Dawn Barclay

Helping you align all that you do with your core values

Moxie Living: Courage and Confidence

All blog post Moxie Living

Assertiveness – What Is It?

To some, when assertiveness or ‘asserting yourself’ is mentioned it conjures up a lot of negativity, simply because assertiveness (positive) is confused with aggression, it is not the same.

What is Assertiveness?

Assertiveness is a way of behaving.

It is communicating confidently to others about your want, needs and feelings. It’s not about being aggressive or abusive, manipulative, or passive. It is loving empowerment, not abusing power. Having your human rights met without taking anyone else’s away.

Assertiveness by Definition

Assertiveness is a behaviour that expresses the person’s feelings, attitudes, wishes, opinions or rights with directness and honesty. It encompasses respect for the feeling, attitudes, wishes, opinions or rights of the other person.

Testing Your Own Assertiveness

How do you know if you lack assertiveness? Below are a few questions for you, answer yes or no:

  • Are you able to say no to unreasonable requests made of you? How do you feel when demands are placed on you that you feel are unjust and unfair?
  • Do you feel guilty when you change your mind?
  • Do you believe you are a confident, valued and worthy human being?
  • Can you handle difficult, awkward and conflict situations?
  • Do you feel awkward with silences?
  • Do people ‘hear’ you not just listen to you?
  • Do you feel awful if you make mistakes?
  • Do you have the confidence to ask people to repeat what they have said?
  • Can you communicate clearly your wants, needs, and feelings?
  • Can you persist to adovate your own and others rights?
  • Do you let others ‘put’ you down, and walk all over you?
  • Are you able to say exactly what you feel without any backlash?

Obviously if you answered yes to all the questions above, you are assertiveness. If you answered no to the majority, then perhaps a missing lesson for you is assertiveness.

Here’s The Good News

Assertiveness can be learned. It’s a skill once mastered last a lifetime. Yes, the ‘skills’ require practice and to fully use you may need to work on confidence and self esteem first.

Assertiveness Rights

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Photo Credit Me’nthedogs (thank you)

Life, I’d Like to Change It But

What? But what?

  • You’ve a wedding coming up?
  • You’re waiting until pay day?
  • Your youngest is starting dance classes next month?
  • Too much on the TV?
  • Getting your holidays over with first?
  • You’re just ‘too’ tired?
  • Haven’t got any money?
  • You’re just not ready?
  • Time isn’t right?

Can I ask you something?

What’s it going to take?

‘But it’s so hard’ you cry.

Yeah, it can be. Who said a change was a breeze?

The key is to embrace it, fall into it, let it happen, full on, come and get me change.

I’m not asking you how you’re going to do it (yet), I’m asking you what do you need to let go off, in order for you to realise that you’re worthy of the change.

You can’t learn to swim by not getting wet. You can’t learn to drive by not getting behind the wheel of a car. You can’t learn to get over a fear of dogs, sitting with a cat. You can’t learn to embrace change, without making changes. You can’t change your life, without doing things differently.

Scared? So is everyone else…

It’s not uncommon for people to turn their backs on the truth of how they are actually feeling or current circumstances because they don’t know or don’t want to face the ugly reality that they are so unhappy.

There are some that will ‘fill’ the voids with ‘stuff’ that will ensure that they never have to put themselves in a place where they have to think about their life, or where they feel fear. Fine. Do you want that? Really?

But.

What?

  1. But you don’t know where to start? Start here.
  2. But you haven’t got anyone in your life who can support your journey? Go here (external link)
  3. But you just don’t know what you should be doing? Here, please.

Nobody is going to change your life, in the way you want it, apart from you. Sure things change, but are you willing to let change happen around you, which you could’ve had some control over?

Command your life. Take authority for it. Be responsible for you. Own yourself. Stand up.

Sounds easy written down.

Sure does.

Is that another reason not to try though?

And, if you’ve let others and circumstances control your life so far, you may find it takes a little time to start living a life with you in the driving seat.

Is a little time to settle in, better than no time?

You can’t control external events, but you can control how you feel about them, we both know that.

Is this way of life abrasive? If you want my answer, then no, it isn’t.

Change isn’t about screwing everything and everyone else around you, it’s merely stepping forward and saying, ‘I’m in, I’m here, I’m ready and willing to play’.

If you want to ‘wait’ for the ‘right time’ and allow other events take their place, that’s fine. Cool. The change will happen anyway, I just wonder though if you’ll be on the right side of it?

Try this exercise:

Think of a current area of your life that needs to be changed. Just one.

On a piece of paper, write down in the middle the current situation.

Then just jot down words in response to the following questions.

