Here's how you can cultivate assertiveness and confidence as a freelancer or entrepreneur.

Apart from the platitudes proposed by AI here, yes, knowing oneself is vital. If we do not know who we are, what our strong and weak points are, and what our dreams are, we can achieve nothing. Yet there is a vast majority of people who live lives decided upon by someone else: parents, trends, economics, religion... We have got one life, just one life, and we cannot afford to waste it. Knowing oneself means getting free from projections, expectations, blackmail and plans about us made by others or even ourselves on the basis of external pressure. It is no easy task because external pressure is more often than not very subtle, but it can be done, if we prioritize self-respect.

Dear AI who wrote these inputs, the first one to set boundaries should be you. You should stop intruding into our lives with your banal remarks and suggestions. OF COURSE setting boundaries is important, in the job market as well as in real life. Yet, if we delegate our behaviour to a generalistic, superficial system telling us what we should do in order to stay well, we will NEVER live our lives. Readers, do you want to become AI yourselves?

Assertiveness and confidence are overvalued. Role-play negotiations are the usual American way to deal with problems. The truth is something totally different. If we know who we are, if we can stay true to ourselves, in short, if we are self-respectful, we can face everything without the silly trendy solutions proposed here. We can propose ourselves and the value of our work with kindness, objectivity and simplicity: intelligent people will like us and will be willing to work with us, and superficial people will let us alone. Who would work for silly people, anyway?

"Positive" and "negative" are useless terms, since their meaning vary according to the context. What AI should have used here is "respectful" VS "disrespectful". Nobody speaks about self-respect, let alone if AI can. Self-respect is the highest form of love we can have. Unless we are cruel, callous individuals, we would never treat someone else the way we treat ourselves when we criticize our work, attitude and skills. Even if we are kind to people, we are not that kind to ourselves. So, we all have to treat ourselves the way we would treat someone else: with patience, kindness and understanding - which does not mean we can pretend not to see our faults. On the contrary, self-respect helps us see ourselves clearly and improve.

Networking is another myth AI puts here as an undisputed truth. The current mania of networking is irrelevant if it is superficial. Wasting time on social media is detrimental to the real work we all must do, which is to grow as a human being. In that sense, even social media can be a chance to grow. Modern technologies may help us expand our network provided we use them wisely and respectfully, like we would do in real life. Personally, I do not believe in competition and I am always ready to help. I am fortunate enough to have found kind people who do the same for me. Yet, in our capitalistic environment, the trendy motto seems to be "your death, my life".