My definition of assertiveness is…..You believe you have the right to state your thoughts, feelings and opinions as long as you don’t hurt anyone in the process.
Aggressiveness is….you believe you have the right to state your thoughts, feelings and opinions without caring about anyone else’s.
Passiveness means…you don’t believe you have the right to state your thoughts, feelings and opinions.
We hope that you all want to be and are assertive. We don’t want you ever to be aggressive or passive, but there are times when you will be both. You are aggressive most of the time when you’re frustrated and have to keep repeating yourself. You’re passive when the issue isn’t important to you, or you know that it is so important to someone else close to you that you don’t want to make a fuss about it.
Regardless, when you are assertive, it means you have to have the tone of voice, verbal and body language to go along with it. Your tone must be even, and your voice should be as low pitched as you can possible get it. You end down at the end of a sentence and your body doesn’t twitch or shift from side to side. You have to be pretty cool to get this across, but once you start practicing, it isn’t difficult at all.
So why do you want to be assertive? Because people admire you and think you are even tempered. It looks like you don’t get rattled and are able to make good decisions. They don’t believe you are beating them up and they trust you. Assertive people inspire confidence and make you feel comfortable. They look as if they have their act together.
Is it easy to achieve this? Yes, believe it or not. It doesn’t take a lot to do this except for being conscious of it. Most of us are in a pretty secure position by the time we reach adulthood. We have been through the sports teams, the language clubs, the service arena and have probably worked at some kind of part time job, so we have taken orders and given them.
We have seen how people react to us and have figured out that calm is best. However, if your self-esteem is low, and you don’t have confidence, you will probably not be good at it. That does not usually typify your entrepreneur, so just keep doing what you’ve been doing as long as it isn’t blowing off steam.