If we wish to express anger fully, the first step is to divorce the other person from any responsibility for our anger.
Plans to exact retribution are never going to make us safer.
We never really know what we want until after we get it. If after we get it, it makes life more miserable, we know that isn't what we wanted. If it makes our life wonderful, we know this is a strategy which will meet out need. That's why Paul Tillich, the theologian says we need to sin courageously. You ask for what you want, hoping to meet your needs. If you get it and it makes life worse, you learn that this isn't what I want.
Instead of playing the game "Making Life Wonderful", we often play the game called "Who's Right". Do you know that game? It's a game where everybody loses.
Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.
Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs.
In our culture, most of us have been trained to ignore our own wants and to discount our needs.
When we judge others we contribute to violence.
At the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs.
Translate all self-judgments into self-empathy.
When we listen for feelings and needs - we can see that people who seem like monsters are simply human beings whose language and behavior sometimes keep us from seeing their humanness.
Never hear what a jackal-speaking person thinks, especially what they think about you.
Our goal is to create a quality of empathic connection that allows everyone's needs to be met.
NVC gives us tools and understanding to create a more peaceful state of mind.
Let’s shine the light of consciousness on places where we can hope to find what we are seeking.
The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. When I first read this statement, the thought, 'What nonsense!' shot through my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation.
This objective of getting what we want from other people-or getting them to do what we want them to do-threatens the autonomy of people, their right to choose what they want to do. And whenever people feel that they're not free to choose what they want to do, they are likely to resist, even if they see the purpose in what we are asking and would ordinarily want to do it.
NVC is a way of keeping our consciousness tuned in moment by moment to the beauty within ourselves.
All moralistic judgments, whether positive or negative, are tragic expressions of unmet needs.
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.