertiveness shows confidence, and we like people with confidence; and for some of us it’s rather sexy, huh? Being assertive – being in control.

Remember that what I am talking about is assertiveness on our level, as part of a very pleasant personality trait; remember the non-aggressive thing that exists within our kind of assertiveness; that’s the one I’m writing about here.

Being assertive makes us free and confident when we express feelings, opinions and thoughts. We are also considered of the people around us and we control any anger (why be mad at all when you are an assertive individual?) with compromise and ease – as we are confident that it is never a big deal, really.

Can we all become assertive? Of course we can, and of course it takes some work if you are not assertive as is. All forms of improvement call for effort – duh; so does this one.

What I’m concerned, our house must be clean, metaphorically speaking. We must be organized, have our stuff in order to the extent that we feel accomplishment beyond the norm; a satisfaction of a job well done, by our own person, physically and mentally, to what we do in the work-place, how we handle our social life and so forth. We must be respectful and considered and in that regard we must listen to the people around us and appreciate what they say, who and what they are.

Do I find myself assertive? Yes I do. Sometimes I can also be wrong (shocking as that may sound), and in those cases, I make sure that I’m wrong on the top of my lungs; assertiveness on an adorable level, I’d say – nah, not really.

When I was out in the real world (considering my present retirement a world apart – really) I applied many things to become more assertive. I was NEVER late to business meetings or appointments. I found that it showed respect and consideration, which added points to my assertiveness. I also found that people I was meeting who were late, some of them very late (pathetic ignorance working hard), declined in my estimation of them, which made it a lot easier for me to get the (assertive) upper hand during negotiations – true story.

I was always well prepared, and in many cases only got to use perhaps 10% of the knowledge I had gathered. But the other 90% made me feel secure in my approach and asserted more control as it was.

There are so many ways we can gather ammunition to load our assertiveness, simply by being more respectful, considered, appreciative, caring, honest, trustworthy and fair. As we keep activating these items, we find that we actually improve the way we feel about ourselves, coming from that wonderful feeling of being respectful, considered, appreciative, caring, honest, trustworthy and fair – just to name a few.

Assertive behavior has a lot to do with what we do and how we do it. We cannot sit there and wait for ‘things to happen’, because those ‘things’ will rarely happen the way we want them to and especially when we want them to. So we must take care of ourselves and MAKE things happen, by being assertive and therefore being in control.

Now go do it, okay?

PS. For those of you who know soccer a bit; one of my (many) issues during my coaching-life was that when a teammate passed the ball to you, you NEVER waited for the ball – you should ALWAYS move towards the ball (yes, I used to call it ‘meatball’). If we don’t move towards our goals, somebody will for the most part intercept – get in between and take it away. Assertiveness in a nutshell – don’t you think?