Bill of Assertive Human Rights
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1. You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts and
emotions and to take the responsibility for what they are and their
consequences. This is basically saying you have the right to take
control and manage each step in the chain reaction Many people give to
others the right to judge: their parents (father/mother knows best’),
spouse or anyone other than themselves. Decide this moment to claim
that right for yourself and you’ll be free from having to constantly
please other people and feeling guilty if you don’t.
2. You have the right not to justify your behavior by offering
excuses or reasons. As an adult you are not answerable to other people
for your beliefs or your actions (unless they impinge on other
people’s rights and freedoms, or they are against the law!). You are
no longer a child having to answer to parents and teachers and being
obliged to justify your actions. Next time someone asks you to do
something you don’t wish to do or can’t, try saying ‘I’m sorry, I
can’t help you’ and STOP. Don’t make excuses. It’s a wonderfully
liberating feeling.
3. You have the right to decide the degree to which you are
responsible (if at all) for finding to other people’s
problems. Ultimately each person must take appropriate responsibility
for their own feelings, behaviour, pain, health and so on. You may be
able to temporarily please someone by altering your behaviour to suit
them, but over the long term this simply undermines your self-respect
and stops them from taking responsibility for their own actions and
lives.
Denying this right of a person also happens when responsibility for
a problem is shifted onto the victim: you make a legitimate complaint
and an organization accuses you of being unreasonable, denies
responsibility or tells you to see the subcontractor they organized to
do the job. Or a victim of abuse is told by his or her tormentor that
if the victim changed their ways they would not be abused. When you
make a complaint you upset people, and if they don’t. handle that
complaint appropriately the first thing they do is accuse you of being
a troublemaker. Unfortunately, the average person falls for this hook,
line and sinker, and is made to feel that the problem would go away if
only they would simply shut up and disappear.
4. You have the right to change your mind. Circumstances change,
people change, you change. Changing your mind does not imply
incompetence. inadequacy or indecision. It indicates that you are
flexible enough and confident enough to claim the right to reassess
something and change accordingly. This flexibility is a virtue, not a
fault (unless you have a real problem making any decisions).
5. You have the right to make mistakes and be responsible for the
outcome. If you discover you are wrong. the most assertive thing you
can do is to claim the right as a human being to make mistakes and
take action to correct them. If someone is criticizing you or pointing
out a mistake, claim this right by saying ‘You’re quite right. I’m
wrong’.
If you are quite comfortable with the idea of being wrong, the
other person’s attack collapses. If you are responsible for a
situation with a disastrous outcome, forgive yourself with the
thought: ‘I did what I could at the time’. If, however, you are being
criticized or attacked but you don’t agree you are wrong, use words
such as ‘probably’, ‘could be’, ‘perhaps’ or ‘maybe’:
‘Perhaps you’ve got a point .. ...'; ‘You could be right . . .‘;
‘Maybe you’re right .. .‘; ‘You probably have a point .. .‘; ‘I hadn’t
thought of it like that...’ These phrases give recognition to the
other person’s viewpoint, which takes the heat out of the situation
but retains your right to have a different opinion; to agree to
disagree.
The criticism may be general and aimed more at deliberately
undermining your self-acceptance: ‘You look like you’ve put on
weight’; ‘That colour really doesn’t suit you’; ‘You’re so
aggressive’. Acknowledge their opinion, but keep asking for more
information so they have to keep justifying their comments and you
appear totally unconcerned but genuinely interested in their comment.
Friend: You look like you’ve put on weight.
You: You might be right; what makes you think I have?
Friend: Your hips look bigger.
You:- Do they? Do you think it’s these pants, or the color or is
it actual weight?
Friend: Well, it could be the pants, I suppose.
You. I was wondering myself whether they were a good choice. Thanks
for your opinion.
This approach is guaranteed (as long as you are not sarcastic and
you look the critic straight in the eye) to give you a fantastic
feeling of personal control and make the other person reluctant to
ever try picking on you again.
6. You have the right to say ‘I don’t know’. What a relief not to
have to know everything! You are now free to try things before you
know all the answers, to experiments to explore, to ask. As
Huckleberry Finn realized, other people love showing you what they
know, and if they can do so, let them. If you are really clever, you
can stand back and let them help you a great deal while you stay quite
comfortably ignorant and save your energy for more important things.
This right also allows negative consequences for your actions. If you
don’t know everything, sometimes the consequences can be unexpected
and unwelcome. But that’s OK because you don’t have to know
everything.
7. You have the right not to be liked by everyone you have to deal
with. It’s very nice to be liked and approved of, but if you go around
thinking that this is a prerequisite for dealing with people you may
well find yourself being manipulated mercilessly as you try to please
others.
