Assertive

Beings Assertive means you can freely express your thoughts and feelings. I'm doing something at college on being an assertive person so I want to know if alot of people are assertive or if they keep their thoughts to themselves. :)

Are you that assertive person who can tell people what your thoughts and feelings truly are, or do you keep them bottled up? :mog:

It depends upon the situation. I'm assertive when I need to be while at other times I'm very passive. Basically I'm assertive when it's on a subject or in a situation that's very important to me. Otherwise I don't bother and save my energy for things that matter more to me.

I keep them bottled up. That way nobody gets their feelings hurt.

I'm a person who acts in extremes often, so I either keep them completely bottled up, or I'm VERY assertive, depending on the person and situation.

No one could ever understand.

Depends what I'm thinking.

I have to be assertive at work, otherwise I'd still be on the phone at work now! :rolleyes2

I usually say what I'm thinking. Unless it's not nice then I keep quiet.

I did an assignment on assertiveness for my course, too. :jess:

It depends for me. I sometimes just can't be bothered for an argument so I won't say anything but most of the time I'll just be outright.

I tend to say my thoughts then run away.

I'm not at all assertive. I don't like confrontation, and I don't like hurting people's feelings. If the subject's very important to me, if I'm absolutely convinced that I'm correct, or if someone else is being poorly treated, then I'll step in and do something about it. The rest of the time I'll just keep myself to myself and avoid unecessary conflict.

It really depends on the people I'm with and the situation. I'm often pretty open about most things, though.

I don't have any problem expressing my thoughts when I want. Though "when I want" is rather rare. So I wouldn't call myself assertive. Opinionated maybe. But not argumentative. Though I do enjoy a decent debate from time to time. Usually I'm just good at being right about things when people need to hear it. Until then I'm just... random and/or quiet

Generally, no. I can be assertive sometimes, but it takes a lot of effort and courage (for me) so it's pretty rare.

Sometimes I put the effort in, but it tends to be in a half-arsed manner. E.g. at the end of my 6 month probation at work I was supposed to get a pay increase but the only way to get it was to ask; even if they 'promise' you beforehand, it's very very rare for any employer to actually go ahead with a pay increase without being prompted (multiple times). I ended up sending an assertive email :p Coward's way out, but it worked, and said everything I wanted to say much more effectively than asking verbally.

On the other hand, my co-workers were surprised at my patience (ahem, which I know to be lack of assertiveness) with this really pushy telephone sales agent who just WOULD NOT take no for an answer.

She kept trying and trying and trying to convince me and I was like "no. no. not interested. *sigh* really not.... yes I see what you're saying but we just don't really... *sigh* I'll talk about it with my colleagues, ok? Yes yes okay you can call back tomorrow..." (anything to get rid of her). This went on for like 2 weeks, and we went through the same old routine, and sales bint just wouldn't get the hint.

Then one time we were going in the usual circles for about half an hour, and it was eating into my break so it was time to be 'assertive'. I said something like "look... we could do this all day as you just won't get the hint, but I'm NOT INTERESTED and have better things to do. See ya." and hung up. That's when I got applauded then told I was far too patient :p She never called back again, and good riddance.

In a way it was quite a good assertiveness exercise all the way through - there's nothing quite like facing uber-high-pressure sales tactics to give you valuable experience of asserting a "no I'm not going to cave in to your bullying and harassment and buy your service" viewpoint.

They stay in the bottle :p