Speaking up for yourself can help you reach your goals, feel less like a doormat and resolve simmering tension in relationships. Here are five realistic tips to help you communicate your needs more precisely and confidently, without rumination.
Know your needs better
Conveying your needs clearly starts with understanding them. Small differences can significantly affect whether your needs feel adequately met. Imagine you’re a runner who is experiencing friction with your coach. Most of your coach’s clients want a very specific prescription for each workout—they’re interested in the what, not the why, and find any ambiguity or decision-making stressful. You want flexibility, with instructions on how to adapt your training session based on how you feel that day. You appreciate a range of target paces to curb your perfectionism.
Avoid the traps of expecting others to read your mind or assuming your needs are the same as everyone else’s.
Practice expressing your needs without ruminating
Don’t overthink whether you’re entitled to your needs or worry excessively about others’ reactions. Instead of dropping hints over weeks or months, practice being direct right away.
For example, if you’re overwhelmed by constant interruptions at work, ask your colleagues to schedule discussions for specific time blocks. This might feel uncomfortable at first, but establishing routines can help you avoid repeatedly expressing the same need.
When you express a need, you might sometimes encounter a gruff or emotionless accommodation, an apologetic refusal, or a reaction designed to make you feel bad for asking. Aim to experience each of these without ruminating over the response. This will help you recognize that you can cope with any reaction.
Realize that expressing your needs can lead to a range of positive outcomes
The obvious positive outcome from expressing your needs is that you get what you ask for. When this doesn’t happen, there can be other benefits from the process: Expressing your needs can help you better understand them, lead to unexpected but helpful suggestions, or prompt you to identify and move on from unsatisfactory situations.
Voicing your needs can reveal when you’re trying to force a round peg into a square hole. For instance, with my second child, I spent months trying to find a way to have a hospital birth with the best elements of a home birth, before eventually realizing that wasn’t going to happen and I planned the home birth that was really what I wanted all along. Blunter reactions to my requests helped me see this.
Change how you respond to other people expressing their needs and wants
Ironically, saying no to others without holding a grudge can make you more comfortable expressing your own needs. Practice not ruminating when you decline a request. For instance, a family member asks to borrow your Netflix password and you say no, but without resentment. When there aren’t any negative consequences to this type of exchange, it can help you feel more comfortable making requests. When someone seems to be hint-dropping rather than being clearer, invite them to be more direct.
Foster a culture of accommodating others’ needs when feasible, even if you don’t understand their why. You don’t always need explanations—whether it’s why a coworker naps in their office at lunch, why someone prefers certain pronouns, or why your friend goes to bed at 7pm and gets up at 3am. Allow people their idiosyncrasies without them needing to cash in social credits for the privilege.
Keep a log of your successes
Our minds tend to remember negative experiences more easily than positives. This has evolutionary origins related to keeping ourselves safe, but it can skew our behavior. You can encourage yourself to make requests by keeping a simple log of when doing so has some type of positive outcome. In particular, note when it results in a surprising solution you hadn’t considered, like taking an entirely different approach.
Seeing the positive outcomes of expressing your needs—whether it’s improved understanding, better relationships, or unexpected solutions—will reinforce the value of practicing these strategies.
