Conscious living Practice 13 - Self Assertiveness

Self Assertiveness is an offshoot of Self love. The more we love ourselves, the more we value our thoughts, emotions and needs. And the more likely we are to be assertive of them. 

So if you haven't been practicing enough self love, then I suggest you go back to post 5 of this blog on "Self love" and strengthen that practice. 

I started the practice of Self love with a journal where I would write down all the things I loved about myself on a daily basis. I also did the mirror image exercise of looking into my own eyes in the mirror and telling myself, I love you. All this helped me to love and respect myself more and more. One day, someone said something that I felt wasn't right, and I immediately put forth my point of view in a polite but firm way. This really surprised me and I kept thinking, what just happened?. May be a few years back I would not have spoken out my feelings so eloquently. At that moment I knew it was the self love practice that did it. It made me more self assertive. 

Nathaniel Branden in his book, The 6 Pillars of Self esteem defines Self Assertiveness as "honoring ones wants, needs, and values and seeking appropriate forms of their expression in reality". 

He also goes on to add, that "Self Assertion does not mean belligerence or inappropriate aggression. It simply means the willingness to stand up for oneself, to be who you are openly, and to treat yourself with respect in all human encounters. It means the refusal to fake your person to be liked." I could not have defined self assertiveness as eloquently as that. 

Now that we all know what self assertiveness is, let's start becoming conscious of how many times we say, yes, when we want to say No. Let's begin to first recognize it's occurrence. Next, let's try to examine why this happens - are we trying to please someone? Is there some sort of fear/ insecurity? This sort of investigation will reveal to us more about our own personality. If we realize that this is happening more often than we would like, then we can remind ourselves the following - 

- Our life does not belong to others and we are not here to live up to other people's expectations.
- Our life is important and our time is limited. Saying yes to something means saying no to something else. Can we afford to make that compromise? 
- Let's be good to ourselves first, before being good to someone else.

Once we start standing up and speaking for our self, we will develop the confidence to do so more often and soon it will become second nature. The more we practice self assertiveness, the more authentic and real we

become. 

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