Anger management or the ability to constructively process our emotional state is key to our well being. Everyone gets angry, but not everyone knows how to manage it. The problem is not about getting angry, but rather what we do with the anger. The meaning we attached to the anger and taking the appropriate action is the key to managing anger.

When our view of life comes from a position of entitlement and/or high level of expectations, then when don’t get what we want or our expectations are not met, we become angry. When we require life, relationship or our partner to be an ideal, without imperfections, faults or inconsistencies, we cannot avoid of being angry. If we expect life to be fair, we cannot avoid of being angry when we are treated unfairly, or when we don’t like the situation. When we adapt a victim mentality or attitude, and see the “others” as bad or negative (the “enemy”) that want to hurt us, we feel that we are entitled to be angry since we think as a victim and need to protect ourselves.

In addition, when we suffer from lack of self esteem, poor self-image, low self respect or a negative self image, we are having difficulties in tolerating conflict or accept criticism from others. This is why healthy self esteem is important element in managing anger. The ability to resolve conflict, negotiate or collaborate is based on increased awareness, realistic perspective, self respect and empathy as well as assertive behavior.

Many people who experience anger problems do not take responsibility for their anger and refuse to see their contribution to the negative situation. They avoid seeing how their perspective effect their behavior and what is their part in the negative relationship. Every time that they insist of being right and having attachment to such unhealthy view, they take the position that being right is more important than the relationship. As a result, a vicious cycle of reactivity and anger is amplify and the relationship suffers.

To manage anger in a healthy way, we need to be able to accept responsibility to our anger and emotion, to calm down and then to express our anger assertively. Accordingly, it is crucial to express ourselves from the perspective of what is hurting us and what we need. This attitude, focus on the “I” rather than the “YOU.” It express personal needs rather than blame the other and done so in a constructive communication style. If we are able to pause, stop and think before acting rather than impulsively react on our anger, we can process our feelings, understand what is causing it, then we can better understand what stimulate our anger and express our needs in a healthy way.

We must understand that our anger emotion is the result of our own subjective perception and response to reality. Once we understand and accept that our anger belongs exclusively to us and that it is created as a result of our view of the situation, we are moving toward a positive direction of managing our anger. Accordingly, the ability to develop realistic expectations for oneself and others will help to eliminate anger problems.

This is why being responsible to our anger is the cornerstone of all healthy relationships. Accepting responsibility to our anger, being able to process it constructively increases our ability to resolve anger and conflict and develop more healthy and happy relationships.

Change is an inevitable part of life, personal growth as well as improving self esteem. Without change, we experience stagnation, depression and even death. Change is the only thing that brings progress, and yet, it is often what we resist and fear the most! As the world around us changes, we must learn to change with it or else we will experience confusion, frustration, stress and anxiety.

Yet, we can practically turn our fear of change into a constructive, energizing force for bettering our life. There is always risk involved in doing something or achieving desired goals and the only way to succeed is by acting and doing. For that we need to conquer our fear. So, remember every fear is an opportunity to grow.

To be effective individuals or leaders, we must be able to embrace change, both professionally and personally. So often, we get stuck doing things the same way (again and again), and hoping for different results and hoping it will work if we just try a little harder. This is called insanity. We often resist the idea of changing our course of actions, because a new path would be foreign to us and we afraid of the unknown. We usually prefer the comfort zone, which is known to us rather than doing something different. It is satisfying our need to avoid facing the fear, yet it preventing us from a long term growth.

To truly achieve our goals, we must ask ourselves, “Where is it that we want to go, what are we doing to get there, and what is holding us back from being there now?”  Once we know what we need, we need to make decisions and act. To be more successful we need to evaluate our actions and if needed we must do things differently. The future we will experience is the result of the choices we make this moment. To create a better future we must begin to see change as an opportunity and choose to live with courage and commitment.

