Standing Up for Yourself
Standing up for yourself is simply stating who you are. “I am a person who doesn’t chocolate. “ “I am a person who doesn’t like to be licked.” “I am a person who doesn’t like to be spit on.” “I am a person who likes to stand in the sunshine, that’s who I am, I am stating who I am.” Stating who you are and what you prefer, that is standing up for yourself.
Standing up for yourself is traditionally seen as being a bit more aggressive. That is not it. “This is who I am and this is what I prefer. This is my choice.” That’s standing up for yourself. Forcing someone else to agree with you, forcing someone else to do what you prefer them to do, forcing someone else to do anything other than being themselves is not standing up for yourself. It is imposing your will upon another.
So somebody is doing something that you feel is unfair and you try to manipulate them into doing what you want so you feel it’s fair. That is not standing up for yourself. That is imposing yourself on others. You just simply say, “I’m not doing it. I’m not playing.”
Then you have to judge in this lifetime is it reasonable, rational and logical. So, I may not like going to work, so I’m going to say “I’m not going to work today, so let somebody else do my job.” Well, how are you going to get paid? If you have a partner and the partner is busy doing other things and you feel they should be doing more work, you may call in sick so they have to do it. What if they can’t? How will you get paid? That doesn’t make any sense. What was your agreement with the partner? Is your agreement that you will do the work while they are away doing other the things? Well then you have to honor the agreement, not do what you want to do because you don’t feel it’s fair at the moment you are in your shit.
They are all subtleties but standing up for yourself is merely stating who you are, your preference and not imposing on anyone. Someone who imposes that on others, tries to manipulate them, tries to get them do things they want, they talk them into it, debate them into it, and force them into it. They do all these things to get somebody to do something so they can feel better about themselves. That is not standing up for yourself. Somehow there is this understanding that to stand up for myself means somebody else has to do what I want, or not I have to fight with them and whoever loses, or wins, either stood up for themselves or lost. That’s not exactly what it is.
You truly stand up for yourself and you have made your statement that we just discussed, you allow other people to make their own choices and stand up for themselves. But, when you stand up for yourself and impose on others, that means you take away their right to stand up for themselves. And, whoever is the strongest or the best manipulator wins and the other person loses the right to stand up for themselves.
As a rule of thumb, parents tend to believe that children do not have any rights and they have to do what the parents say. When they do that, they take away the child’s rights and the child feels compressed, caged and imprisoned and they will either fight or disappear into nothing as a rule of thumb. There are variations, but these are the general rules.
Giving people choices, even though you design guidelines; option a, option b, options c. This is what you can do. At least I have some governing control over my life. When I get big enough I can choose whether I like those three options or whether I want more or whether I am going to make up my own options. But, while I am being managed as a child, I need those limitations to select from because I don’t know how to create new ones. And when I figure them out, then as a parent you can help the child create new ones. You are guiding them again but now it’s even a greater step. They have created an option on their own that’s added to the other three options and now they can choose from all of them. When they get good at creating their own options, you can okay or nay it and then they are free on their own, which now has taught them to be free-thinking human beings when they grow up instead of puppets.