Reduce Stress With Increased Assertiveness
What Is Assertiveness?:
Assertiveness is the ability to express one’s feelings and assert one’s rights while respecting the feelings and rights of others. Assertive communication is appropriately direct, open and honest, and clarifies one’s needs to the other person. Assertiveness comes naturally to some, but is a skill that can be learned. People who have mastered the skill of assertiveness are able to greatly reduce the level of interpersonal conflict in their lives, thereby reducing a major source of stress.

How Does Assertiveness Compare to Other Behavior?:
Sometimes people confuse aggressiveness with assertiveness, seeing that both types of behavior involve standing up for one’s rights and expressing one’s needs. The key difference between the two styles is that individuals behaving assertively will express themselves in ways that respect the other person. They assume the best about people, respect themselves, and think “win-win” and try to compromise.

In contrast, individuals behaving aggressively will tend to employ tactics that are disrespectful, manipulative, demeaning, or abusive. They make negative assumptions about the motives of others and think in retaliatory terms, or they don’t think of the other person’s point of view at all. They win at the expense of others, and create unnecessary conflict.

Passive individuals don’t know how to adequately communicate their feelings and needs to others. They tend to fear conflict so much that they let their needs go unmet and keep their feelings secret in order to ‘keep the peace’. They let others win while they lose out; the problem with this (which I’ll go into in more detail momentarily) is that everybody involved loses, at least to an extent.
What Does Assertiveness Look Like?:
Here are some common scenarios, with examples of each style of behavior:

Scenario A: Someone cuts in front of you at the supermarket.

An aggressive response would be to assume they did it on purpose and angrily say, “Hey, jackass, no cuts!”

A passive response would be to just let the person stay in front of you.

An assertive response would be to assume that they may not have seen you in line, and politely say, “Excuse me, but I was in line.”

Scenario B: Your friend, who can be quite verbose, calls to vent about her bad day. Unfortunately, you have a lot of work to do and don’t have time to talk.

An aggressive response would be to become angry that she obviously doesn’t respect your time, cut her off, and sarcastically say, “Oh, get over it! I have my own problems!”

A passive response would be to let her talk for as long as she needs, and figure that your deadline can suffer; she needs your help.

An assertive response would be to listen for a minute or two, then compassionately say, “Wow, it sounds like you’re having a tough day! I’d love to talk to you about it, but I don’t have the time right now. Can we talk later tonight?”

Get the idea?
What Are the Benefits of Assertiveness?:
Assertiveness affects many areas of life. Assertive people tend to have fewer conflicts in their dealings with others, which translates into much less stress in their lives. They get their needs met (which also means less stressing over unmet needs), and help others get their needs met, too. Having stronger, more supportive relationships virtually guarantees that, in a bind, they have people they can count on, which also helps with stress management, and even leads to a healthier body.Contrasting with this, aggressiveness tends to alienate others and create unnecessary stress. Those on the receiving end of aggressive behavior tend to feel attacked and often avoid the aggressive individual, understandably. Over time, people who behave aggressively tend to have a string of failed relationships and little social support, and they don’t always understand that this is related to their own behavior. Ironically, they often feel like victims, too.

Passive people aim to avoid conflict by avoiding communication about their needs and feelings, but this behavior damages relationships in the long run. They may feel like victims, but continue to avoid confrontation, becoming increasingly angry until, when they finally do say something, it comes out aggressively. The other party doesn’t even know there’s a problem until the formerly passive individual virtually explodes! This leads to hard feelings, weaker relationships, and more passivity.

How Does One Become More Assertive?:

The first step in becoming more assertive is to take an honest look at yourself and your responses, to see where you currently stand. The answers to the following questions will help clue you in:

* Do you have difficulty accepting constructive criticism?
* Do you find yourself saying ‘yes’ to requests that you should really say ‘no’ to, just to avoid disappointing people?
* Do you have trouble voicing a difference of opinion with others?
* Do people tend to feel alienated by your communication style when you do disagree with them?
* Do you feel attacked when someone has an opinion different from your own?

If you answered yes to several of these, you may benefit from learning assertiveness skills.

Knowing where you stand on the assertiveness spectrum, and knowing where you want to be, you can read more on assertiveness training, develop a win-win mentality, and begin becoming more assertive today!
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REF:WWW

Dr Bijukumar of Aquatic Biology Department of University of Kerala has discovered a rare species of mud snake in Vellayani Lake.

There is very little information available about the rare snake. There are very few photographs of the snake in live condition. Mainly, the only information is what comes from the specimen with the Hamburg and Paris Museums while no specimens are available in any of the Indian museums.

