Being unable to speak up at work can have long-lasting negative consequences. It can lead to stress, burnout, or render you almost invisible in a setting where promotions and raises depend on visibility.

When you’re assertive, you ask for what you need, you talk openly about what you want, and you recognize when someone is taking advantage of you. You can approach the things you do with confidence and make a direct impact on your environment. But this does not come easily for everyone.

There are two important components to becoming more assertive: (1) learning to treat yourself with respect, and (2) building communication skills.

1. Recognize Your Value

The first step toward becoming more assertive is nurturing a realistic and respectful perspective on your value as a person. Many people struggle with attribution problems—attributing their failures to internal flaws (“I’m just no good at this, no matter how hard I try”) and their successes to luck (“That went well because it was easier than everyone thought it would be”), contributing to gnawing self-doubt and potentially a sense of worthlessness.

Take a step back and think about what you contribute to your workplace. For now, try to quiet any internal criticism that wants to scrutinize your flaws, mistakes, and failures; those thoughts can evoke shame and cloud your ability to see your positive attributes. Take a balanced inventory of who you’ve been at work, noting both good things that you’ve done and anything you might want to improve.

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2. Know Your Rights

Educate yourself on the things you’re entitled to in your workplace. The big wall of posted notices in your lunchroom, your employee policy manual, your job description—you might not know what’s in all of that available material, despite it having important information.

Learning to be assertive in your workplace includes learning the legal and ethical boundaries of what you can expect from your work environment. For example, if you find that you’re frustrated by being expected to work through lunch four times a week, this material can tell you if that expectation violates laws in your state, which can support your desire to stand up for what you need. If you are being harassed or subjected to mistreatment, there may be protections in place to help you. Knowledge can help empower you to seek what you need.

3. Know Your Boundaries

Learning and respecting your personal boundaries is an important step toward regulating stress and frustration. Taking on extra projects despite missing important family events, or continuing to answer work emails from your bed despite the interference with a proper night’s rest—burnout is made of these ingredients. Think about what you can realistically expect of yourself and respect your limitations. We are all bound by our humanness and by time; there is no getting around those things, even if deadlines are looming.

Everyone benefits from your direct communication. Being exhausted or resentful is not only miserable, it keeps you from performing at your best.

4. Prepare and Practice

First, prepare for being assertive at work in the safety of your journal, your therapy, or your close relationships. Imagine what it might be like to communicate something difficult to your coworker or your boss. Ask yourself the following questions: What is my goal? What do I want to say? How would I like to say it?

Act it out in your mind, playing out both the ideal scenario and the scenario that scares you the most. Try talking it through with a loved one who would be open to role playing. Say aloud what you would like to communicate at work. If you don’t, when the moment comes, your nerves might get you tongue-tied and it can feel easier to give up. Consider the things that are often difficult for you to say (for example, “No, I can’t,” or, “That makes me uncomfortable”) and rehearse them for future use.

5. Learn the Difference Between Assertive and Aggressive

Many people quiet their voices because they have come to believe that speaking up is synonymous to being bossy, pushy, or disrespectful of other people. Being assertive does not have to be any of those things; it only means to value your own thoughts, feelings, and voice as well as those of others.

You can continue to be a kind, likable person while communicating directly. Assertive communication doesn’t look to bulldoze over other people (that would be aggressive communication). Its goal is to create the best outcome for you in cooperation with the others in your workplace. “I disagree with that” is assertive and honest, and it opens up further conversation to move toward resolution. “What kind of stupid idea is that?” is aggressive and minimizing, and it shuts down conversation.

6. Keep Growing

The more you learn and grow, the more connected you can feel to your skills and your knowledge. Confidence is rooted in knowing yourself, your value, and the things you can offer to the world around you. Continue to cultivate your career, and acknowledge how your efforts and strengths bring benefits to your work environment.

Have patience with yourself as you make these changes. You may stumble through difficult conversations or lose nerve at the last moment. That’s OK—many new things are hard at first, and building a direct communication style is a process.