Developing the courage for change will help you to create a future that is more successful and fulfilling. Walt Disney shared this belief with us when he stated, “all of our dreams can come true- if we have the courage to pursue them.“

Clear communication is an important part of assertiveness. In communication is where assertiveness can manifest it self the most (or not). This is where you show:

• knowledge – you are able to understand and summarize the situation
• feelings – you can explain your feelings about the situation
• needs – you are able to explain clearly what you want or need, giving your reasons and any benefits to the other party

It isn’t just the content of what you say that counts; it is the way you put it across (the process of how you communicate the content). Assertive communication helps to:

• be honest with yourself about your own feelings
• keep calm and stick to the point
• be clear, specific and direct
• if you meet objections, listen to the other person’s point of view whilst ensuring that your message is clear
• try to offer alternative solutions if you can
• ask, if you are unsure about something
• if the other person tries to create a diversion, point this out calmly and repeat your message
• use appropriate body language
• always respect the rights and point of view of the other person
• own your messages by using “I” – for example, it’s more constructive to say “I don’t agree with you” than “you’re wrong”
• remember, you have the right to make mistakes and so does everyone else

Assertiveness communication requires a co-operative, respectful and mutually beneficial relationships. Assertiveness is an attitude and a way of relating to the outside world, backed up by a set of skills for effective communication. By mastering effective and assertiveness communication you move forward and empower yourself despite conflicts and challenges.

Many individuals desire to build, boost, and develop assertiveness and build self-confidence . Yet, for many individuals it seems a difficult task. However, building confidence and assertiveness is probably easier than you think. ‘Non-assertive’ people do not generally want to transform into being excessively dominant people and they certainly don’t normally want to become bullies.

What they want is to be more able to resist the pressure and dominance of excessively dominant people. When most people talk about wanting to be more assertive, what they usually deeply mean is: “How can I become more able to resist the pressure and dominance of excessively dominant people?” or “How can I stand up to bullies (or one bully in particular)?” or And also, “How can I exert a little more control in situations that are important to me?”

For anyone seeking to increase their own assertiveness it is helpful to understand the personality and motivation of excessively dominant people, who incidentally cause the most worry to non-assertive people.

Most excessively dominant people are usually bullies. Bullies are deep-down insecure people. They dominate because they are too insecure to allow other people to have responsibility and influence, and this behavior is generally conditioned from childhood for one reason or another. The dominant aggressive behavior is effectively reinforced by the response given by insecure and non-assertive people to bullying. The aggressive person gets his or her own way. The bullying dominant behaviour is rewarded, and so it persists.

This is why it is important to understand where you want to be: what level of assertiveness you want to use at any given situation? The main purpose of assertiveness is to defend yourself, and to control your own choices and destiny, not to control others. Once you master the assertiveness skills, you build clear boundaries and establish healthy self esteem while creating more satisfying and fulfilling life.

Lack of assertiveness can affect your relationships and quality of life, as you fail to communicate effectively and probably end up not getting what you want. Family life, career prospects and stress levels can all be affected by non-assertive behavior.

By examining carefully the way you communicate with others, there are a number of ways in which you can begin to assert yourself, helping to improve your quality of life. In this regards, assertiveness training can provide you the necessary skills and benefits. You may read books, articles about the subject (the internet is a large resource). If you have tried to improve assertiveness but still find you are acting in a mostly passive or aggressive way, you may find talking to a trained counselor or psychotherapist useful.

Talking to a professional counselor that specializes in assertiveness training may bring back painful memories of unpleasant experiences you have had, but it can help you understand why you act the way you do. It will help you to think differently about yourself and to have constructive, assertive behavior. Many psychotherapists utilize proven cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to gain positive results and you may find it helpful. This is a therapy that involves helping you to overcome unhelpful patterns in the way you think and behave, including aggressive and passive behaviour.

Although it can be overwhelming and intimidating to start behaving more assertively, you will find that it has many benefits. When you act in an assertive way you communicate better and command respect. This can improve your relationships - both at home and at work.

The higher your self esteem, the more durable you are. As such, self-esteem includes the feelings and thoughts that individuals have about their competence and worth, about their abilities to make a difference, to confront rather than retreat from challenges, to learn from both success and failure, and to treat themselves and others with respect.

Healthy self-esteem and self-efficacy were promoted through supportive relationships. Accordingly, parents may help their children develop self-esteem by focusing not only on their areas of vulnerability, but also on their strengths. Parents must learn to identify and reinforce each child’s strengths to motivate the child to venture forth and confront the tasks that have previously been difficult.

