Assertive v Aggressive

While aggressive behavior injures in order to win, assertive behavior focuses, not on winning as such, but on negotiating reasonable changes in the way both parties behave so as to equalize the balance of social power. The purpose of assertive speaking-up is usually to solve an interpersonal problem.

But assertiveness is not just expressing feelings, laying down the law to someone, and then walking away. In general, to solve problems you must do more than talk back or express feelings; you must be very clear about what you want to accomplish by asserting yourself. You must attend to your feelings, decide what you want, and then use some specific verbal skills to negotiate for the changes you want.

Assertive problem-solving involves the ability to plan, “sell,” and implement an agreeable contract between yourself and the other person without sounding like a nag, a dictator, or a preacher.

In other words, an assertive person can express feelings in a manner that is both personally satisfying and socially effective.

Sharon and Gordon Bower, Asserting Yourself

Going with your Gut

Your feelings are a very important tool in understanding the world. Your unconscious mind does a lot of mental calculations that are more complex than your conscious mind is able to do. It can handle more information. That’s what comes back to your brain in gut feelings, hunches and intuitions. Those aren’t from nowhere. They're the result of complex calculations your brain did on an unconscious level, in conjunction with emotion. 

Leonard Mlodinow, quoted in GQ

How Feelings Help You Think

If you’re in a grocery store, and you're hungry, everyone knows you're going to buy more stuff. You go into the store, you have certain data. If you go when you're in a non-hungry state, you have all that data in front of you, and all those choices to make, and you make a series of choices. If you go when you're in a hungry state, same data, same information, and you make totally different decisions. That's a good illustration of what emotions do. The emotions are a framework for your logical processing. It affects how you evaluate data, how skeptical you are of certain ideas versus how accepting you are of those same ideas. Your brain doesn't process in a vacuum. 

Leonard Mlodinow, quoted in GQ

Leading with Empathy

Leaders can demonstrate empathy in two ways. First, they can consider someone else’s thoughts through cognitive empathy (“If I were in his/her position, what would I be thinking right now?”). Leaders can also focus on a person’s feelings using emotional empathy (“Being in his/her position would make me feel ___”). But leaders will be most successful not just when they personally consider others, but when they express their concerns and inquire about challenges directly, and then listen to employees’ responses.

Leaders don’t have to be experts in mental health in order to demonstrate they care and are paying attention.

Tracy Brower writing in Forbes

The Cycle of Bitterness

Bitterness leads to a helpless, hopeless cycle around our distasteful feelings. Like the child first learning to ride a bike, we keep moving without knowing how to stop and not crash. We pedal on and on, afraid to quit, yet wishing desperately for someone to come and break our ring of futility. Only forgiveness can do that. Only forgiveness can disrupt our endlessly dull rotation in the same senseless orbit around a lumpy ball of bitter feelings. 

Stephen Goforth

What’s really on people’s minds

Too often spouses, and also parents with their children, reduce conversations to logistics such as what to have for dinner, whose turn it is to do the laundry, or when to leave for soccer practice. Friends might run down their latest accomplishments and activities. What often gets left out is what is really on people’s minds — their joys, struggles, hopes and fears. Sometimes people keep conversation light with friends and family because they assume they already know what’s going on, but also, they may be afraid of what they might learn.

But what is love if not a willingness to listen to and be a part of another person’s evolving story? 

It turns out the best way for us to really understand those closest to us is to spend time with them, put down our phones and actually listen to what they have to say.

Kate Murphy, writing in the New York Times, author of You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters

I know exactly what you mean

We think it’s helpful to say, ‘I know exactly what you mean, I went through something similar…’ but that’s you talking about your own feelings, rather than allowing your friend to tell you what it’s like for them. When a person wants to express their pain, your experiences aren’t relevant to them. A similar, common mistake is to leap to offer advice before being asked. Giving advice is not listening, and often it’s not helpful. It shuts people down. If you feel a responsibility to fix your friend’s problems, relinquish it.

Moya Sarner writing in The Guardian

Feeling

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

EE Cummings

The Vulnerability Myth

The perception that vulnerability is weakness is the most widely accepted myth about vulnerability and the most dangerous. When we spend our lives pushing away and protecting ourselves from feeling vulnerable or from being perceived as too emotional, we feel contempt when others are less capable or willing to mask feelings, suck it up, and soldier on. We’ve come to the point where, rather than respecting appreciating the courage and daring behind vulnerability, we let our fear and discomfort become judgment and criticism. 

Our rejections of vulnerability often stems from associating it with dark emotions like fear, shame, grief, sadness, and disappointment—emotions that we don't want to discuss, even when they profoundly affect the way we live, love, work, and even lead. What most of us fail to understand and what took me a decade of research to learn is the vulnerability is also the cradle of the emotions experiences that we crave. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual eyes, vulnerability is the path.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Both Tough and Tender

In many parts of American society it is considered inappropriate for men to express any emotion save one--anger. When a man learns to express other feelings and not be so concerned whether as to whether others think he is strong or “manly” he takes a major step forward.

Sure, there’s a time and place to "come on strong and take no prisoners." But it's a denial of your humanity to oversimplify, hiding behind a narrow definition of manhood. Men must be both tough and tender. Maturity comes when when we understand which one is appropriate at what time.

Stephen Goforth

handling offensive behavior

Whenever possible, express your feelings about offensive behavior from a positive rather than a negative perspective. Negative expressions state your dislike, as in “I hate you when you do that,” “You make me angry,” “You make me feel insecure and unloved,” or “You’re insensitive and overbearing.” You can be more effective if you focus on the common goals and the shortcomings of the interaction, rather than your hatreds.

Goal oriented statements might be, “I think that your behavior and my reaction to it are preventing us from having a pleasant relationship.”

You might try new ways to express your feelings, using metaphors on describing the concrete aspects of your emotional reactions. Thus you might express embarrassment by the metaphor “I feel naked and exposed,” or express conflict by “I feel my head spinning in two directions at once.” Striking metaphors may produce a greater impact than the accustomed “emotional words” that have been worn out in your interchanges with others.

Sharon and Gordon Bower, Asserting Yourself