A vital component of sucking less through awareness is noticing whether the things you do, say, and think are passive, aggressive, or assertive. Assertive behavior—clear, honest, and respectful—is the best course for getting what you want and need, including healthy relationships with those around you.
Each of us has a great variety of things we need and want, from survival needs (food and shelter), to emotional needs (love, companionship, self esteem), to our specific desires (to have a certain job, to be treated a certain way). Different styles of behavior can dramatically increase or reduce your chances of getting what you want and need. (Hint: Assertive behavior is most efficient and effective!)
Passive
Behaving passively means not effectively identifying, expressing, or pursuing the things you want and need. In the image below, your wants and needs are represented by the color green, and the curvy dotted line represents the boundary you establish for yourself against external pressure—the boundary behind which you are not willing to give up control and ownership of the things you legitimately want and need.
Your wants and needs are highly unlikely to be met if you respond passively to external pressure (notice how much green lies outside the dotted line in this illustration). Many times, someone behaving in a passive manner does so because he or she isn’t aware of other choices—he or she feels incapable of asserting him or herself. Sometimes, a person is aware of other options but intentionally chooses passive behavior as a way to avoid making a direct statement of a desire or a need—for example, a person may believe that assertiveness comes at the cost of seeming ungracious (a false belief).
Aggressive
Behaving aggressively means you have an exaggerated sense of your wants and needs—you feel the need to pursue more power and control than is actually required to protect the things you legitimately want and need against external pressures. To gain this power and control, you are willing to intrude on the wants and needs of others and to violate their boundaries so you may grab up territory, so to speak.
Aggressive behavior is not a good long-term strategy for meeting your goals because, while you might bully others into giving you what you want or need today, the people around you will eventually distance themselves from you, physically or emotionally. They will come to associate you with negative emotions like fear or anger. They will tire of choosing between competing with you and letting you dominate. You will not have an opportunity to find contentment by taking ownership of the things that really matter to you because you will be distracted, defending your exaggerated territory and dealing with competitive or dysfunctional relationships.
Passive-Aggressive
Passive-aggressive behavior is destructive because it is not only ineffective but also dishonest. As its oxymoronic name suggests, it contradicts itself. It is challenging to create a visual for passive-aggressive behavior: perhaps the best way to depict it (which would be much too seizure-inducing to look at, so the Relationship Ghostwriter will simply describe it) would be an animation flashing back and forth between the “passive” and the “aggressive” images above. The minute you try to put your finger on which behavior you’re dealing with, a passive-aggressive person will don a new disguise. If you are passive-aggressive, you simultaneously act powerless and disruptive; your literal words make it sound like you are retreating, but the effect of your words is to influence others into behaving the way you wish.
This is highly ineffective and inefficient behavior, and it is unhealthy for your relationships. You will encounter the negative consequences of both passive and aggressive behavior. Your intentions will be difficult for anyone to make sense of, and others will come to feel that you are attempting to manipulate them. You will feel confused because your results will be very inconsistent. This will dramatically hinder your ability to develop accurate awareness and to take ownership. A person behaving passive-aggressively may believe he or she is choosing to be being assertive. But he or she is actually just oscillating between passive and aggressive behavior, the two least effective styles of communication.
Assertive
Behaving assertively means taking confident ownership of your personal responsibility to identify, express, and pursue the things you want and need. There is no healthy way to do this for another person or to have it done for you.
When you act assertive, you do not retreat in the face of external pressures. You are respectful of others. Your personal boundaries are both strong and flexible—you are always mindful of your own goals and of external pressures, and you look for the most constructive way to address conflict between the two should conflict arise.
Being assertive means being firmly aware of your own principles and being confidently protective of those personal boundaries. Being confidently protective of your boundaries means you are not playing defense (you aren’t anxious that others could compel you to change), nor are you playing offense (you are not wasting energy engaging in every random argument just for the sake of arguing). The principles you live by will evolve and change over time.
Assertive behavior is the most effective and efficient way to achieve your goals. You are rewarded by feeling empowered and capable, and you have strong, healthy relationships with those around you because you allow others space to express and pursue their wants and needs as well.
