This article is over three years old, but its message is, unfortunately, timeless.
Over the past couple of years, you may have been familiar with a situation like this. Without a face mask, you walked into a store, hospitality venue or healthcare setting. An assistant, doorman or receptionist told you that you may not enter without a face covering, that you must wear one. In effect, ‘no mask, no service’. How did you react? What did you say? How did you feel?
If you were like me, when this happened it felt awkward and difficult. It felt confrontational to refuse to wear a mask but it felt an affront to your personal liberty – and intelligence – to accept that someone could bar you from accessing a shop, pub or surgery simply because you didn’t believe that a piece of ill-fitting, highly permeable and uncomfortable cloth worn over your mouth and nose could protect you from a virus. Either way it didn’t feel ‘good’.
And what did you do? Did you acquiesce to their demand? Did you ‘go along to get along’ and accept that you’d need to wear a mask? Or did you, like me, get strident and angry and remonstrate with the gatekeeper, using a mixture of emotion and indignation to pushback upon their insistence that you comply with what you knew to be irrational impositions?
Or maybe you were smarter than I and learned quickly that your own outcomes lay in your own hands; that if you took the time to educate yourself about the true mask ‘laws’ and trained yourself to be assertive, you could say ‘no’ and still go inside.
Find out the facts
In the journey towards confidence, whatever follows, the first thing one needs to do is become informed. If you are to establish a necessary bedrock upon which to build assertiveness, making the time to read up on mask matters is a priority. Understand the research that has been done on mask effectiveness; look at the data; think about what it all means. There are many excellent sources, on Substack for example; and there are some well-written books that cover this topic, either as part of a wider critique of coronavirus coercion or as their sole focus. The data keeps growing, as do the sources, so keep reading.
In addition to having a grasp of the facts – and those are the real facts, as in those which have been proven by scientific methods, using hard evidential data – it is important that there is a knowledge of the law; the real law. As well as using magical enchantments as the basis of their ‘scientific’ approach (“I wear my mask to protect you”), mask mavens have pointed to a higgledy-piggledy miscellany of laws, rules, requirements and mandates to back up their demands for face covering compliance. The truth is, when it comes to wearing a mask, a lot of these claims are based on nothing enshrined in law: they are usually recommendations and requests, all grouped together as ‘guidance’.
Train yourself to be assertive
Assertiveness is a social skill that involves being direct, open and honest with people while still demonstrating respect for their feelings, wants, and needs. In a nutshell it is being able to say what I want without acting at your expense. Being assertive sits right in the middle of being passive and being aggressive.
There are 5 main elements of assertiveness:
- The ability to say ‘no’ to people or refuse their demands;
- The ability to openly ask for what you want and need from others;
- Being able to talk honestly about your feelings – both positive and negative – with others;
- Knowing how to start a conversation, maintain it and end it;
- Being a good listener and knowing how to empathise with your interlocutor.
Some people – in my experience, only a lucky few – are naturally self-confident and assertive, seemingly possessed of the whole package of traits and familiar with the behaviours that are required if one is to calmly and firmly push back against the mask zealots. It’s easy to meet these people and feel they have some natural advantages that you do not, and never will, have.
But, as with most things, being assertive, having a positive personal impact when dealing with others (also known as having ‘gravitas’), is something that can be learned by anyone. And once acquired, these skills may be honed through use and practice as they become second nature.
Six tricks of the trade
To develop your assertiveness, here are some areas that you can work on. This is not a comprehensive list, but it is full enough to ensure that, overall, you will feel more confident about saying ‘no’ to the mask enforcers. Some techniques are concerned with how you appear to other people; whilst others are about managing your inner thoughts and preparing for the moment when assertiveness will be required. We’ll start with the outward-facing ones, of which there are three.
1. Train your voice
As this short video of Margaret Thatcher shows, it is eminently possible to develop one’s voice. In Thatcher’s case, this was done, with the help of a voice coach, so that she would sound more authoritative, more ‘statesman’-like. But, with diligent practice, any of us can make these sort of changes, on our own. The goal should be to speak slower, in a lower register and with greater timbre, and with a positive tone that sounds as if you have a smile on your face.
