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Assertiveness - VIP Commentary

Hello this is AJ, welcome to the commentary this month. Our topic this month is ‘Assertiveness’, assertiveness, which is an interesting topic for me and it’s a common topic I think. I mean I don’t know if it’s common everywhere in the world, but in the United States this is a very common topic in many different areas: business, communication, relationships, all that kind of thing.

People very frequently talk about this idea of being assertive or assertiveness. It’s highly valued in American culture. Not everybody is assertive in America, but it’s seen as a positive trait, a very valuable trait, probably maybe more so than in some cultures in some countries. For example, I think in many Asian countries where I’ve lived before assertiveness is less valued. Doesn’t mean that it’s seen as a bad thing, it’s not necessarily seen as negative, but it’s not promoted as much.

In Japan, Thailand, places like that, sometimes in those cultures people value other traits more highly or they’re considered more important, but in the United States assertiveness is seen as a very, very, very positive thing. Some people are assertive and some people are not, but when people are assertive we generally think of that as a good thing. It’s good to be assertive. What is that exactly? I talked about it in the video, of course. Let’s talk about it a little more.

I think that when I think about it deeply, assertiveness can really be summarized with two words, kind of strong and calm. It also has an idea of directness and calm, but the calm part is important. So an assertive person, when we think of someone who is assertive, we’re not thinking of someone who is aggressive and angry. It’s not that.

So it’s not like yeah! You must do this! I’m really angry and err, this kind of aggressive energy and feeling. That’s not assertiveness, that’s aggression. And it’s not passivity, which is the other thing we talked about, which is kind of that very weak, soft. Oh, it’s okay. I don’t mind. You know that passive idea. That’s also not assertive.

Assertiveness is kind of a sweet spot between the two maybe. ‘Sweet spot’ means like that perfect spot, that great spot where you get the best benefits. So it’s this idea of the calm. Maybe we think of someone who’s passive as being relaxed and calm? Well, it’s taking that positive part – calm and relaxed – and then someone who is aggressive has a lot of energy and they’re very strong, but they’re not calm. So we’re taking the strength and the energy from that and then we’re putting the two together. So it’s calm strength. That’s what assertiveness is.

So, when you’re communicating assertively, you’re communicating in a strong direct way, but it’s also calm, it’s friendly, generally. So that’s assertive communication. You’re not being aggressive and angry and too forceful, but you’re also not being weak and too quiet and too relaxed, right in the middle. Assertiveness, taking the best part of both parts and then combining them and it’s not an easy thing to do.

This is one of the things I struggle with in my life. I’ve mentioned in the past that sometimes with the topics each month some of the things I’m very good at myself and I use them in my life all the time and other things I am working on and I’m trying and sometimes I’m good and sometimes I’m not. This is one where sometimes I’m good and sometimes I’m not.

So, you may know that one of my hobbies is martial arts, self-defense, that kind of thing.

I teach self-defense. Mostly I teach women, kids, male adults, that kind of thing and assertiveness is very important with self-defense, very important, and it’s something that you have to learn and practice.

I’m lucky. I had a chance to practice a lot because I used to live in San Francisco until recently. I lived in some neighborhoods that were not great, so I was constantly being bothered in San Francisco. It’s very common in San Francisco for people to bother you on the street, to come up to you and bother you. Sometimes they come up and they want money and they bother you. Many times, especially in San Francisco, there are just crazy people and they just come up and they just yell at you for no reason or they walk by you just talking to themselves and yelling. Other times people just yell insults at you for no reason, depending on the neighborhood you’re in. So there are lots of different situations.

I had never lived in a place like that before. So before San Francisco I had never experienced those kinds of situations. Prior to that I grew up and lived in the southern part of the United States and the south is a much more relaxed kind of place. In fact, assertiveness is not as valued in the south. Yes, it’s still seen as positive, but in the southern part of the United States being polite and kind of calm and very friendly, those things are seen as most important.

So I was used to just constantly kind of being very friendly and open and warm with everybody and then when I moved to San Francisco it was a big shock because people were much more strong and aggressive so I had to learn to be assertive with people. So in the beginning people would come up and bother me and I’d go oh, no thank you. I would have this nervous emotion and feeling and I was really being kind of passive and weak with them and because of that they bothered me more, so that wasn’t very good.

Well then, after a time I got frustrated and I would start to yell at them sometimes. Go away! Leave me alone! I would be kind of aggressive because I was upset and angry.

Well, that didn’t work very well either because then they would get even more upset and they would yell back at me sometimes. It was also a bad situation and I didn’t feel very good about that.

Eventually, as I learned to be a self-defense instructor I learned some of the verbal skills for that, the speaking and body language and I learned how to be assertive. So I would just say, you know, stop. Go away. I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Kind of using a calm but strong voice and then with my body I would do the same thing. Kind of calm gestures with my hands, but strong too.

It was something I had to practice. I wasn’t used to doing that, but I did practice it as a skill and I became quite good at it. I don’t do it all the time because when I’m relaxed I don’t feel the need to do that, but in certain situations if I need to I know I have that skill and I can use it when necessary and so can you.

Now, hopefully, you live in a more relaxed place and you don’t have to worry about being bothered on the street. However, there could be other situations in your life where you need to be more assertive, more calm and strong, maybe with your work life, maybe with your children and your family. This is a common problem in the United States these days that a lot of kids are kind of spoiled and they’re not very respectful to their parents. So they do bad things, they ignore their parents and a lot of the parents react in two extreme ways.

Some of them are very passive and I’ve seen this in public many times where the parents they tell them to stop, but it’s in a very weak passive way, the same way I used to be in San Francisco. They’ll say stop that. Stop that. Now, you better stop that. You better stop crying right now or you better put that down, but their voice quality and their body language is kind of weak and passive and the child just ignores them. That’s probably the most common nowadays in the United States with kind of problem spoiled kids.

