Читать книгу Assert Yourself: Simple Steps to Build Your Confidence - Gael Lindenfield, Gael Lindenfield - Страница 9

What a strange and moving experience it was for me to revisit this book! It brought back so many wonderful memories of the excitement we felt when doing this ‘groundbreaking work’ over 25 years ago. It is hard to believe how few people at that time had even heard the word ‘Assertiveness’. Now it is part of our everyday language. A whole generation has grown up taking it for granted that they ought to be more assertive – and, feeling full of guilt because they are not!

It is of course one thing knowing how we would like to behave, and quite another trying to stop ourselves from acting too often like a doormat or a raging bull. I know, because it was the position I had been in for many, many years before I came across Assertiveness Training. Its simple easy-to-learn techniques changed my life. That is why I became so committed to doing this work and spreading the word. Interestingly, many of the participants on our early courses and readers of this book have done just the same. I have had many letters and calls from people who wanted to let me know that they had been inspired to start training groups in their schools, offices, hospitals, churches and community centres. This was wondrous music to my ears, which had previously been filled with the whispering of cynics who said our work would breed selfishness and ego-centredness.

Assertiveness Training has proved itself to be so much more than a therapy for ‘losers’. It is now an established method of teaching anyone to communicate more openly, honestly and calmly and to stand up for both their and other people’s basic human rights.

Another reason for its appeal to me is that at its core is the win/win principle. This may not be one that can, or indeed should, always guide our behaviour, but when it does it undoubtedly brings both inner and outer harmony. And who doesn’t need a little more of that in their lives today?!

Finally, I’d just like to add that the writing of this book was a triumph for my own fledgling assertiveness. I had grown up with a deeply held conviction that I was an exceedingly bad writer. Assertiveness Training instilled in me a new belief that I had a right to say what I wanted to say. It was this belief that inspired and motivated me to persist, however many dyslexic errors I committed to the page, and however long it took me to do! Two years after I started, we published the book ourselves, and my husband travelled the country taking its first few hundred copies to bookshops himself. When this supply ran out, a client of mine asked my permission to take it to a small publisher of ‘alternative’ books. Now, 18 years later, I have 10 best-selling books to my name, and my publishers, Thorsons, are widely acknowledged to be leaders in one of the fastest growing sectors of the book trade.

I hope this updated version of Assert Yourself will help you to make the changes in yourself and your life that you know you want and deserve.