5 Ways to Stand up for Yourself

The Need to Stand up

As the time passes by, the need to change becomes a necessity to survive. The earth has evolved in billions of years by its fundamental of the Survival of the fittest. These fit and strong species have survived on the goodness of weak species. Now these good people are perceived as weak people who are taken for granted by the strong not so good people. Hence, the teachers of the new school of life are not having enough emphasising on becoming the person who is at first good for him or herself rather than to others. This new idealogy of being good to yourself and standing up for yourself in response to the benefit seeking people is the Veda for today’s life.
By not spending your energy and time for pleasing others you start living for yourself. You no longer feel guilty for not prioritising your own needs. Your relationships grow even stronger as you don’t say yes to anything that your friends or family ask which helps eventually to keep up your promises, if you ever make. The less you say “Yes” the more you filter out unnecessary tasks from your agenda. This refinement makes you most productive and puts you at your optimum level. You feel the real freedom and start loving your life. You earn respect yourself and also make others respect you.

5 Ways to Stand up for Yourself

To help you start with your new journey, I have penned below 5 effective ways of becoming good to yourself by standing for yourself. The methods I have mentioned are not the typical one you will find in the blogs of every blogger out there. These are actually created and experimented by me for the maximum results which you can also obtain by practicing a copy paste.

i. Create a Twin Character of Yourself

Problems are never solved until they are identified first. The first step is to create a fictional character in your mind and name it.
For example, my name is Sumiet, and I have created a character and named him Samiet. His job is to recognise the threats of unwanted encroachments from day-to-day conversations and interactions. When someone asks you a favour and you open your mouth to say Yes, this character will immediately poke you and tell: “Hey there! You have a task already that is more important than this. How can you say yes to this? Finish that task first dumbo.” When someone treats you unfair or offends you, this is the person who makes you notice that. It asks you to better leave the conversation or to voice for yourself.

ii. Be Rude without being Offensive

Talking rude is better than sugarcoating fake promises. If you are upset by your loved ones, talk with them immediately. Don’t be silent and think that it will be rude to show them their mistakes. The unsaid feelings are like ticking bomb. The bomb will explode one day and those people who thought you were so nice are soon going to leave you accusing for every bad thing that has happened. Therefore, start practicing talking rude with others but in a polite way. For example, your colleague asks you to help her to setup a google account for her. Tell her that you don’t teach anyone for free. Or you can also reply that you are soon going to open a coaching class and are going to invite her there. Alternately, you can tell her to google the query. All the above answers didn’t offend her but were rude enough to discourage her in future to use you for free.

iii. Do Favour for a Favour 

Nothing is free here. You were not born for free. There was a cost for giving birth to you. Nobody does anything for free. You too don’t do any favour for free. This seems to selfish, but this is better than giving yourself others for granted. If you do things for others for free, they won’t value you. Because whatever here is free, it has no value. You breath air here, it is free for everyone to breath. Hence it doesn’t have any price tag, nor did anyone tried to open a business of air except the oxygen cylinders and the likes. Nobody is going to remember you after their wants are satisfied. You strive to satisfy them by keep doing favours but they ultimately take you for granted. And if you stop doing things for them in the middle suddenly, they will get angry and will treat you like crap. Hence, it’s better to not make this habit at the onset.

iv. Realise the Value of Time

You wake up and go to office every day on the same time. You eat, drink, work and travel on very much the same time. The value of time is more than money and one who recognises this is real wealthy. Even if one doesn’t have a luxury lifestyle, if he has enough time for his disposal, he has real freedom. And freedom is the most satisfying factor of everyone’s life. If you use your precious time for working for others for free instead of working on yourself, you are living a miserable life my friend. Don’t give your time to people for free. Demand equal value from the person with whom you spend every minute. Set your boundaries of time and efforts. Don’t work on weekends and don’t spend your me time for others. Learn the value of your me time. Don’t work overtime for free and don’t let anyone to distract you from your goals. Eat healthy, sleep enough, do enough exercise, learn professional skills, read or listen to books, practice fine arts. There is so much to do in this precious life. Don’t just waste and dispose it on the feet of these selfish people. I have written a separate post emphasising the value of me time and the Work-Life Triangle.

v. Practice saying “No”

Practice makes a man perfect. There is no perfection if there is no practice. So, start practicing to utter the word “No”. To initiate with, try saying No for everything. Your friends, your family, your colleagues, say No to everyone and even for the things that you have time for. However, be a little cautious with this technique. This trick will backfire if you start to deny those tasks which are an obligation for you like your job, your responsibilities or some emergencies. Apart from the obligations, just start saying No to everyone and say yes to yourself and experience the difference. This experience, my dear, is sweeter than the sweetest. All the best.