If you find that being assertive is particularly difficult, you can also address the issue through assertiveness training programs, group psychotherapy, or individual psychotherapy.

If you like to listen to music, you’re probably familiar with the intense flurry of emotion that can come when you hear a song that precisely fits the mood you’re in—a song that perfectly captures what you’re thinking and feeling. You might have organized playlists to turn to in order to create such an experience, securing instant access to songs that can meet your needs.

You’re not alone if one of those playlists is suited for heartache. Many of us turn to music after breakups, whether this music is muffled from under a tear-soaked blanket, blasted through running earbuds, or belted from the diaphragm.

A breakup is a loss, so it evokes everything that comes with loss: confusion, denial, longing, anger, depression, despair. Through all this chaos, heartbreak can magnify our needs for comfort, support, and understanding. One way we can meet those needs is through music.

Pain Relief: How Music Supports You at the End of the Road

For decades, researchers have been examining the pain-relieving effects of music, and for good reason: a considerable amount of research supports the notion that music can have positive effects on listeners in pain.

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In one study, published in 2006, Mitchell and McDonald induced pain by having participants immerse their hands in ice water. They found participants who listened to music of their choosing could withstand pain for significantly longer than those who listened to music chosen by the experimenters or no music at all. In a 2008 study, Mitchell, McDonald, and Knussen found listening to music also decreased study participants’ levels of anxiety when the researchers induced pain.

Researchers are investigating the mechanics underlying the impact of music on coping with pain. In a 2010 study by Salimpoor et al., participants were asked to bring along music they found moving. The researchers then examined functional MRI scans of participants and found significant increases of dopamine, the neurotransmitter involved in reward and pleasure, in the brain at the moments that participants were deeply moved by the music they chose. The dopamine increase started even in preceding moments, when the participants started to anticipate these poignant parts of their songs.

Have you ever gotten the chills while listening to music? Salimpoor et al. suggest this dopamine rush is responsible.

Music can have soothing and moving effects on us, including actual physiological reactions in our brains. Neuroscientists are continuing to research this topic, learning more about the way music affects our brains and shapes our experiences. But what we know so far indicates what many of us recognize intuitively: listening to music you love can alleviate some of the hurt in your heart.

Why, then, are we drawn specifically to breakup music? If any music we enjoy can give us a dopamine boost, why do we look to breakup songs to help us feel a little better?

Song Lyrics: How Words Remind Us We Will Survive

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with feelings you just didn’t want to talk about them? Intense emotion can make you feel lost—stuck in a place where you may not know how to tame the tornado of thoughts and feelings inside of you and order them into tidy words.

The lyrics of a good breakup song can help you express thoughts and feelings often difficult to articulate otherwise. You may not even know how you feel before you hear it stated perfectly in a song. At a time when it can be difficult to organize your thoughts—let alone communicate them to others—hearing, “How can you mend a broken heart?” can suddenly give you clarity about the anguish you’ve been dealing with: it’s a broken heart! The lyrics of a song can bring unresolved, unspoken, unknown thoughts to the surface and bring you closer to understanding what is happening inside of you.

On top of realizing how you are feeling, it can be powerfully validating to hear someone express thoughts and feelings similar to yours. You learn even though you are hurting, you are not alone in an abyss of misery built only for you. You’re grieving, and that’s a human reaction to losing love. That experience doesn’t isolate you. In fact, it connects you to the people around you.

Coldplay and Carole King and Lauryn Hill can help you remember that.

References:

1. Mitchell, L. A., & MacDonald, R. A. (2006). An experimental investigation of the effects of preferred and relaxing music listening on pain perception. Journal of Music Therapy, 43(4), 295-316.
2. Mitchell, L. A., MacDonald, R. A., & Knussen, C. (2008). An investigation of the effects of music and art on pain perception. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2(3), 162-170.
3. Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14, 257-262. doi:10.1038/nn.2726