Assertiveness is a skill regularly mentioned to in social and communication skills training. Being assertive means able to stand up for your own or other people’s rights in a calm and positive way, without being either aggressive or passively accepting ‘wrong’. Developing an Assertive personality can start in early Teenage. Here are some tips given by our Teentalkindia expert to help you learn to be more assertive.
 

• Make the choice to positively assert yourself: Commit to being assertive rather than passive or aggressive and start practicing today as a teen.
• Look for open and honest communication: Don’t forget to respect other people when you are sharing your feelings, wants, needs, beliefs or opinions.
• Listen actively: Try to comprehend the other person’s point of view and don’t interrupt when they are explaining it to you.
• Agree to disagree: This is important to note that having a different point of view doesn’t mean you are right and the other person is wrong.
• Avoid guilt trips: Be honest and tell others how you feel or what you want without making allegations or making them feel embarrassed.
• Stay calm: Breathe normally, maintain an eye contact, keep your face relaxed and speak in a normal voice.
• Adopt a problem-solving approach to conflict: Try to see the other person as your friend not your rival.
• Exercise assertiveness: Talk in an assertive way in front of a mirror or with a friend. Be watchful about your body language as well as to the words you say.
• Use ‘I’: Stick to statements that include ‘I’ in them such as ‘I think’ or ‘I feel’. Don’t use hostile language such as ‘you always’ or ‘you never’.
• Be patient: Being assertive is a proficiency that needs practice. Remember that you will sometimes do better at it than at other times, but you can always learn from your faults.

Benefits of being an Assertive person:

• Reduced social anxiety and need for approval. As we become more capable at expressing our own beliefs, wants, we don’t need to worry as much about disapproval as we imagine.
• Better self-confidence and self-respect. When we honestly express how we feel and what we want, we’re reinforcing our own brains that we are important and valuable. And ultimately, it’s the source of genuine self-confidence and self-respect.
• Improved relationships and partnerships:  All communication issues are problems of assertiveness. When we know how to communicate assertively especially with friends and family, every aspect of our relationships improve.

We all to be more confident, but not everyone know how to be assertive. Assertiveness lies between passive and aggressive. If you're passive about your opinion, you may come across as submissive whereas, if you are aggressive in your viewpoint, you may come across as a hostile or a bully. But if you learn to be assertive, you can express yourself without being passive or aggressive, and you will have a better oppurtunity of getting what you want. You teens keep working through each of these techniques and soon you will feel more confident!

Preparing for the world isn’t an easy job. As the world transition, new technologies and practices are introduced. What we acquire in schools usually becomes obsolete by the time we’re ready to start working. This is why preparation for children, teenagers and young adults nowadays should focus on developing skills that are important for adapting to this ever-changing reality. One of the essential skills we need to nurture is creative thinking. This creative process allows you to discover connections, meet new challenges and seek solutions that are unusual, original and fresh. We have to break the patterns and traditional way of thinking which is going to help you create a new approach to a particular situation or a problem. Beginning with this method early on guarantees more experience as you learn from many different examples as you grow up. As an innovative way of approaching and exploring ideas, creative problem solving became an essential skill for the 21st century.

Our Teentalkindia expert shares some ways to develop creative thinking:

1. Brainstorming: It includes thinking about something and putting down all the ideas that come to your mind–regardless how unrelated they might seem at first. In this pool of ideas, you’re bound to find one that will stand out, one that will be concrete and innovative. Used as an individual or group practice, brainstorming is a good way to develop creative thinking and problem solving. The more options come to your mind, the more likely you’ll find great ideas.

2. Mind mapping: Mind mapping is the method of connecting the dots. While brainstorming consist of putting all the ideas down as they come to your mind, mind mapping is about organizing your thoughts, thinking in a logical way, using associations, recognizing patterns and arranging an order. All that collection of ideas from brainstorming should come together in mind mapping. This exercise involves both left and right hemisphere of the brain; it encourages you to think about the relationship among aspects and ideas. It also has a good influence on organizational skill.

3. Reframing: Reframing means shifting the frame of things, so you’ll need to take a look at a problem or a situation in a different manner, to be able to come up with a new, innovative approach. Explore other meanings of things, evaluate the context and enlarge the perspective to spot new opportunities and expect potential obstacles. Again, this exercise and way of thinking are useful in many professions nowadays.

4. Envisioning the future: The goal of this is to train your mind to anticipate future based on the images of today. Begin with the current situation. Regardless of you’re using images or data to understand it, try to think about future and where you want future to take you. Through this process, you’ll need to create connections from present to future, and this is where creativity is useful, as ideas to overcome gaps become solutions that will take you to desired future and help you achieve your goals.

Creative thinking is not just for ‘creative types’ like artists and musicians. Everyone can benefit from creative thinking. There are huge benefits to learning to think a little differently. It will help you to see others’ perspectives. In a global scenario, broader horizons and an ability to think more widely is never going to hurt. If you want to build a successful career, it’s important to develop creative thinking, together with problem solving and critical thinking.