Not getting our needs fulfilled is painful - but it's a sweet pain, not suffering, which is what comes from life-alienated thinking and interpretation.
We give empathy to others for our own benefit.
However impressed we may be with NVC concepts, it is only through practice and application that our lives are transformed.
In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs, and requests.
NVC is a reminder; to focus our attention where we are most likely to get our needs met.
We're not taught to think in terms of needs. We don't make nice dead people when we're in touch with needs. Domination structures cannot maintain themselves when citizens are educated to be alive.
I think that there is a problem with rewards and consequences because in the long run, they rarely work in the ways we hope. In fact, they are likely to backfire.
Every time I mess up is a chance to practice.
Never connect yourself with the other person's pain. Just hear their need. Leave yourself out of the other person's feelings and needs.
When we make mistakes, we can use the process of NVC mourning and self-forgiveness to show us where we can grow instead of getting caught up in moralistic self-judgments.
They have most likely said it because they have an unmet need.
NVC helps us connect with each other and ourselves in a way that allows our natural compassion to flourish.
Plans to exact retribution are never going to make us safer.
My need is for safety, fun and to have distribution of resources, a sustainable life on the planet. NVC is a strategy that serves me to meet these needs.
If you are a jackal, you will try to reassure. Jackals try to fix people in pain. They can't stand pain, but make matters worse by trying to get rid of it. Put on giraffe ears. Try to hear what they are feeling and needing.
We want to take action out of the desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, or obligation.
Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.
Social change involves helping people see new options for making life wonderful that are less costly to get needs met.
NVC gives us tools and understanding to create a more peaceful state of mind.
The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.
A difficult message to hear is an opportunity to enrich someone's life.
The most important use of NVC may be in developing self-compassion.
NVC is language, thoughts, communication skills and means of influence that serve my desire to do three things: 1) to liberate myself from cultural learning that is in conflict with how I want to live my life. 2) to empower myself to connect with myself and others in a way that makes compassionate giving natural. 3) to empower myself to create structures that support compassionate giving.
Praise and reward create a system of extrinsic motivations for behavior. Children (and adults) end up taking action in order to receive the praise or rewards.
Upset? Ask yourself what this person does that is a trigger for judging them?