In fact the more people see you as your own person, willing to be
pleasant but not needing approval, the more you will find them wanting
to please you! Independence will make you attractive to others, who
want to be approved of by someone they see as strong. However, there
are organizations that find such independence extremely threatening.
They’ often have a highly authoritarian structure where power is
claimed by people feeling that those under them have to grovel and
please. If you are not prepared to play these games, get out of the
situation if you can because you are a major threat to the whole way
the organization operates.
In ordinary person-to-person situations with people of equal
standing, trying to please can mean you end up agreeing to lots of
things you just don’t like in order to avoid hurting their feelings.
Remember — they are responsible for their feelings, not you!
8. You have the right to be illogical in making decisions. My
teenage son is an expert at finding weaknesses in my reasoning and
arguments about why he should not do certain things. Worse still, he
remembers what I said months or even years previously and has no
difficulty pointing out that I am hopelessly illogical and
inconsistent.
The fact that things are logical does not make them right, nor does
it make them what you want. Take the right to do things and feel
things because you want to, not because they are logical. 9. You have
the right to say ‘I don’t understand’. If you live or deal with people
who expect you to be able to read their minds and automatically know
what they want, when they want it and how, they can become very
irritable and aggressive with you when you don’t comply. It’s not your
responsibility to work out what’s going on in somebody else’s head or
to guess their needs. It’s up to them to spell it out clearly. Put the
responsibility squarely back with them to tell you what they want.
Sensitive people tend to expect this mind-reading from others
because they may be good at intuitively responding to other people’s
needs. They assume this characteristic in others, and its absence
leads them to imagine lack of interest or caring. Really intuitively
sensitive people, well tuned to others, are actually quite rare. Most
people are too wrapped in themselves to use such sensitivity, even if
they have it. There are also some interesting basic differences
between the way men and women communicate and these can cause
misunderstandings. If in doubt, check it out! The book You Just Don’t
Understand What I Mean by Deborah Tanner explores these fascinating
differences in gender communication.
10. You have the right to say ‘I don’t care’. A rather nasty form
of dogma has recently crept into a great deal of Western culture. It
demands that everyone should be trying to improve themselves, whatever
that means. Constant striving to improve yourself according to the
dictates of a mythical perfection means the search is never-ending.
The money keeps flowing into the personal development’ business, but
your enjoyment of life is suspended until you have sorted yourself out
— the ‘I’ll be happy when ...‘ or ‘I’ll be happy if...’ trap.
None of us is perfect, nor did anyone have a perfect upbringing. If
you are comfortable with and used to your ‘hang-ups’, and they don’t
impinge on the rights of others, then don’t let anyone else bully you
into getting rid of them. Often these ‘hang-ups’ are very important
survival strategies that you have adopted for good reasons and need to
hang on to until circumstances, or opportunity or time, allow you to
change them to something more constructive. On the other hand, you may
resist changing yourself as a form of passive aggression in response
to someone else’s refusal to accept you as you are.
Often the less someone is hassled about changing to what others
think they should be, the more likely they are to change because it
suits them. You can’t change other people; you can only change
yourself and your own behaviour. But that in turn can cause a chain
reaction that allows other people to change too.
If you are being pestered by people telling you what you should or
should not do, say to them: ‘You might be right, but I don’t care to
change right now’; ‘You may be right but I don’t want/choose to
change’; ‘You might be right but I choose to do this in my own way’.
Knowing that you have the right to choose to be assertive if you
wish is one. thing; knowing how to do it is quite another. It’s very
important to realize that being assertive is a verbal problem-solving
option to add to your repertoire of strategies for dealing with
people. It is not always the right option for all people, of all
religions or all cultures. It’s up to you to choose this assertive
option appropriately, according to your own values and your desire for
particular kinds of relationships.
It is also important to remember that you will need to modify how
you use these skills depending on the power differential between you
and the other person and the organizational structure. When you start
using these skills and asserting your rights it will seem quite
strange, like breaking in new shoes. There may be a few blisters to
start with: people close to you may get quite angry and annoyed that
they can no longer manipulate you the way they are used to or that
your attitude and behavior is no longer predictable. You therefore
need to give some thought to the effect of the consequences of this
assertiveness on personal and professional relationships.
There can be advantages: as you feel better about yourself, other
people tend to treat you with more respect and you attract people who
operate in a more assertive way. However, some people may have a
vested interest in keeping you as a doormat and will try very hard to
undermine you. Think it through before you start. Are these people
important enough in your life that you care whether or not they can
cope with the changes?
Being assertive does not mean operating in a way that is
contemptuous of other people’s feelings, but rather in a way that
shows mutual respect and your acceptance of only appropriate
responsibility for other people’s reactions.
Extract from "The 12 Secrets of Health and Happiness" by Louise
Samways
