WHAT IS ASSERTIVENESS?



Assertiveness is many things to many people, but the most common

definition is about speaking up and letting others know what we think

and feel. It is about voicing our feelings; that is, putting the

right word in a sentence that accurately describes our experience.

In fact, jumping ahead a little, using just the right feeling word in

a sentence is THE thing that will increase our assertiveness by fifty

percent.

I am a psychologist and in my private practice, I deal with eight

issues or problems every day. Lack of assertiveness is one of the eight.

Improving assertiveness skills positively impacts the other seven areas,

usually right away. (For the curious, some of the other seven issues are

low self-esteem, anxiety disorders, depression, relationship issues, etc.)

In my practice I teach clients how to pick just the right words to use.

In fact, I wrote an ebook that describes the nine primary feelings we

humans have. At the back of the ebook I have listed nearly eight hundred

synonyms for these nine feeling words. When it comes time to be

assertive, all a client has to do is go to the back of the ebook and

select the right word, and then use it in a sentence. Nowhere in my

research is there a greater collection of feeling words. I have made

the process very easy and put it in written form in a very

easy-to-understand flow chart format.

Learning assertiveness involves other things besides just choosing

the right feeling words. Clients have to learn that being assertive is

actually a good thing. Too many people fear being assertive because we

think there is going to be conflict or negative feelings involved.

These things are hard to avoid in life, so we need a technique to deal

with them. Assertiveness is just the ticket. We all sometimes have

to deal with negativity, regardless, because it is in the nature of our

personal realities.

But it does not have to be this way either; that is, focusing on

the negative. I think our experiences are more often positive, or at

least neutral. If not, then we need to consider how to create such a

mental atmosphere, which again, is where assertiveness comes in.

And, even if there is no negativity, which is the sought after goal of

most of us, assertiveness is the technique of choice in dealing with our

thoughts and feelings. The technique of assertiveness is very much

needed to get what we want, or at least ask for it regardless of whether

we succeed in actually getting something. (The process of being

assertive is what counts.)

Assertiveness, as I teach it in the office, involves five steps.

We have to 1) know what we actually are thinking and/or feeling,

2) decide that our thoughts and/or feelings are important enough to do

something about, 3) if so, fantasize a little about the possibilities

of expressing ourselves, 4) then, once settling on a "plan," actually

doing something or "working" the plan, and lastly, 5) assessing the

results. I call the fifth step, "feedback." I describe this flow

chart approach to becoming assertive in great detail in my ebook,

entitled, "The Five Steps of Assertiveness."

The process is very easy to understand, but we have to approach

assertiveness, starting with step one. Most people try to skip directly

to step four, which is the "doing" step. We tend to do this without

thinking through the first three steps. Then, we scratch our heads

in wonderment when "things" did not go so well.

Actually, more people fail at assertiveness in steps one or two.

Many of us do not pay much attention to what really goes through our

minds. We are not "mindful," to use a popular phrase. Or, even if we

do have some awareness of our thoughts and feelings, we tend to downplay

their significance. We tell ourselves our thoughts and feelings are not

important, therefore, why bother to tell anyone, much less do anything

about them. This is a formula for non-assertiveness. For much more

information about this and other subjects, see my website.

Dr. Griggs.