Burning Boy

There is a fabulous book on assertiveness “When i state No I Feel Guilty” by Manuel J. Smith by which he tells us how being more assertive. This book teaches practical skills that you should use immediately. You’ll end up comfortably using some techniques ahead of when you even finish the book, however, it’s not always appropriate to be assertive. I’ll discuss such situations where being assertive isn’t a wise choice for us.
Often you might encounter situations where you have little control over what is going to happen, and it’s foolish and possibly dangerous to assert yourself such situations. One such situation where assertive behavior is inappropriate is also sensible and obvious: when you are at the physical mercy of other people. Throughout a hit-and-run, robbery assertion is of little use to you. Let me share with you one real example from my life to make my point crystal clear.
After i was in senior high school, walking home from class one evening, I encountered four large, tough-looking men on a dimly lighted street. Flicking out a switchable knife, one of the men asked me to lend him my bicycle. I was so frightened that couldn’t think about being assertive.
Many of my friends, at that time, considered me coward, but I think that there is really a dividing line between being foolishly brave and being assertive. When we have no other option, it is in our best interest to cooperate fully with somebody that physically threatens us. When someone points a gun or knife at you, it doesn’t help much to say, “You can’t have my money.” over and over in the hope that the mugger goes away!
There are also situations where regardless of how assertively persistent you are, you are likely to lose; you are not going to achieve your material goal. Usually it happens in situations where you might try to use assertiveness to renegotiate a prior structure. I wants to share with you one particular example from my own life.
After quitting my job, I started taking tuitions to raise some cash. Although I had been a good student in school time, but I had no experience of tutoring. Moreover, I didn’t know much about home tuitions charges, therefore, I designed a guess when I had been hired to teach a seventh standard boy, and charge them INR 1000 monthly. Next day, I came to understand that his previous teacher was charging INR 3000 per month. I thought about being assertive and talked to his parents about raising my charges the day. His parents become angry and fired me.When i realized that I was trying to use assertiveness to regain his self-respect after I silently settled for a cheaper price ..
Unfortunately, some people cloak their very own personal biases on how people ‘should’ behave , and have the real, if not absolute ‘legal’ authority to act out on their personal feelings. Concisely, assertiveness like anything in world works at times, and doesn’t at other times.