What does it take?

Some of you may be a bit uneasy about changing the world at this point. It's very easy to do what's right when you don't feel under pressure, but bring up the "boss" and attitudes change quickly. I've seen it happen a thousand times. Now, I would be willing to bet that if I asked 100 of you how your relationship is to your boss, you'd tell me it was just fine. And I would also be willing to bet that in 90 of those cases, that would be a slight to significant distortion of the truth. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing anyone of lying. I'm merely suggesting that they're just being human.

How many of you (and how many of the people you know) are willing to admit they are in a subservient relationship? I don't do it willingly, I can assure you, and I don't consider myself all that out of the ordinary. I've been in relationships – most often work relationships – in which the "other", whomever s/he might be, took more liberties with their "authority", let us say, than was their due. Some people get off on being the boss, but that still doesn't give anyone the right to become abusive ... not even a little bit.

This is not only true of work relationships, but it's true of family relationships as well. How many of your parents demanded that you talk back to them? How many demanded of you to challenge their doling out of punishments? How many expected you to question their authority? Hmmm, I don't see a lot of hands up right now. And no, I'm not suggesting that it need to go that far. What I am suggesting though that each of us, especially those of us who have children or grandchildren, lead our young ones to a healthy degree of self-assertion and self-confidence. This doesn't always – in fact, it rarely – means defiance. It simply means being able to, having the courage to say "no."

This is one of the first things that all of learn, but it is the one thing that most of take the longest to learn how to it right. It's an essential part of growing up, though. And, it's an essential part of adult life as well. If you never learn to say "no", you can end up the abused spouse. If you never learn to say "no", you end up being other people's doormat. If you never learn to say "no", you will, in one way or the other, simply end up somewhere you don't want to be. What is worse, it will somewhere you don't need to be either.