Author: Steven Aitchison (407 Articles)
I am the owner of this blog. I am a Freelance Writer and write about personal development with my passions being belief formation, thoughts, perceptions and emotions. My number 1 priority is my family, and after that my aim is to help as many people as I can around the world to live their dream.
I was speaking with one of my colleagues from work the other day. She was talking about the fact that she was not good at standing up for herself and she hated confrontation. I asked her if this bothered her and she advised it bothered her quite a bit and she wished she could have more guts and stand up for herself. I then asked if she really wanted to change this aspect of herself, because if she stood up for herself more it would literally change her life. She gave me a strange look and asked what I meant. I asked her to imagine standing up to all the people she had wanted to in the past and how she would be a different person now. She looked at me and was thinking about what I had said. She then said it didn’t matter as she has always been like that and shied away from confrontational situations. I advised her the best thing she could do was to try to involve herself more in confrontational situations. You could imagine the even stranger look I received.
Walking into the wind
In everybody’s lives, we all build up strength by resisting something. Think about it for a moment. If you want to build up your body strength, you fight against weights to make your muscles bigger and stronger. If you want to be aerobically fit, you fight against machines to make your lungs stronger. If you want to become smarter you fight yourself to study and study some more.
Anything we want more of we have to build up resistance to it.
It’s just like out body fighting a cold it has to build up its immune system response to fight the cold.
Making use of this
When I suggested to my colleague that she should involve herself more in confrontational situations, I meant just that. If she did not walk away from these situations she would pretty soon become comfortable in them and then learn to stand up for herself more. You can also do this with various aspects of your life.
To be more courageous put yourself in more courageous situations.
To be able to stand up for yourself more put yourself in situations where you will have to stand up for yourself more. This way you build up a resistance to the stress you may feel in these situations.
To be a better speaker, put yourself in situations where you will have to speak more.
Your life
This is your life, if you don’t like something about it change it, don’t talk about it, don’t bitch about it, don’t think about it just change it.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Steven,
Well said! Your colleague probably did not understand what you were saying and the idea behind it! If she is unwilling to change, nothing will change!
But this is a good example and explanation for your readers who would like to change!
Cheers
James
Hi Steven,
Great post! It sounds quite different such that we need to put ourselves in uncomfortable postitions to improve. Yeah!I guess that is the gist of it.
Great learning tip! All the best in your continuous bid in blogging to the top!
Cheers!
Glenn Tan
Courage is a great thing to have, and I have gained a lot of it in the past few months. In the same way as your co-worker wants courage, I did too, until I had something that I wanted to go to so much, that I would not let even my dad get in my way. My suggestion is to find something like that for her, something that she doesn’t want to give up so much that she has to stand up for herself.
The only way to overcome something is to dive right into it. The best advise you could have given her is to find situations that are confrontational. They can be minor, in which she can begin by retaining control. And I think maintain control is an issue here, it sounds like she allows herself to be controlled and its hard to be courage when you’re not in control.
Steven,
I actually am dealing with this same issue. I often find it challenging to stand up to people and speak my mind. What I have found is that The Universe continues to put me in these confrontational situations. However, I keep fighting it…After reading this I realized that they’ll just keep happening until I do something about it!
Thank you!!
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