As long as I remember, I've seen myself as the type whom you can bully. It's not easy to be an editor and fob off innumerable aggressive contenders for coverage in your magazine when you are conscious that your boundaries are weak and that you have very little defence against a really determined publicity seeker. The result was that I became aggressive with a vengeance. Almost before a publicity seeker would complete her sentence, I would go on the rampage and shriek, until considerably shaken and stirred, she would put down the phone.

Obviously, this wasn't the most effective or humane approach to take, particularly for someone like me who was looking for enlightenment. So, the search for assertive skills became one of the dominating drives of my life. I even did a course in assertiveness. But I am not a huge fan of these externalised approaches that give you techniques and methods without ever looking at the reason why you lack assertiveness and working on changing you as a person. Naturally, this last is a much longer approach and cannot be easily compressed into a weekend, which explains why trainers don't take to it, but long and difficult as the process is, it is the only lasting way to become assertive naturally.

So, let's look at the root causes of non-assertiveness and see how we can eliminate it from our lives. Before we start, let me add that the process is one of elimination and not accretion for a simple reason. Our real self is naturally assertive and confident. Life, however, has a nasty way of battering at us until we become unsure, under-confident, shy and inhibited, among a whole lot of other blocks, stops and inhibitions that go under the name of conditioning, until we lose our natural poise and communication skills and become either unassertive or aggressive. That golden mean, of bzeing assertive without being aggressive, which will be our Holy Grail, is only to be attained by one who is once again established in her real self.

So what stops us? Poor self-esteem is at the bottom of our inability to assert ourselves. When we do not think well of ourselves, we find it impossible to deal with others on equal terms. We feel overwhelmed and overpowered, with the result that we cannot speak up for ourselves in an appropriate manner. It's almost as if we are pulled over to the other's magnetic space, without the power to say no to the movie they want us to see or the errand they want us to run. I cannot think of the number of times I have gone along with other people's plans and schemes simply because I didn't have the gumption to say no.