5 Habits Of Quietly Confident People That Repel Miserable Users
There are a few traits that make it impossible for people to dull your spark.
Lucas Sankey | Unsplash How can we learn to filter troublesome people out of our lives without expecting perfection from others? After all, life is full of unavoidable trouble. Nobody is perfect, and every partner or friend will hurt you in some way, someday. You need to be able to have hard conversations, to grow and change alongside the people you care about. You also need to know who to cut out or step away from.
Raele Altano, a certified communication coach and the founder of Well with Raele Coaching, shared a few helpful tools for making these conversations effective without being controlling or hurtful during an episode of Getting Open with Andrea Miller.
Clearer communication not only helps in romantic relationships, but it also helps at work, as a parent, and as a friend, too.
Five habits of quietly confident people who naturally repel miserable users:
1. They have firm, clear, and concise conversations when setting a boundary
You have to throw redirecting out because redirection won't work when someone is caught in volatility. You have to stop and assert your boundary. You can do that with gratitude and empathy and by calling it out directly.
For example, you can say, "Hey, I don't appreciate the way you are speaking to me. This is not OK I am also upset, but we won't get anywhere talking this way, so let's take a pause."
Be sure to point out briefly:
- The communication is not productive
- The communication is hurtful
- The communication is disrespectful
- Show a bit of the impact of the communication
2. They face their fear of being seen
We all want to be more confident, but confidence requires a sense of worthiness. A lack of confidence usually comes down to not feeling good enough or important enough.
When you don't feel worthy, you become afraid to take up space and be seen. You never own your space. This is how we get in our way and sabotage ourselves.
We know we have the capability, but we stop ourselves with the fear of potentially making the situation awkward by expressing a boundary, making a contribution, or asking for more.
Yet, we have to put the problem, idea, or request out there. We have to protect our space and ourselves. We need to feel worthy to be confident, but we might not see how confidence comes from clarity and doing the thing, not the other way around.
Having the confidence to act, or to speak up, means getting rid of the fear of sounding arrogant or acting like we aren't willing to share the wealth. This is self-sabotaging.
Instead, identify where you are doing well, where you are strong, and where you make contributions, and then associate all of your positive attributes with the facts that represent them.
Don't be afraid to let others know where your power is and where your boundaries lie.
3. They allow boundaries to be semi-permeable
Our boundaries can’t be steel traps. Rather, they need to be semi-permeable fences that allow real human beings to come and go, to err and apologize authentically, to grow and change and be better. This is part of the clarity that creates confidence, and the confidence to adapt.
So, how do we do that safely? By doing the work on ourselves to become more authentic, more honest, and more accountable for our own behavior.
4. They take accountability
By getting to know ourselves. Getting to know our true wants, needs, hopes, and dreams enables us to identify when we’re changing too much to accommodate another person. By being more honest, we become better “lie detectors”, sniffing out when someone is telling us what they think we want to hear or lying outright.
Being more accountable for our mistakes and apologizing when necessary teaches us when accountability matters the most, and when someone should be taking that accountability themselves! OK, maybe we become more like "accountability detectors"!
5. They pull the people they value and trust closer
Being self-protective in ways that are healthy doesn’t mean dramatically cutting people out of our lives, but rather pulling in closer the people we value the most.
That can be our mission. We can keep our most trusted, loyal, and accountable friends close and care for each other in ways to help everyone grow. Any adult who cannot handle an honest, direct, and respectful conversation about another person's needs is simply not ready to occupy a large space in your life.
Joanna Schroeder is a writer, editor, and media critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and more. She is co-author of the book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men. She also shares advice on Substack.
