ON BEING ASSERTIVE

We’ve all come across those people who lack confidence, and they probably assume that it’s easy for others to be self-assertive because they have high self-esteem. But that’s a mistake. It’s a mistake to look at others who are self-assured in this way.

One of the ways we build self-esteem is by being self-assertive when it’s not easy to do so. There are always times when self-assertiveness calls for courage.

And one of the ways we help our kids – and in equal measure our friends or fellow employees – is by forcing them to put one foot in front of the other and ACT courageously, to show courage themselves instead of us doing everything for them.

Some of our kids learned to be self-assured through travel, by putting themselves in situations at a very young age when they had to make decisions for themselves on a daily basis, and in this manner their self-esteem increased until they’ve now become quite self-assertive. Other kids never had the opportunity to experience this, which is sad, but they may have learned to be self-assertive through work, through taking on more and more difficult, and sometimes uncomfortable, tasks.

People are not assertive because they have high self-esteem. They have high self-esteem because they’ve learned to be assertive. 

Shame on parents who haven’t allowed their kids to become self-reliant.

Copyright © Karl Wiggins