You have heard several people claiming that you should be more assertive to avoid hurting others. In other words, you should stand up for yourself to express your opinions as you consider the other person’s needs. Such aspects refer to assertiveness, which means when you directly communicate with others without making them feel upset. Here are the guidelines which can make you assertive without being aggressive.
1. Do not fear anger
When you are enhancing your communication skills, and you might think that anger is the worst issue you should always avoid. That is because anger can accumulate deep inside such that it becomes too much for you to handle, and you express it at once. Therefore, you should change how you approach to anger. For instance, you can begin by allowing it to happen and understand that it is a natural emotion that you cannot prevent from happening. After that, you can try to understand it. In that way, you can easily internalize it and watch its consequences. The moment you make peace with your anger, you will manage to relieve yourself from it. By doing that, you will express your opinions freely and communicate with other people without developing the need to blame, argue or yell at them.
2. Be a good listener
Being a good listener entails maintaining an open non-verbal, and respectful posture and attitude as you listen to the other person and restate their words. While communicating with others, you are also supposed to manage your thoughts and emotions and maintain eye contact. In that way, you can separate your explanations, defenses, reactions, and goal from collective issues. Most importantly, you should know that your body language plays a critical role in an assertion. Therefore, you should mind your body language by standing in control, relaxed and calm while maintaining open arms and a light smile when expressing your opinions. Remember, most people become receptive to a gentle by vigorous discussion instead of a loud and bold one.
3. Believe in yourself
If you comprehensively understand your topic, you can easily become knowledgeable and passionate about it. Therefore, when you have confidence in yourself, you will manage to discuss a specific topic and probably influence others to believe and have faith in you. In other words, sincerity will develop naturally, and you will not find yourself being aggressive. In summation, people will end up admiring you and your passion.
4. Know your limits
To become assertive without hurting others, you should draw a boundary line and avoid allowing other people to cross. If you allow people to harass you, they will continue to do that at all times. Therefore, you should inform them you will not compromise any intimidation towards you.
5. Think before you speak
Suppose you know that you will be holding a serious conversation with another person to share your opinions and wish to earn respect and appear self-assured. In that case, you should take a couple of minutes to contemplate it. It would help if you did that because it is easy for you to begin attacking, interrupting, judging, or blaming others. However, when you practice holding dialogue in your mind, you will easily notice where you are deviating from the main goal and where you are aggressive than you would not like.
Most people allow others to take advantage of them, and they continue to allow that to happen since they do not want to upset others. If you want people to treat you approximately with the respect you deserve, you should assertively demonstrate how they can do that with the help of these tips. Or you can use hypnosis to improve your assertiveness – it’s easy and works well.