ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ASSERTION Let there be no misunderstanding about this: standing up for your rights to a sensible degree is the most important thing you can do if you care about your happiness and the happiness of those around you. Our most common problem is excessive passivity. There are many times in our lives when we all have to back down before a real threat. However, there are many more times in our lives when we don’t, when standing up to unacceptable behaviour is proper, ethical, in keeping with religious teachings, and just plain healthy. The degree of happiness and contentment we feel is strongly correlated to the degree of cooperation, respect and love we get from others. Self-interested people know full well that they must be cooperative, respectful and loving towards others in order to be more important to them. But they also know that they themselves need the cooperation, respect and love of others in order to remain happy and contented. THREE RULES TO ENCOURAGE OTHERS TO BE MORE COOPERATIVE, RESPECTFUL AND LOVING TOWARDS YOU RULE 1: If people do something nice to you, do something nice to them. This is a common sense reinforcement principle which operates so effectively in teaching our children and pets to be cooperative, respectful and loving. Each time we reinforce a good act, it grows stronger. The stronger it becomes the more likely it is to be repeated. When we are nice to others because they are nice to us, we are saying with our actions that we appreciate what has been done for us. This cannot but help others be more decent to us. Lovers find proof of their partner’s deep feelings in how one act of affection is met with another. Nothing is more effective in convincing others that you care. Rewarding others for their good behaviour is among the simplest yet most beneficial of all acts. It often costs us nothing more than a kind word or gesture. Yet we are misers in giving praise, comfort and encouragement. Instead we find fault with the greatest of ease and speak out before it even occurs to us to look for something nice to say. RULE 2: If people do something bad to you, do something nice to them anyway, but only twice. If someone does something bad to you, deciding on your response is not quite so clear-cut an issue. Your first response should be to turn the other cheek, to love those who trespass against you. Don’t be angry. Forgive the other person his misdeed. Be patient and tolerant. If a wrong has been done, perhaps it was unintentional or accidental. Talk it over. Everyone is entitled to a hearing. If two talks don’t work, what then? We should not tolerate endless bad behaviour in the belief that the wrongdoer will eventually change. It does not make sense to reward and strengthen bad behaviour by tolerating it. It’s one thing to forgive a wrong (which means not getting angry) but quite another to tolerate a wrong (which means not making the perpetrator regret the act). We act most ethically when we always forgive all bad behaviour but tolerate it no more than twice. Dealing with the Unacceptable. Option 1: Toleration without resentment. If you learn not to alarm yourself over frustrations, to keep a level head, and not get panicky or angry because you’re not getting what you want, you’ll be amazed at how much nonsense you’ll be able to tolerate without resentment. If you can’t change a situation, it is perhaps best simply to put up with it. The beauty of this approach is that the problem ceases to be a problem the moment you decide to accept it. When you believe that injustice is horrible or disastrous rather than merely regretful or irritating, you’ll react in one of four ways – depression, anger, fear or procrastination. However, if you take the attitude that life is unfair and you have to tolerate a certain measure of unfairness, and if you can do that without feeling resentment, you’ll avoid emotional disturbances, remain composed and be better able to get on with your life. Option 2: Protest The purpose of this strategy is to make the person responsible for your frustration so uncomfortable that his objectionable behaviour lessens or stops: any pleasure or satisfaction he derives from his behaviour must be overshadowed by the pain or suffering he will endure if he doesn’t change. Option 3: Separation A separation of three to six onths is quite often successful in getting a difficult partner to appreciate all you’ve done and not just take everything for granted. Separate until your partner shapes up. Option 4: Toleration with resentment. This is the neurotic solution to the problem. You accept the problem and you resent doing so. This will only make you depressed, angry, maybe even affect your health. RULE 3: If people continue to treat you badly, and talking to them has not helped, then do something equally annoying to them, but do it without anger, guilt, pity, or fear of rejection or injury. When you stand up for your rights with anger, you’re being aggressive. Do so without anger and you are being assertive. If you stand up to someone who has hurt you, you can count on running into resistance. Pressuring him to change could conceivably make him even nastier. Be firm and calm, and you stand a far higher chance of success. Don’t give the other person further reason to fight you. The nicer you are, even if you are being uncooperative, the nicer he is going to be to you. If you can calm him down, you are far more likely to settle the problem once and for all. If you feel guilt because of something you have done in an effort to stand up to someone who is frustrating you, you will cave in like a house of cards. Guilt is self-hate, and the result of frequent self-criticism. Learn never to hate yourself even when you have behaved wrongly. Hate your unworthy actions, to be sure. To bring about change in someone’s behaviour you must make the consequences of that behaviour more painful than any pleasure it gives that person, so that they will think twice before they act so selfishly. Do not fear rejection. It is not painful unless we make it so. It is merely uncomfortable.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 14:39:26 +0000
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