Our Assertive Rights
- Angelena Rose
- Feb 22, 2024
- 2 min read
We always hear the saying that "communication is key", although we still struggle to hear others and have others hear us. Assertive Communication is not something we learn about in school and unless we go out of our way to educate ourselves on how to communicate in a healthy manner with assertiveness skills, we are really left to navigate communication through trial and error.
Here, I wanted to share your rights to assertiveness and I will talk about assertive communication skills in a further discussion.
Below are your rights. (Make note that these are YOUR rights but they are also everyone else's rights. This means, we must be accepting to others rights as well.)
YOUR BILL OF ASSERTIVE RIGHTS
1. You have the right to judge your own behaviors, thoughts and emotions, and to take responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.
2. You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.
3. You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people’s problems.
4. You have the right to change your mind.
5. You have the right to make mistakes and be responsible for them.
6. You have the right to say “I don’t know.”
7. You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.
8. You have the right to be illogical in making decisions.
9. You have the right to say “I don’t understand.”
10. You have the right to say “I don’t care.”
11. You have the right to say “no.”
12. You have the right to do less then you are humanly capable of doing.
13. You have the right to take the time you need to respond.
14. You have the right to disagree with others regardless of their position or numbers.
15. You have the right to feel all of your emotions (including anger) and express them appropriately.
16. You have the right to ask questions.
17. You have the right to be treated with respect.
18. You have the right to ask for what you want.
19. You have the right to feel good about yourself, your actions and your life.
20. You have the right to exercise any and all of the these rights, without feeling guilty.
When you are done reading through these, I recommend saying them out loud with "you" switched to "I". Each of these rights are an affirmation to bring you more confidence in your communication with others.
-Angelena Rose