  • How do you feel about it? (15 words plus)
  • What’s great about the situation? (there will be something!)
  • What’s bad about the situation?
  • How does the situation affect other areas of your life?
  • If the situation were changed, what would be there for it’s replacement?
  • What resources do you have (or can tap into) to make the change happen?
  • Is the change worth it? What will you be trading?
  • What will be different as a result of the change?

 

Standing Knee Deep In a River (Dying of Thirst)

I so wish that was my title, alas no, I can’t claim any ownership.

I was driving back from the doggy walk today and couldn’t turn the radio over, and the channel I was forced to listen to, thankfully played Kathy Mattea’s ‘Standing Knee Deep In a River (Dying of Thirst)’.

Not heard it?

Youtube video below for you: get your cowboy boots, studded shirt and Stetsons on though! Yeehaa! It’s very ‘country’!

I hadn’t heard it in ages. And it got me thinking…

If you’re proclaiming stuck-id-ness, in your career, biz, life. Would I be right in saying that you can ‘see’ the pictures (no matter how feint or perhaps not the dominant thought) of what you really want life to be like?

I believe there are different levels of ‘being stuck’, there is

Stuck definition = ‘I have no idea which way to go now’

Stuck definition = paralysis of action

Stuck definition = I know what I need to be doing and why, but I’m too scared to move

Sticking with the title analogy of rivers and thirst…

Sometimes right beside river there are ideas, solutions, resources, people, tools, but we’re so close to source that we can’t see them.

We can be standing looking out in all the different directions, confused and bewildered about what to do next, but if we paid attention to what’s happening right in front of out noses, we’ll see that our feet are getting wet!

They can be there, calling to you from the riverbank, throwing you a lifejacket, asking you to jump in a boat, but you are to concerned with the water all around you have lost the ability to open your senses to anything else.

Knowing how to take a drink is very different to actually bending down taking the drink.

Look closely at one area of your life for 10 minutes today. It doesn’t have to be the biggest problem you’ve got. Write a list of 10 possible solutions, ideas, resources, actions, people on the riverbank you could take, approach, ask for help to end the thirst. Take action on just one!

Take the hint.

I’d be interested to know, what would be your number one tip for unsticking yourself? Comments welcome.

Oh, and here’s the video as promised (youtube)…take it away Kathy Mattea! Go listen, I can wait.<

Thinking Positively All The Time, Is Not ‘Realistic’! Really?

I would say I’m a ‘95% of the time’ a positive person, the other 5% being reserved for general ‘off’ days and when I give myself a permission to be a good old grump!

That means, using these percentages, most people I meet are faced with the ‘Dawn of Positivity’.

I can only think of a handful of people who have spent time with the other part of me, it’s not a pretty sight, when I decide to spend a while over in the darkside, nothing is spared.

(I know, you may have thought that those who advocate positivity are in merriment and glee 24/7, nope not true. Well I for one, will admit that. We’ve all got our nonsense to deal with.)

I like being a positive person.

I CHOOSE positivity, yet I know I annoy the hell out of most people in my immediate circle of friends and family.

Like last week…according to a close connection, who said ‘thinking positively all the time, is not realistic…’ (there was more, but I’ll save that for another post.)

Thinking positively (in my book) has nothing to do with realism.

If you find yourself in the company of a positive thinker, here’s a few tips on how we see the world.

Oh and I use the word ‘we’ generally, if you are a postive thinker and I’ve missed a point you think is mega important, feel free to jump in on the comments:

1. We’ll always see the best in people, first.

Telling us what they are really like, won’t matter. We will make up our own minds.

2. We’ve decided that happiness (in our life) is a priority

However hard some try to beat it out of us, we won’t break. Yes money and material things are nice, but happiness, positive mental health and general health count more.

3. We don’t mind the fact that problems exist

No we are not burying our head in the sand and ignoring reality (as many want to point out to us), we just know that there will be a solution somewhere, and we’ll find it.

Oh, and telling us ‘that’ll never work’ will just make us more determined — actually, if you want something done, ask a positive thinker.

4. We know things may not always go to plan.

But we don’t dwell on the negative ‘may not happens’, we rather focus on the positive ‘could happens’.

Some may think we just ‘go for it’ and not worry about the consequences, we usually have worked through the worst possible case scenarios and planned for the best!

5. We can use strange sentences like ‘be in the present’, ‘live in the now’!

We’re sorry if we don’t feel as devasted about past events as much others. No matter how shit they were.

We like to take the lessons out of the experiences we made in the past, but that’s all it is to us, the past.

6. We like to explore who the hell we are

Yeah, we like doing ‘work on us’, we love the fact that we may change and grow, we actually get excited when we learn something about ourselves we never knew was there!

