Assertiveness and Paul Keating

It is important to be assertive in life.

So many people abuse the word assertive. Usually just after they've been denied something. And just before they demand someone else gives them what they want.

I try not to do that. I suspect I constantly fail.

This post tends to look at politics from a leftist lean, for example. My intention is to explain what I think and why I think it, but not to demand that you think it too. Yet by its nature a blog expects you'll have conceded the previous paragraph's point as it articulates the next one. It's a tension between writing and communicating. Cut me some slack, I beg you. These are my thoughts offered up to you, and they don't have to be yours.

This isn't a blog about the mundane moments of life, by the way. I'm not really talking about the moments when you pasively stop at the red light, or snap at the child reaching out to hook toast from the toaster with a butterknife. I'm more referring to the moments when the best response is not readily socially agreed upon. Like when you're being bullied, or your partner doesn't want to go to the family bbq, or when you're suddenly expected to contribute your thoughts about pre-marital sex in an Australian Women's Weekly interview http://tiny.cc/8bxbw.

In terms of my own behaviour at moments of grey expectations, apparently I scare the hell out of a lot of people. In a work context, I've been told I'm really, really aggressive. When I think of aggression, I think of Paul Keating: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roIeVEf5alk


I love Paul Keating. He tells everyone else what is wrong with them and why they should change and behave in line with his views - not just John Howard, lots of people. I have a private daydream of Paul Keating struggling with a crossword and colouring in squares black so he can insert his own words. Then sending the 'fixed' page to the editor and demanding a retraction.

But that is not assertiveness. Paul isn't assertive, or at least that's not what he's famous for. He's famous for ripping people a new one and telling them to like it. Let's call that aggression (of which more later).

Despite what others think of me, my aim is not to demand others' aquiescence during uncertain moments. Personally, I feel I lack Keating's aggressive granduer, and I'm not aspiring to adopt it.

I have also been accused of being too passive. By different accusers, obviously. It has been suggested I'm obsequious. I'd love to think that makes me multi-layered, or even deep. I fear it makes me two-faced or machiavellian. When I first heard it I lacked good education and a dictionary and I thought it meant I was everywhere (oh! so it's different to ubiquitous, then?). For a panicked moment I thought they meant I was fat. Now I know better. But then again, now I AM fat.

But I digress. This is a blog about my attempt to be content. Earlier entries have suggested that the most impressive achievement of an intelligent being would be to achieve contentment with one's life, and also to achieve self-respect by having integrity in responses to life's events. I could have stopped there, (and I guess for a time I did,) but there is more to say.

It is important to be assertive in life.

Forgive me lecturing for a moment, please. I want to achieve a common understanding of 'assertiveness' or we'll get nowhere. Bear with me, as I talk about mowing lawns and flies in soup...

Imagine we're neighbours and in our estate the grass is to be kept mown short by local by-law. Helpfully, I lean across the fence and cheerfully inform you that you'd better cut your grass or you'll get in trouble. You'd have three options...

1) If you went and grabbed your lawn mower and cut your grass you'd be passive. That's because my brain did the thinking for what your arms and legs carried out.

2) If you told me to go to hell and get my nose out of your business and stop being such a busybody, you'd be aggressive. That's 'cause you expect to achieve a result where your brain thought through what my arms and legs (and nose and the rest of me) will do.

3) If you say something like, "I appreciate that's your opinion, and I'll consider it. So if I mow the lawn and that's the wrong thing it'll be my fault, or if I leave it alone and that is wrong, it'll be my fault again - but if what I do with my grass works out ok, likewise I will have the credit for that. I'll be interested to see how you go with your grass." Then your arms and legs are moving based upon your own opinion, and you're being assertive.

So the defence 'But you told me to do it!', or 'I knew it wouldn't work, but you were so insistent I just went along!' are ways of saying 'You should have told my arms and legs to do something different with your mouth', and so are ways of being aggressive and passive at the same time. Passive aggressive, one might say.

Ok so let's imagine I am at a restaurant and there's a fly in my soup. The waiter is wandering past and I have the option to be passive, aggressive or assertive:

1) I could be passive and just eat the soup. I don't want to make a fuss. I just want to do what is expected of me. YUK!!! I eat the soup. Seriously, this is unhealthy AND wimpy. But people do it.

2) Aggression. I could upbraid the waiter: "You have broken all kinds of health regulations. You'll take this bowl and empty it out, give me a new bowl, new soup and this better be free buddy. You've broken the law and I'll be telling everyone else not to come here!" This is, of course, an invitation for the waiter to take the bowl away and pluck the fly out then spit in it and return it to me. People generally don't respond well to aggression, and anyone who prepares food out of your sight is best not treated as a target for aggression. Here's someone who discovered this earlier: http://tinyurl.com/6jum2u

3) Assertiveness. I could say to the waiter, "Waiter there's a fly in my soup. I'm not up for eating this, and I'm interested to know what your response is..."

An assertive response to the waiter means that what the waiter does next will be based upon the waiter's own thoughts. In such situations typically we could expect two things: accountability and generousity. People appreciate not being yelled at, and when left to make their own decision would be inclined to be more generous if possible so as not to be thought ungenerous. Please feel free to try this out (if you think it appropriate) and see if you agree.

Ok, so now we have a shared understanding of assertiveness, you may be wondering why I bring the subject up on a blog about trying to live a contented life. It's simple, really.

I have seen Paul Keating give considered responses upon many subjects, and I respect him most when he speaks his own truth and describes the values which he holds up as worthy of his own adherence. Even if I don't personally believe in those values. And while I have no doubt he delights in his own clever insults, I also honestly believe he is driven by an integrity which leads him to, at times, be very assertive. And, for me, Paul Keating's assertiveness makes him an example of what it truly means to lead a nation.

Unfortunately, 'doing a Paul Keating' has become synonymous with an energetic articulation of sophisticated aggression. At the moments when most people have been watching him, Paul Keating is famous for unremitting invective which demanded the behaviour of others fall in line with his own thoughts on proper behaviour and government policy.

When I compare what I know of Paul Keating to my knowledge of Francis Forde (see an earlier blog), it strikes me that the difference between the two men is perhaps one of how they choose to behave in the peak moments that defined the turning ponts of their lives. And, while this is a point upon which I urge you to make your own mind, it seems to me that Forde is known for being a contented person but Keating is, well, not so much.

Over many years of people watching, I have come to the conclusion that those people I think of as the most contented tend to be consistently assertive at key moments.

When I am in the midst of a crisis, I try to be assertive and not aggressive or passive. It is a practiced art and I'm not always very artistic. I honestly believe that when I manage to be assertive those around me become uncomfortably accountable for their actions, and me for mine.

Obviously I have only my own subjective knowledge of my own critical moments. Nevertheless it seems to me that often, at such times, aggressive people perceive this as passive, and passive people as aggressive. And assertive people have tended to be interested where I am at, but to speak more of their own feelings and responses.

So we come to the take-home, glib assertion:

It is my honest belief that true assertiveness is a healthy response to the behaviour of others. Assertive behaviour is behaviour which we tend to respect in ourselves, and I believe that considered self-respecting lives are characteristic of the most contented people I know.

I am not asking you to take this on faith, but rather to reflect upon the way in which people you know conduct themselves, and, having divided them into people who tend to be passive, aggressive or assertive at key moments, to consider which of these groups you would most describe as living a contented life.

So of the little I feel I have to offer others, I heartily recommend this: know what your opinion is, announce it and behave accordingly. Hold no-one to your beliefs but yourself. This will afford you a contented life.