The following are few ideas how to help children build healthy self esteem:

• Teaching Responsibility by Encouraging Contributions

Children develop their sense of achievement and pride by providing them with opportunities for assuming responsibilities, and by allowing them to make a contribution to their home, school, or community environments. For example: tutoring younger children, or painting murals on the wall, or assisting in the school office, or bringing messages to the office, or going on Walks for Hunger, helps them to feel that they are making a difference, and serves to reinforce their motivation and self-esteem.

• Teaching Decision-Making & Problem-Solving Skills & Reinforcing Self-Discipline

An essential ingredient of high self-esteem and resilience is the belief that one has control over what is transpiring in one’s life (positives and particularly negatives). To acquire this attitude of ownership, children need opportunities to learn and apply decision-making and problem solving skills. This can be done by involving children in discussions of how best to solve problems, or enlisting their input in the development of rules and consequences that affect their lives, or asking them to do research on a particular project. These kinds of activities help children to feel empowered.

• Offering Encouragement & Positive Feedback

Self-esteem and resilience are nurtured when caregivers communicate realistic appreciation to children and help them to feel special. By doing so, we become the “charismatic adults” in their lives. Spending “special” time alone with children, or writing them a brief note of appreciation, or recognizing their accomplishments (not just academic achievement) are examples of this strategy.

• Helping Children Deal with Mistakes

The fear of making mistakes and looking foolish is one of the greatest obstacles to develop self-esteem and resilience. Children with school problems often feel defeated and readily retreat from tasks that may lead to failure. Parents must help children to realize that mistakes are an important ingredient in the process of learning. Parents can do this in various ways, such as responding to children’s mistakes by showing them the correct way to solve a problem and not by saying things like, “Are you using your brains?” or “You always fail at things!” Parents and teachers discuss the value of mistakes and can share memories of their own anxieties about making mistakes when they were students and involve the class in a discussion about the best ways to insure that no student will be nervous about making a mistake. Placing the issue about the fear of making mistakes out in the open typically serves to lessen its potency, thereby increasing opportunities for learning.

In general, resiliency is linked to a sense of optimism, ownership, and personal control. Parents can serve as the “charismatic adults” in children’s lives – believing in them, and providing them with experiences that reinforce their feelings of self-worth. This is a wonderful gift parents can offer, a priceless gift that will last a lifetime.

Perfectionism can be a big obstacle. It can slow you down, even keep you from accomplishing what you want. So, stop struggling to be perfect – it’s an unachievable, unhealthy goal. Below please find few tips to overcoming perfectionism and living more fulfilling life:

• Acknowledge your achievements. In the endless quest for perfectionism, you completely lose track of all that you have achieve, and all the progress you have made. To combat this, keep a chart for your milestones, and each time you achieve something, jot it down on your chart. Each month, review how much you’ve created and achieved. You’ll be surprised how much you’d been overlooking, blinded by those perfectionist ways. Learn to appreciate and honor your effort, the journey, and your accomplishments.
• Set Goals and take action towards them. What have you always wanted to do, but didn’t because you were afraid of failing? Don’t worry if you fail and have to try again. Accept mistakes; learn from them and despite feeling bad, move on to what is actionable. Reflect on how this process of learning from failure applies to other areas of your life. Focus on your positive attitude and effort, which will lead you toward fulfilling life.
• Set realistic expectations. A shortcut to misery is setting completely unrealistic expectations for your work. It’s good to have ambitions and aims for your work, and to push yourself to do the best you can. Perfectionists have expectations and goals that simply can’t be met! To overcome perfectionism, you need to balance great expectations with reality. Accept that your limits – and other people’s limits – are real. You simply can’t create perfection.
• Stop comparing yourself to others. We are each unique in our talents, abilities and personalities. When you compare yourself to others and wish you were as creative/talented/successful as them, you completely overlook your own strengths and abilities. It’s great to be inspired by other people, but use that motivation to fuel your own work while you focus on your best.
• Recognize the ideas are directions, not absolutes – Continue to hold your ideals and set goals because these serve as growth-levers and motivation sources. The goals are not the problems – it’s the attachment towards the goals which you need to work on. Accept your goals as directions to work towards and not absolutes which you need to achieve. Commit yourself to pursuit your goals. However, it does not matter if you do not reach the goals because the goals are just pointers toward where you want to be. They are not who you are or who you should be.
• Enjoy the process and look at the big picture – The big picture matters more than the tiny details. The process is the longest part of achievement – enjoy it! Find ways to lighten it up – learn to laugh at yourself, take things positively, rest/eat/sleep/play when it is time to, take part in enriching recreational activities.

