The objective of Nonviolent Communication is not to change people and their behavior in order to get our way: it is to establish relationships based on honesty and empathy, which will eventually fulfill everyone's needs.
Teacher, school administrators and parents will come away from Life-Enriching Education with skills in language, communication, and ways of structuring the learning environment that support the development of autonomy and interdependence in the classroom.
All that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries about consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to maintain a perspective of empathy for ourselves and others, even under trying conditions.
People don't make us angry, how we think makes us angry.
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.
Staying with empathy we allow speakers to touch deeper levels of themselves.
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being.
Ask before offering advice or reassurance.
Criticism, analysis, and insults are tragic expressions of unmet needs.
In these long-standing conflicts, I find that most cases it gets resolved in about twenty minutes after each side can tell me the needs of the other.
Very often, the way love is defined, it does violence to both people. It almost makes them a slave to the other. For example, if to be in love, or to be married, it means that I'm responsible for the other person's happiness, now we get into this guilt game, where if they're upset, I'm at fault. Soon, that makes the person we are closest to about as much fun to be around as a prolonged dental appointment.
Blaming and punishing others are superficial expressions of anger.
What I want in my life is compassion a flow between myself and others based on mutual giving from the heart.
Anger can be a wonderful wake up call to help you understand what you need and what you value.
Empathize, rather than put your "but" in the face of an angry person.
How I choose to look at any situation will greatly affect whether I have the power to change it or make matters worse.
By maintaining our attention on what's going on within others, we offer them a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves. We would stem this flow if we were to shift attention too quickly either to their request or to our own desire to express ourselves.
Never do anything that isn't play.
Regardless of our many differences, we all have the same needs. What differs is the strategy for fulfilling these needs.
Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word 'no' without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence.