New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do I develop aggressiveness?

Ask HN: How do I develop aggressiveness?
3 by throwmeaway09 | 1 comments on Hacker News.
I'm 41 years old and I find I'm not aggressive enough, neither at work nor (probably) in personal life. It was something my boxing coach (various years ago) told me quite often. I'm not passive or shy; I speak up, I tell people (and managers, and girlfriends) uncomfortable truths, I'm usually confident and (quite) assertive, but I'm usually too calm and understanding when things heat up in a discussion. It's totally OK for me to give up and think something like "ok, that person is having a bad day, I shouldn't fight fire with gasoline". Now I feel that's a problem; because, very often, those discussions are those when you "win" an argument (especially in the eyes of colleagues or managers) or lose it. When I approach again people that treated me harshly, they usually say "I thought that was already settled, wasn't it?" or something like that. I work as a software engineer, and I think this is preventing to step up in my career, despite the fact that most colleagues regard me as a really authoritative (and not authoritarian!) source and respect me a lot. I know that some of you will tell me "find a better company". But I've changed some jobs already in my life, and ultimately some things don't change - I don't work in an horrible politics-only corporation - and I think it's high time to step up to what the game is. Any kind of recommendation? Books, trainings, professionals that can help me?

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