Perfectionism is one of the most common symptoms of low self esteem. Perfectionism can destructively chip away at your healthy self-esteem. Perfectionist probably learned early in their life that others only value him because of the things he can do and have accomplished. Perfectionist’s self esteem is based primarily from external standards. This leaves him defenseless and extremely sensitive to other people’s opinion and criticism. As such the decision to be perfect is the only defense from such criticism.

Some of the reasons for perfectionism are listed below:

• Fear of failure is among of the reasons for perfectionism. Often times, perfectionists blame their failures to lack of personal worth.
• Another reason is being afraid to make mistakes. For perfectionists, mistakes and failure are the same. They miss opportunities to learn and grow by living their lives avoiding mistakes.
• Fear of rejection is a one of the most common reasons. Perfectionists are often afraid that if other people will see their flaws, they will be rejected.
• Rigid Rules. Perfectionists live with rigid rules structured by a never-ending list of “should.”

When measuring yourself by what you don’t accomplish rather than by what you do accomplish, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration. The need to be perfect quickly leads to a distrust of the ability to judge what’s good and what isn’t. When you can’t trust your own feelings of self-worth, you look to others to define and affirm your self-esteem. Perfectionism only allows one way to enhance self-esteem — that’s by being perfect. As such, when a perfectionist believes she isn’t perfect, she feels guilty, frustrated and unhappy. Perfectionism is a never-ending negative cycle of self-abuse.

Procrastination becomes a problem when delaying tasks leads to internal and/or external consequences.  The external consequence may be minor or severe, from missing a meeting to losing your job. The internal consequences also range from minor to severe, from mild discomfort to guilt, shame, self-condemnation and despair.

Procrastination is a habit, a learned response to anxiety-producing situations or tasks. It is an avoidant behavior we adopt when we are to do a task which reflects our abilities and we feel afraid/anxious that we will not measure up. Fear of failure or of success, cultural limitations or imagined disabilities all contribute to a person holding them self back for fear of finding out that they will fall short and thus it will prove without a shadow of a doubt that they are worthless individuals.

Personal competence is the antidote to procrastination and comprises of five elements: emotional strength, well-directed thought, time-management skills, control over habits, and task completion abilities. Therefore, most strategies for overcoming procrastination are based on improving these five skill areas, and involve: improving emotional control and adjusting one’s underlying attitude, focusing attention and thinking rationally, learning executive (self-management) procedures like planning and scheduling, learning habit-changing methods, and acquiring better task completion and problem solving skills.

People who have mastered the skill of assertiveness are greatly able to reduce the level of interpersonal conflict in their lives, thereby reducing a major source of stress. When assertive people face problems, they focus on solutions rather than problems, thereby able to resolve conflict successfully. Ultimately, assertive attitudes and behaviors are at the core of living healthy and productive life.

Nonassertive people may be passive or aggressive. Passive individuals are not committed to their own rights and allow others to infringe on their rights rather than to stand up and speak out. On the other hand, aggressive persons are strongly defending their own rights but are also violating the rights of others. Additionally, aggressive individuals insist that their feelings and needs take precedence over other people’s. They also tend to blame others for problems instead of offering solutions.

Lack of assertiveness promotes also low self esteem and social anxiety. While engaging in assertive behavior is rewarding and leads to positive self-esteem and more fulfilling life. Whenever you see someone being assertive, rather than passive, aggressive, or both, you are witnessing an act of healthy self-esteem. Whenever you see someone verbally attacking others to get what they want, or being indirect about what they want, or silently enduring something they don’t want, you’re witnessing the result and perpetuation of injured self-esteem. So, while it’s clear that having high self-esteem makes it easier to practice assertive communication, it should also be noted that acting assertively promotes healthy self-esteem.