How to Understand Assertiveness When one is assertive they confidently self assured of themselves. That’s a good feeling isn’t? Well confidence already is a feeling and one can feel confident about many things but assertiveness gives you just a little bit extra confidence that you truly believe and assure yourself what you’re confident about. Think about it like this confidence can put you at 100% but being assertive will put you at 110% maybe even more over. Being assertive is a good thing but it can be a little bad since some people might be given the wrong idea by how someone conveys their assertiveness. They might thing you too assertive sometimes to the point of being aggressive. You need to control your assertiveness because you or anyone else don’t want to be known as an aggressive pushover. That person really isn’t that popular and not getting the invites to the cool parties after work or finals. You need to find a fine line between being too assertive and a little less assertive and balance that line. There have been studies done about assertiveness showing how much it has to do in establishing personal boundaries for you and those around you and there are three categories of assertiveness that many people fall into and the first is being passive where they can overcome their own personal boundaries and if you’re passive yourself you’ll probably say yes to a lot of thing some of them things you don’t really want to do or have other people take credit for the work you do. Passive people fall into these traps mostly because they’re afraid of speaking up for themselves and that behavior will leave them being manipulated and abused. You might be passive yourself if you see yourself as the victim in many scenarios.
Type two The next type of assertive person is well assertiveness itself honestly. Being assertive means you’re unlikely going to allow yourself to be manipulated but if you’re willing to take on any extra work when necessary you allow other people to have there way when the time is appropriate. An assertive person generally feels good very confident about the decision they have made and are more in control of their own destiny than other. The last type of assertive person is one that’s assertive to the point of being aggressive and those people are more unwilling to compromise or let someone else’s voice be heard. Assertive aggressive people have a mentality of “my way or the highway” because its their ways voice and rules that only matter. You have no say in the matter of things and their social circles more likely are consisted of a few close friends who view them as the big dog or leader as it where. The problem with aggressive personalities is that they aren’t right all the time so they will take advantage and manipulate others into thinking they are right without the people being manipulated realizing it. What we’re here to help you with is landing on the middle of the assertiveness scale so you can be more successful in life and have better personal and work relationships since being assertive means you know how to properly express your feeling and that you can assert your own rights and ways while still respecting the rights of other people. You won’t have too much conflict if you do that with other people since passive and aggressive people ten to live in worlds that are filled with discord and drama thanks to their inability to properly talk about their feelings and desires constructively.
The Cultural Norms When one tries to be more or less assertive there will be some problems that come into place that have to do with our culture’s social norms such as how assertive women are thought as overbearing and/or unpleasant people sometimes whereas assertive men that are so assertive towards becoming aggressive they’re seen as go getters instead.