Chapter 4 – Why don’t people read between the lines? Asserting yourself and speaking up for your beliefs and values
Learning Objectives
- Identify and describe the three ways of relating – aggressive, assertive, passive
- Understand how develop assertive messages to draw boundaries for what you want and need
- Recognize and expand your emotional vocabulary
- Understand how to develop different types assertive messages
- Understand when to NOT assert yourself
- Utilize a 6 step assertion process for delivering your assertions
“Courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” Brene Brown
Learning to speak up for our wants and needs, in an assertive way, can be challenging. Being assertive requires us to do two things simultaneously, 1) understand and then share what is important to us, what we want, what we need, and to share our values and perspective with others and 2) do all of this without taking away respect and dignity from another person. For some of you, it will be hard to speak up and share your needs with other people, for others it will be hard to allow other people their need and wants to exist with yours. In this next chapter we will look at what it means to be assertive, and how that is distinctly different than being passive or aggressive. We will also explore different tools to utilize in order to become more assertive.