7. We are not ‘happy clappy optimists’ as some may think

The Joy of Grumping!

We know that goals, dreams, plans aren’t just going to magically appear, we are ready for the hard work, as the payoff will be worth it.

And we’re real, if something is beyond us, we either put it aside until we can take the challenge or find someone who can help!

And lastly…

We give ourselves permission to feel how we are feeling, if that means we are choosing a grump day, then so be it.

What I find amazing is when the grumping begins the people that hate ‘postitive’ thinkers get in a panic, I wonder if we’re more valuable and needed than some let on!

Your turn — if positive psychology and thinking is your thing, how do others ‘view’ you?

Not your thing? Just how annoying are we?!

Photo Source With Thanks to: It’s Meng

Is Saying Sorry Enough?

(Unless of course you’re apologising for things that aren’t your fault, but we’ll get to that another day.)

“A stiff apology is a second insult…. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.” ~G.K. Chesterton

This is more a ‘whatdoyouthinkkinda’ post, feel free to comment at the end.

If you don’t mind, I’ll start with giving you some background and yes, you’re more than welcome to take sides.

Here’s what happened…

Shopping - Ecstasy
I actually don't do this in shops, I wish I could, how exciting.

What started as a pleasant trip for the ‘big weekly shop’ with the beloved, turned into two days of not speaking.

Okay, even I’m cringing a little, we sound like some completely dysfunctional couple, who live in a permanent state of anger (we don’t, events like these are rare and usually we are good at accepting the fact we have wronged or hurt each other, and will say so), what happened?

Well…

We got separated, we eventually caught up with each other in aisle 25 (we last made contact at aisle 2!), around 45 minutes later!

(Start taking sides…NOW!)

I did hear a scream of ‘WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?’, I actually looked around with the other shoppers, catching their eye and similar thoughts passing between us ‘who the hell are they talking too’!

It continued: ‘DAAAWWWNNN’. By which point, folks in the healthy eating ailse had ‘clocked’ I was Dawn, even without a name badge.

Now, we all have those little trigger buttons, that is one of mine, instantly I was in anger mode. How dare they scream at me, especially in a shop.

I did whisper this to them, through clenched teeth I admit, and I got the reply ‘well, you always do this’.

Oh! DO I? Really?

My reply was ‘I’ll wait in the car’.

Never ruin an apology with an excuse. ~Kimberly Johnson

Two days later, yep, two DAYS (after visitors had left, you know when you have to pretend ‘all is hunky dory here’ and you talk as if nothing is wrong in front of the guests) they said:

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have screamed like that at you (long pause) but (me: grr)I just need you to know how angry I was”

Me: “Maybe you should stop there”

It’s such a trivial event, why would something that unimportant matter? I mean, we’ve apologised for worse.

So, I’ve been thinking…

When it comes to saying we’re sorry, does the context matter?

If an apology is required, there is no doubt that pain has been inflicted somewhere.

Why do we apologise for some of our misdemeanors quicker than others?

For the scenario above, ego was involved, and of course we both have been pissed with each other in the past, as we wasted about 30 minutes looking for each other, so that event had a little ‘here we go again’ attached.

But the act of saying sorry, why do we struggle to say it and send flowers and write poems instead?

And, why do we accept apologies when we know they aren’t really sincere?

I don’t know about you, but I was brought up to say sorry, a lot.

Crikey, my sister and I were never done apologising to each other, would have saved a lot of our parents time just adding on I’m sorry to the bedtime prayers at the end of the day ‘Amen, oh, and I’m sorry’!

Is Saying Sorry Enough?

I’ve started this paragraph about twenty times, I mean if the Prime Minister of the UK says ‘I’m sorry about Iraq’ or the Pope can say ‘sorry for child abuse’ what does a sorry actually mean?

Is sorry a poor excuse for not being able to act like a compassionate human being?

The ‘get out of guilt’ free card?

What do you think?

I’d love your thoughts, leave a comment below.

Photo Credit: David Brackwell

The Makings of Great Speech

I was spending a happy hour on Ted Talks the other day (I swear tedtalks could be listed on my CV as a ‘hobby’), and I came across this wonderful ‘talk’ by Mark Bezos ‘A Life Lesson from a Volunteer Firefighter’.

It has a very powerful message ‘don’t wait to make a difference’, and more than that it’s an awesome speech.

Here’s why…

1.  No Time Wasted Clearing Throat — Mr Bezos dives straight in, how many times have you listened to a speech and thought ‘just get on with it’, Mr B has in the first sentence covered the ‘here’s who I am, here’s what I do, here’s what I have for you today’ , fabulous. [Read more…] about The Makings of Great Speech