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Assertiveness - VIP Audio

Hello my VIP member and welcome to this month’s training. This month’s training is about ‘Assertiveness’, the basics of assertiveness. This topic is kind of near and dear to me, because it’s something that I personally had to develop. It did not come naturally to me and I still work on it sometimes in certain situations in my life. So let’s talk about this idea of assertiveness and our reactions to discomfort and intimidation and bullying.

All of us in our life have had to deal with bullying at some time and I’m not just talking about as children. Of course, children bully each other. Stronger children will bully the younger children, the weaker children or the more shy. It happens everywhere, but it also happens as adults in a more subtle way. Not quite as obvious, but it happens.

We’ve all had bosses, for example, who could be kind of loud and difficult and kind of like a bully or co-workers or people in our families or friends even or acquaintances.

Just walking on the street you can see aggressive beggars or aggressive salespeople. I mean we all in life have to deal with people who cross our boundaries. That’s kind of an idiomatic phrase in English.

To ‘cross someone’s boundaries’ or to cross your boundaries, it means someone is getting too close. They’re trying to make you do something you don’t want to do, right?

They’re doing something you don’t want them to do and trying to force you to do something that you don’t want to do. That’s the basic of someone crossing your boundaries.

For example, if you’re a woman and a guy starts touching you, you know? I’m not even talking about just grabbing you and assaulting you. I mean even just uncomfortably putting their arm around you and doing this stuff. That’s crossing your boundaries. You don’t want it. You’re like no, no, no, but they keep doing it anyway. They’re crossing your boundary. It’s kind of a form of bullying. It can be verbal. People can say things to cause that.

Whenever we face these difficult social situations in life, we all typically have different reactions and there are really kind of three basic reactions that we can have. We learn these basic reactions when we’re younger usually. They’re trained into us at a deep level so that whenever they happen after that we instinctively and naturally just seem to react in a certain way, even if we don’t want to react that way.

Now, the first way we typically react is a passive reaction. A passive reaction is a weak reaction. It’s an escape reaction. This is the way that I typically reacted. It was the way that I reacted when I was a kid being bullied and still it’s sort of the instinctive way I will naturally react. Except now I’ve trained myself to react in a different way, but it’s still there. A passive reaction looks like this.

Let’s say if you’re a woman a guy is putting his arm around you and you don’t want him to or you’re a guy and another guy is pushing you trying to make you buy something and you don’t want to and you told him no, no, no. Well, here’s what the passive reaction looks like.

There’s a physiological aspect kind of with our body. There’s a way we use our voice and then there’s what we actually say. So physiologically with our body, passive tends to turn away. The first reaction is to turn away from the person or the problem. This could be you’re on a subway or a bus and there’s some like young tough guys and they’re acting tough. Well, a passive reaction is to oh, I’m just going to ignore them so you turn away. Your eyes look away or they look and then they look back really quick. We call this a furtive glance.

A ‘furtive glance’ is a look that’s very quick and then looks away, quick and then look away, quick and then look away. It’s a passive kind of reaction. It looks weak. It makes you look weak. So, again, you turn. You’ll recognize that the shoulders kind of maybe drop a bit. The head might drop. The eyes drop and look away from the problem, the person or the people or glance up and back, up and back, up and back.

Next is the voice. If there’s something verbally happening the voice is weak. You’re like ha, okay, no. No thank you. Let’s say someone is trying to make you buy something and you tell them oh, no, no, no, that’s okay. No, no, no, no thanks. No thanks. You can hear how the voice is kind of weak, right? My voice is not strong. It’s not powerful. No thank you. No thank you. No, no, no, it’s okay. No, no, that’s all right weak body weak voice.

Then finally, what you’re actually saying. No thank you. No thank you. It’s very polite, but it’s not very strong. Especially if someone is continuing to bother you, you’ve been polite, they keep bothering you and if you continue being polite like that, no thank you, no thank you, ah it’s okay, you’re not being, again, direct. It’s a very passive, weak reaction. So that’s one extreme and some people tend to be passive whenever they’re confronted in this way, in any way they tend to act passively.

Now, another extreme that some people will go to they will react aggressively, which is exactly the opposite. A lot of men do this. That’s where instead of being passive and weak you’re aggressive. Meaning, you become threatening to them. So with your body what happens is when someone is being aggressive they step forward towards the person into the other person’s space. The chest tends to come up a lot like this.

