Conclusion

So this is what ‘assertiveness’ is essentially all about. Once you make the decision to proactively change things for yourself in order to be more confident and achieve more in your professional and day-to-day life, there is really no going back. Once you are receptive to the fact that things can be different and you can be in charge of that, it is already a more confident and positive position to be operating from.

It is true that when we are not feeling assertive ourselves and we look at others, their way of operating can seem a million miles away and yet, once you begin to make just small shifts, then you really start to see the benefits. The key, as has been repeated in the book throughout, is to keep moving forward.

And, just to finish, there is one final note on handling other people’s negativity:

If someone is negative towards you, either in what they do or what they say, if they put down you, the way you think or the values you hold, remember that it is their ‘stuff’, it is their own lack of self-esteem driving this behaviour and not yours.

If you choose to engage with their negativity, however, it becomes yours. If you give negativity any energy at all, it is given the chance to exist in your own life.

To come this far and engage with negative outlooks would be to go backwards. So keep your own self-respect intact. Ignore negativities where possible and, if you can, make a joke out of them. Resist the temptation to ‘put down’ in return. You don’t need to. By rising above this sort of behaviour you are already holding your own assertiveness in high regard, and doing so will encourage other people to do the same.