2. Lift your stature
Type ‘tall people are more successful’ into your Internet search engine and you will see a long list of articles that will tell you that if you are tall, say over 6 feet 4 inches, then you will be considered smarter, you’ll be more successful at work and probably richer, too. Is this truth or fallacy? For our purposes of increasing assertiveness, it doesn’t matter: no matter your actual height, the goal is create the impression of being ‘larger than life’ and to give you the feeling of elevated levels of confidence. You can’t add physical inches, but you can act like you have. Think about your stance, the way you hold yourself and how you move. Do you appear apologetic and mousey? Or do you walk with purpose; as Shakespeare, who is credited with inventing the word, said, do you have ‘swagger’?
3. Manage your body language
Our overall goal is to gain entry to a place without wearing a mask. It is not to ‘win’ the mask argument, change our interlocutor’s mind, or even influence it, and it is definitely not to dominate and bludgeon the gatekeeper into submission.
As such, physical behaviours are quite possibly the most important and the most difficult to master. How others see us is difficult to gauge: after all, as humans we practice mirror imaging whereby, based on how we would like to be seen and how we hope to come across, we imagine how we appear to someone else if they were us. How they really see us is something we cannot explicitly control, but only influence: all we can do is present our best self, the version that is sincere and assertive.
How we make (and break) eye contact; the set of our face and the expressions we adopt whilst speaking and listening; our posture; our gestures; the distance between us that we maintain … all of these things matter.
In brief, don’t crowd, don’t lean over or in, don’t wave your arms around and don’t cross them, don’t stare as if conducting an interrogation, and do maintain an affable, open countenance.
And here are the other techniques, aimed at helping you manage and marshal your ‘say no to the mask’ mindset.
1. Stay calm
No matter how angry this subject makes you feel, you mustn’t let frustration take you over. When you show emotion, maybe through the use of intemperate language or with a raised voice, you commit the cardinal sin of giving your interlocutor a reason to deny you entry. So don’t let your feelings put you at a disadvantage: your aim is to be at ease, using a firm, relaxed voice at an appropriate volume. And the best way to achieve this state is by taking control of your own stress and dissipating anxious feelings.
So, prior to leaving home, perform some simple breathing exercises, such as these. When approaching the venue settle yourself by repeating a short sequence of deep breaths, imagining stress leaving your body as you exhale. Over the longer term, consider taking a mindfulness course – I recommend those run by this organisation – and learn to meditate.
2. KISS
In his excellent book, ‘Face Masks In One Lesson’, Allan Stevo shares the one, nine word sentence that you need to remember:
“I am unable to wear a face mask safely.”
When dealing with someone who has power over you, ‘keep it simple’ is the golden rule 99% of the time. Use short sentences, and only a very few of these. Use ‘I-statements’ -like Stevo’s – that express your own reality, your own feelings, wants, needs or opinions and, unlike statements that begin with ‘you’, are less confrontational. Don’t frame the topic, create a preamble, present facts, debate or feel the need to justify your position in any way; simply focus on your sole objective, which is to gain entry to the shop, restaurant or hospital without having to wear a mask, and speak accordingly.
3. Practice makes perfect (or ‘better’, at least)
For most people, this is not a one-time fix: one doesn’t become assertive without effort and it doesn’t happen overnight. When the mask ‘mandates’ were introduced I struggled to learn how to say ‘no’, simply, clearly and with brevity. So, it is important to practice this new approach, in the familiarity and security of one’s own home. Like trying on a new pair of denim jeans, it will be necessary to walk around, stretching and getting comfortable in this new ‘skin’. Try it out with a sympathetic friend or family member. Think about what your ‘I-statement’ will be (perhaps Allan Stevo’s will be yours, or maybe you’ll want to find your own version). And spend time having positive, affirming thoughts, for example “I will not be denied entry”, “I will remain calm, but I will stand up for myself” and “No matter the hostility I might experience, I will express myself openly and directly”.
Stand your ground
In an ideal world, you could set a boundary, say “no,” stand up for yourself, or address an issue just one time and not have to do it again. With the mask mandates – as with the rest of the Covid coercions – the reality has been different. To access every venue, every shop and every healthcare setting, every time, we have needed to assert our rights not to wear a face covering.
Along with the techniques outlined above, you need to become persistent and relentless; in effect, a broken record, repeating the small number of short sentences. And never raising your voice, never getting into a shouting match and never being rude to the person who stands between you and maskless entry.
In short, if at first you don’t get what you want and ask for, don’t give up. Keep practicing and preparing; keep calm and respectful; keep determined – and keep smiling.
July 2022
Paul Stevens is a business coach and gravitas trainer and part of the Smile Free campaign.