Mr. Bijukumar said, “Since they live in the mud, they escape attention of human beings. The fishermen in the Vellayani lake said they have come across these snakes while excavating the mud on the margins of the lake.”

These snakes are known as `Kanda pampu’ (paddy snake) in southern Kerala and `Cheli kutta’ (mud snake) in the North. The snake discovered has been identified as rare Kerala mud snake (Enhydris dussumieri) which is apparently the only water snake endemic to Kerala.

The snake has dark orange brown above, with blue iridescence in sunlight while the ventral side has light pinkish brown colour with three continuous lines running across. The species is timid and inoffensive unlike other snakes in the country. Locals say that its bite is slightly venomous and is painful.

The snake feeds on fish and frogs and gives births to snakes unlike other snakes that lay eggs. The Indian variety is represented by four species, namely the Kerala, the Rainbow, Soebold's and Boie's mud snakes. The kerala snake has very little information about it due to its rare distribution.

“There is no information about the biology, habitat or the feeding nature of these snakes. Probably, there could be more than one species in the marshes there. Somebody has to take up a detailed study,” added Bijukumar.

The species will now be part of the collection of the Bombay Natural History Society. As the news of the discovery reached Ashok Captain who is a world-renowned snake expert and photographer he arrived in Thiruvananthapuram to take live pictures of the snake.

“Much remains to be studied scientifically about this endemic mud snake of Kerala, particularly on its biogeography, biology and genetic linkages,” says Ashok Captian.


ref: http://www.stockwatch.in/researcher-discover-rare-mud-snake-kerala-25810
http://expressbuzz.com/cities/thiruvananthapuram/rare-mud-snake-found/171768.html
http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article424711.ece

With the launch of 3G spectrum in India, more and more mobile companies are coming up with their latest 3G mobile phones at an affordable range. And Nokia being one of the largest player of mobile phones in the country, has launched not one but two brand new 3G enabled slider mobile phones in India, the Nokia Slide 6700 and Nokia 7230. The company has designed the phones keeping in mind the customer’s choice for stylish and fresh looking phones mostly the youth. Not only the built of these phones are solid but they also offer quick access to social networks which is quite an in-thing among the youth in the country.

The Nokia Slide 6700 is a good looking phone in six beautiful colors namely, red, pink, purple, lime, petrol blue and aluminum grey. The Slide 6700 is priced at Rs. 11,500 in India. The phone has a modern stylish look with solid aluminum finish and just weighs 110 gms. The battery life offered by Slide 6700 is up to 4 hours and the standby time is up to 300 hours. The phone also has music back up to 29 hours. It features a 5 MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual LED flash and supports a memory of up to 16 GB with microSD card. Slide 6700 has a built-in FM radio and music player and has a 2.2 inch 320 x 240 pixel resolution QVGA display. The user can also share photos and videos from camera menu to OVI easily.

The Nokia 7230 is the second 3G slider phone from Nokia that is not only feature rich but also aggressively priced at Rs.7000. The phone has a 2.4 inch TFT display with 320 x 240 pixels resolution. It also supports a 3.2 MP camera with 4 x digital zoom and dedicated camera key. The users can make use of its fast photo and video sharing with Ovi, Facebook and Flickr. The phone also comes with FM radio, Built-in Nokia Xpress Audio Messaging and Bluetooth. The battery life is good and offers 4.1 hours of talk time with a standby time of 14.3 days. The phone supports USB 2.0 and is available in two colors namely, hot pink and graphite black. The hone has an external microSD card with 2GB card free memory.

With the launch of the two slider phone supporting 3G, Nokia is expected to grab a decent market share among the young Nokia fans with the amazing features, stylish look and quick accessibility to social networks.

Labels: features and specifications review, Nokia 7230 at price Rs.7000 in India

Surprising as it sounds, it looks like the English alphabet will be losing one of its letters on June 1st. The announcement came from the English Language Central Commission (ELCC).

Here is a quote from the press release:

After carefully considering and debating the matter for over two years, the ELCC came to the conclusion that the letter “Z” should be removed from the English alphabet. The main objective of this change is to simplify the phonetic aspect of the language, and to unify the American and British spellings.

What will happen to the words that have the letter “z” in them? It depends on the word. According to the ELCC, words that started with a “z” will now start with an “x”. Examples include:

* zero becomes xero
* zoo becomes xoo
* zone becomes xone
* zodiac becomes xodiac

Words that featured a “z” with the “s” sound, on the other hand, will now be officially written with the “s” (i.e., unifying the American and British spelling). Examples include:

* visualize becomes visualise
* analyze becomes analyse
* materialize becomes materialise
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ref:http://www.dailywritingtips.com/

Labels: The Letter “Z”