There are a few parents who go the other direction and they become really aggressive and almost crazy with their kids. We hear about them on the news sometimes, where they just scream and yell at their kids or if it’s very extreme they might even hit their kids or beat them or something. That’s where you might see in a shop the parent suddenly loses total control and they’re just screaming at the kids. You better stop that! It’s very shocking to see it sometimes, right? You see it and you’re like, oh my God what’s happening? I’ve talked about this example before, right? That’s aggression.

So, obviously, the nice sweet spot in the middle, the assertive thing is to be strong but calm with the kid. I said put that down right now, right now, and your whole body language is very strong but calm. You’re looking them in the eyes and they realize. They can feel like ooh, I must stop now. Dad is very serious about this. But he’s not upset.

He’s not out of control. He’s controlled, but he’s strong or mom is controlled and strong and it’s the same with dogs.

We have a puppy living near our house now. It’s not our puppy, but he comes to our house all the time. It’s our landlord’s puppy. The landlord lives next door to us and so we have adopted him. We’re kind of his buddies or his friends and we’re working with him and we’re trying to teach him and train him and we have found that we also must be assertive with him.

If we’re aggressive with him, which we don’t want to be because he’s cute, but if we were aggressive with him we’d just scare him and that’s not good. He doesn’t learn anything. But if we’re passive, if we’re too weak, if we’re just oh, you’re so cute then the puppy becomes quite spoiled. He jumps on us and he just tries to take food from us and he’s not a polite dog.

So we have to be assertive, strong but calm. So we’ll say sit. You have to use that voice tone. If you say sit, sit, sit, the dog ignores you. If you yell at him sit! Then he gets scared and he jumps and he runs away. So it’s that middle part, that assertive sit, down, stay. That gives that feeling of assertiveness.

So you can use it with dogs. You can use it with kids. You can use it when necessary in a job situation. I have used this many times as a teacher. So, normally, as you can hear, I’m very fun and energetic when I’m teaching in class. However, I do use this skill as a public speaker in seminars, in trainings and as a teacher.

For example, I’m in a class and I’m teaching and I’m really focused and then someone in the back room starts texting on their cell phone or, even worse, this is the part that really makes me angry, is they actually start talking on their cell phone while I’m teaching a class. I don’t want to be aggressive, even though I do get angry when that happens because it’s extremely rude. I have to kind of calm myself first because assertive is calm and strong, not aggressive, not angry. So I calm myself, but I don’t ignore it.

I’m not going to be weak and just ignore it, but I’m calm and I’ll just look at them. I kind of slowly turn and look at them and then I will slowly walk towards them. I’m continuing to talk and to teach, but all of my focus is I’m looking at them and I have this very strong kind of calm body language and my voice instead of being friendly and happy and fun it drops down to this kind of low serious voice. I’m looking at them the whole time and I’m slowing walking towards them. As I do this, everyone else in the class starts looking at them at the same time.

So, suddenly, they’re on their phone and they can feel something changes in the class.

They hear my voice change. They look up. They see that I’m staring at them and that I’m moving towards them. They suddenly notice that everyone else in the room is looking at them and I keep going. I walk all the way up until I’m right next to them and if they still haven’t put the phone down at that point then I will look at them and I’ll calmly say please turn off your phone and they do. They do, because it’s quite embarrassing to them. I teach adults, but this could work with kids too. Kids don’t usually have cell phones, hopefully, but they do actually, some of them nowadays.

See how that is kind of an assertive way to do that? If I was passive I would ignore it or I would say ah, please turn off your phone. Hey, will you… I know that you’re having a phone call, but could you please turn that off because it’s distracting me. See, that’s weak and passive and students might do it, but then they’ll do it again later because they feel that kind of weakness. If I screamed and yelled at them then they would be angry at me and the rest of the class probably would think God, AJ is out of control, what’s wrong with him, but I’m just calm and assertive like that. It’s a tiny bit scary for the students, but not too much. Then they will just do what is correct and they usually won’t do it again.

This works with public speaking too. A lot of times that’s all I need to do. I just walk towards them and look at them and I change my voice and I never have to say anything directly. I usually don’t have to say turn off the phone. They know and they’ll just do it.

So this is a great trick. It’s not really a trick, it’s just becoming assertive.

You don’t have to be this way all the time. Some people are naturally like this and they’re just this way all the time and good for them. That’s great. Some of us have to develop this skill like I do. I have to actually work at it and actually need to choose to do it in certain situations, but it’s very useful. It’s very powerful for use in job situations, work. It’s a good thing to be able to do during a job interview. You don’t want to be too strong in a job interview, but you do want to be somewhat strong. So you don’t want to come across as weak and you certainly don’t want to come across as aggressive.

‘Come across as’ means to appear as. You want them to think wow, this person I calm, but they’re strong. They’re very good.

So this month what shall you do? This month I want you to identify at least one area in your life where you want to be more assertive, more calm and strong. Then I want you, step two, to practice it in that situation so, again, being calmer and stronger. To be that way, most of it is your voice tone and your body language. It’s not so much what you say it’s more how you say it and how you look.

So maybe it’s in your family, maybe it’s in your job. If you live in a big city with people bothering you it could be just on the street. Whatever it is, I want you to choose a situation, an area or a person to do this with and all month I want you to be focused on this and practicing it, being calmer and stronger at the same time. It’s a great skill. It will be very useful for you.

All right, that’s it. Share your experiences on our social site, our VIP site. Tell us how it’s going. Tell us what you did and if you had good experiences, bad experiences, whatever. Just share them with us.

All right, I will see you again.

Have a great day, bye-bye.