Assertiveness Is The Way
Not to write another “summary of the year” kind of shitpost, but I want to reflect on one of my little battles that I had unexpectedly won in 2020.
It’s about a few positive changes in my thinking and behavior when I'm dealing with other people:
I’ve become more assertive and direct. I'm not sure where I've got that confidence, but I think I had just stopped beating myself up. How I did that is a big topic itself which I hope to cover in a separate post once. (Or am I just getting old enough?)
I've learned how to challenge people's beliefs by pointing to fallacies and inconsistencies in their thinking indirectly, through questioning their thinking patterns atomically. This way I let them come to their own conclusions step-by-step and direct their defensiveness towards their own realizations rather than me personally.
I challenge people assumptions with ad-hoc experiments. The most important one. Seeing is believing, and most people can't resist the empirical evidence they found themselves. Only the most intelligent ones 😉.
It all started with applying these techniques to myself first. And given that applying such methods to other people is even easier, I've decided to give it a try and got surprisingly good results.
In the meantime, I've also eradicated my shitty behaviors:
I no longer expect anything in return tacitly. And when I do, I'm making it explicit. Sometimes, I still fail at this, and when I find myself frustrated with someone else’s behavior I have to remind myself that I hadn't set the expectations in the first place.
I don't tolerate when people cross boundaries anymore. I set hard boundaries and make everyone respect them or get the fuck out.
I'm not trying to control or caretake. Control is an illusion, and I've let this illusion go for good. Control-less life is much more fun.
I ceased trying to fix people. I'm just trying to help them when they ask me.
Still need to polish every each of these new behaviors, but now I can let me wonder where to move next. Which is quite not clear to me actually. Thus I want to ask you: what do you think I need to fix or master in my communications?