You ever see two guys in a bar getting in an argument? Yeah! Yeah! The chests come up. The jaw can come out a little bit like this. This is an extreme version. And, of course, the eyes become really kind of not friendly eyes. It’s direct contact, which is usually good, but you get this kind of look on your face like err. Some people might even make a fist or raise up their hands like this. Everything is going forward and getting bigger and wider err like two big gorillas. That’s aggressive.

Now, of course, the tone. When someone becomes aggressive the tone gets very loud and abrasive like what did you say? I told you I don’t want this! Right? It gets angry and err. There’s that tone that’s very aggressive. And, of course, verbally people can become very insulting when they’re aggressive. You know, piss off you asshole! I told you to leave me alone! That’s an aggressive reaction.

‘Piss off’ means go away, but it’s a rude way of saying it. ‘Asshole’ is an insult. This is the kind of reaction. You’ve seen guys doing this a lot and some women do it too.

Increasingly, more and more women do this as well, so aggressive.

Now, why is that a bad thing? Well, because an aggressive reaction can cause an escalation, right? If you’re aggressive and then the other person becomes aggressive and then you become more aggressive and they become more aggressive then shouts and insults. It could lead to an actual fight, but even if it doesn’t a lot of mean terrible things can be said and you can hurt relationships with people.

It’s also very stressful to you. It’s not healthy to be like that and you never know what the other person is capable of. They can become aggressive with you. It could lead to some really bad things, generally not good. Passive also bad, because then you typically feel terrible. You feel weak. You feel horrible and maybe you end up doing things that you really don’t want to do, which makes you feel even worse. You become kind of a victim. So these are two extremes that we don’t want.

The third way, the sort of middle way, is the best way, because it gets what you want without hurting another person or becoming insulting, becoming a jerk yourself. A ‘jerk’ is like an unfriendly person, a bad person. So that’s the assertive approach. Now, to be assertive you want to be strong and direct without being insulting or aggressive. So how does that work?

Well we have two levels of assertiveness. Let’s say, again, someone is bothering you doing something. The first level we could call it the yellow level. Kind of like a stop sign, right? It would go yellow and then red. So yellow is kind of a more calm and normal situation. Someone says excuse me. I would like you to buy this. Here’s what you do.

You want to stand facing them. So, remember, passive does this. You don’t want to do that. Don’t turn away. You also don’t want to step into them or get big suddenly and kind of look aggressive. What you want to do though is just stand upright directly and turn your shoulders totally towards them, so square towards them.

You could put one foot forward. You could put your left foot forward, right foot back. It’s almost a martial arts’ fighting stance is what it is or a boxing stance. We’re not learning self-defense here. This is just basic assertiveness, but this pose looks strong and with your hands you could do some just very basic things. You could do this. One hand is here and one hand rests on top of it. Hand on your chin like that like you’re thinking. It’s a pretty good assertive stance. It looks strong, but it’s not aggressive. You’re not like this. You’re not like this. You’re not err, right? You’re like this. It looks good.

Or you could just take your hands and fold them in front of you like this or down. You could have them down just at your waist crossed over. This is a nice, strong assertive stance. You’re facing towards someone. Your eyes and head are up. You’re looking them in the eye. It’s very direct and then you smile, right, because at the yellow level they’re not threatening you. They’re not being aggressive. They’re bothering you maybe, but it’s not at a threatening level. So you’re just going to do this and smile. How can I help you? That’s an assertive response.

Then let’s say they’re starting to bother you. What you want to do next is with your tone you want to have a strong, neutral tone. So you’re not going to talk like this with a low voice. You’re not going to shout like this. You’re just going to be strong and direct, a confident voice. You’re going to say yes, how can I help you? You see? That sounds strong, but it’s not aggressive.

If someone is looking to bully you a little bit or bother you, immediately you’re sending a message with your voice tone and the way you’re standing that you are strong and that you’re not going to let them just bother you. It’s very powerful. It seems very simple and it is simple, but it’s powerful.

Then what are you going to say to them? You’re going to say direct things to them. So instead of saying ah, ooh, I don’t know, you’re just going to say what do you want?

Excuse me. What do you want? Just ask the question like that. Sometimes people will come and they just talk, talk, talk and you say yeah, excuse me. What do you want?

