Many people don’t think they are assertive enough.

To be sure, speaking up on your own behalf, or those around you, is a good skill to have.

And just like learning any skill, especially a skill that is based on how you interact with others, you’re going to expand your comfort zone.

And for many, this means getting some unexpected blowback from others.

For example, many of your friends like you because of the way you are now. Then you come along and start speaking up more for your wants, needs, and desires, and suddenly you don’t seem like that nice, passive guy or gal they used to know.

I’ve heard from a few assertiveness trainers that often times, “assertiveness training” is synonymous with “loneliness training.”

It’s also a common idea that if you always need to be “right” you won’t win any friends. In fact, in Dale Carnegie’s famous book, being “right” all the time is the surest way to destroy friendships and alienate people.

This is a common and unexpected outcome when people learn and begin to play around with the “meta-model.”

The meta model is a set of language patterns that are designed to get more specific information whenever people are speaking in vague language.

For example, if I said, “I had chicken for dinner last night,” you could use the meta model to find out what kind of chicken, how did I eat it, who did I eat it with, how long did I take to eat it, how was it cooked, and on and on.

Now, you can imagine if I was just saying that conversationally, grilling me about my chicken dinner (see what I did there?) wouldn’t likely make me more interested in you. It would likely have the opposite effect.

However, the meta model (finding out more specific information by asking why, when, how, etc.) can be a FANTASTIC tool when getting the person talking about the thing they REALLY want to talk about.

For example, think of your biggest life’s dream, right now. This is not something you generally walk up and start talking about.

But if it comes up conversationally, and somebody seems genuinely interested in YOUR DREAM, and they start asking meta model questions, based on their interest, it will generally feel pretty good.

Of course, if their interest was totally fake, you’d think they were warming you up for some kind of MLM pitch.

But if it was genuine, and they really liked the fact that you had a dream, and wanted to find out more, chances are you’d feel pretty good talking to them.

As you can probably guess, YOU can be that person who’s extremely interesting to talk to. Simply get out of your own head, forget about proving how right you are, and simply look for the treasure in others.

Do this, and they’ll never forget you.

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