Yoga

To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough.

— Edith Eva Eger

I don’t need another productivity tool.

I just need to say No to more stuff.

— Stewie

The messages you received from your family or your childhood experiences may have caused you to believe that assertiveness is unacceptable or even dangerous. Practice saying the following: I have the right to be treated with respect by others. I have the right to express my feelings and opinions. I have the right to say no without feeling guilty. I have the right to ask for what I want. I have the right to make my own mistakes. I have the right to pursue happiness.

— Beverly Engel

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.

— Eleanor Roosevelt

It is extremely important to be able to make negative assertions. We must be able to say what is ‘not me’ in order to have a ‘me’. What we like has no meaning unless we know what we don’t like. Our yes has no meaning if we never say no. My chosen profession has no passion if ‘just anyone would do’. Our opinions and thoughts mean very little if there is nothing we disagree with.

— Henry Cloud

Confidence is always the best accessory. Own the moment. Own your space.

— Andrena Sawyer

If someone is inconsiderate or rude to you, risk telling them how it made you feel or that you didn’t appreciate being treated that way. If you tend to talk yourself out of anger by telling yourself that you don’t want to make waves, try telling yourself instead that it is okay to make waves sometimes and risk letting people know how you really feel.

— Beverly Engel

Assertiveness is not what you do, it’s who you are!

— Shakti Gawain

In order for us to practice self-control, we must have a goal. We must have something we are saying “yes” to, which necessarily comes with things that we must say “no” to. We use self-control to maneuver ourselves toward this “yes.” This goal must be entirely our own. The minute another person is choosing and managing our goals for us, we have left self-control behind.

— Danny Silk

There’s no certainty, only opportunity.

— V for Vendetta (2005)

If you live your life to please everyone else, you will continue to feel frustrated and powerless. This is because what others want may not be good for you. You are not being mean when you say NO to unreasonable demands or when you express your ideas, feelings, and opinions, even if they differ from those of others.

— Beverly Engel

If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution.

— Emma Goldman

If you have the tendency to repress your anger, you have lost touch with an important part of yourself. Getting angry is a way to gain back that part of yourself by asserting your rights, expressing your displeasure with a situation, and letting others know how you wish to be treated. It can motivate you to make needed changes in a relationship or other areas of your life. Finally it can let others know that you expect to be respected and treated fairly.

— Beverly Engel

What some call rebellion, others call survival.

— Shirley Fessel

When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground…it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.

— Maureen Brady

Envying other people is a distraction from the hard work of improving your own life.

— Stewie

Until you learn how to confidently say NO to so many things, you shall always say YES to so many things. The real summary of a regretful life is a life that failed to balance YES and NO. Yes! A life that failed to recognize when to courageously say NO and when to confidently say YES!

— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.

— Malcolm X

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

— George S. Patton

The opposite of self-assertiveness is self-abnegation–abandoning or submerging your personal values, judgment, and interests. Some people tell themselves this is a virtue. It is a “virtue” that corrodes self-esteem.

— Nathaniel Branden

When we can’t dream any longer we die.

— Emma Goldman

If you can teach me something for my betterment then you get my respect and gratitude, but if you are here only to criticize, then I have no time or ears for you!

— Maddy Malhotra

Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.

— Emma Goldman

We must teach our girls that if they speak their mind, they can create the world they want to see.

— Robyn Silverman

If you have the bad MOJO of a situation or a person riding you down you must first remove that saddle.

— Donavan Nelson Butler, Master Sergeant US Army

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

— Emma Goldman

Wall your life, guard your heart and mind your mind! A life without a wall least blocks something! A mind without a wall accepts anything at all!

— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

— Emma Goldman