How can I help you? Then what you want to tell them is what you want.

So you can say okay, I want you to leave now. I’m not interested. You can say it just like that if someone is bothering you. Please do this, do this, do this, do this, do this and they’re really starting to annoy you, you can still be polite and you can say I’m sorry or excuse me, but I’m not interested. And if they continue bothering you, you can say okay, I want you to leave now.

You could even say this to a boss who’s like yelling or acting kind of crazy and really bothering you. You can say okay, you know I don’t want to talk about this now. I want to talk about this later when you’re more calm. You hear, strong voice, direct? You’re saying what you want, but you’re not insulting them. That’s assertiveness and, of course, how you stand is very important and what your voice tone is like.

Now then, the next level is what you might call orange or red level and this is when someone is becoming threatening or aggressive or insulting. If someone starts insulting you saying yeah, you fucking bitch! Anything like that or they start screaming and they’re really becoming a threat or if you’re on the street. This happens a lot in San Francisco. Crazy people will come up and then they start yelling and acting crazy for no reason. Then you need to change.

You need to put your hands up like this. This is kind of a go away, nonverbal language.

In every country and culture people understand this. Your hands are not here, they’re out more towards from your body. Stand like this and you’re going to look at them. Once someone insults you, once they are threatening you, once they are yelling or they’re out of control, then you don’t want to be polite anymore. You’re not going to insult them, but you need to just tell them to go away. So you’re just going to say go away now. Go away now. Simple.

You can say it in your own language, but just a short phrase. Basically, go away, leave me alone. You just repeat it again and again. You don’t get into a discussion with somebody. If someone is drunk and abusive you don’t have a discussion with them, you just keep saying the same thing. Go away now. I said go away now. Go away now! Go away now! The voice tone is a little more strong. It’s like a bad dog voice is what we call it, right? You’re dog is being bad and you say no, bad dog! It’s low and it’s loud. It’s not insulting like yeah! It’s just go away now! Stop! Go away now. Not like err like this, but it’s a strong face, body stays strong, voice is low, bad dog voice.

Now, you can use this with anybody. You could use it with, again, like a boss who’s yelling at you. You don’t have to endure that. You don’t have to put up with that. You can just say enough. Go away now! You can just keep saying it until they leave and then you can talk to them later. You want to keep your job, fine. Talk to them when they calm down. You could go in and say hey, again assertively, you know you were yelling and out of control and I don’t want to talk to you when you’re like that, but I’d be happy to discuss it now if you’re calm. So that’s the best way to deal with these kinds of situations.

Again, if you’re a woman and a guy has got his arms around you, you don’t have to be like go away now! Immediately, you would just first be assertive and say I’m sorry.

Please don’t do that. Be polite first and then if they keep doing it say I’m sorry. Please don’t do that, a little stronger. Then if he keeps coming then the hands go up and you say you know what? Go away now. Go away now! Go away! Just keep doing it. The louder you get they start to get embarrassed and that’s usually all you need to do.

This is something you should practice. Again, it takes daily practice. For some people this is natural and easy, good for you. For other people it’s more of a challenge. I had to practice this again and again and again because I was kind of always trying to be polite and nice.

I’m from the southern part of the United States and we’re taught to always be polite and not to be so strong like that, but when I moved to the city in San Francisco I started encountering all these kind of aggressive people; crazy people on the street, kind of these young tough guys on the street or on buses and subways and I didn’t know how to react. I would react kind of trying to just be polite and I realize now kind of passively.

Like oh hey, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to cause any problem. Then when they saw that reaction it made them actually bother me more because they thought ah, he’s weak and they kept doing it. So finally I was like okay, enough. No. Go away now.

As I started practicing that wow, it works really well. When they see that usually I don’t even have to do go away. Usually I just stand and I’m strong and I say how can I help you? No, I’m sorry. I can’t help you. Something like that. Usually most people who are going to maybe try to bother me they’re like okay. It’s the tone and how I’m standing and looking at them and a few times I have to do that too.

So do this. Also, teach it to your children. Teach them to do this at school if they’re getting bullied. Practice it yourself with any difficult people in your life and then tell us about it on the social site.

All right, great, this is an interesting topic. I hope you will actually practice it. Practice it in the mirror every day and then go out there in the world and practice it with people who are annoying you.

All right, see you again next month. Bye-bye.