Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To practice the process of conflict resolution, we must completely abandon the goal of getting people to do what we want.
Keep in mind that other people's actions can never 'make' you feel any certain way. Feelings are your warning indicators.
NVC suggests behind every action, however ineffective, tragic, violent, or abhorrent to us, is an attempt to meet a need.
However impressed we may be with NVC concepts, it is only through practice and application that our lives are transformed.
Postpone result/solution thinking until later; it's through connection that solutions materialize - empathy before education.
NVC is founded on language and communication skills that strengthen our ability to remain human, even under trying conditions.
We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves.
We know the speaker has received adequate empathy when a. we sense a release of tension, or b. the flow of words comes to a halt.
I wouldn't expect someone who's been injured to hear my side until they felt that I had fully understood the depth of their pain.
When we are depressed, our thinking blocks us from being aware of our needs, and then being able to take action to meet our needs.
Often, instead of offering empathy, we have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling.
Anger is a signal that you're distracted by judgmental or punitive thinking, and that some precious need of yours is being ignored.
Tragically, one of the rarest commodities in our culture is empathy. People are hungry for empathy, They don't know how to ask for it.
Whether I praise or criticize someone's action, I imply that I am their judge, that I'm engaged in rating them or what they have done.
While we may not consider the way we talk to be 'violent,' our words often lead to hurt and pain, whether for others or for ourselves.
We can't win at somebody else's expense. We can only fully be satisfied when the other person's needs are fulfilled as well as our own.
Never connect yourself with the other person's pain. Just hear their need. Leave yourself out of the other person's feelings and needs.
In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs, and requests.
The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury, never to punish or to cause individuals to suffer, repent or change.
Make your goal to attend to your underlying needs and to aim for a resolution so satisfying that everyone involved has their needs met also.
Our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize that our well-being and the well-being of others are in fact one and the same.
The more we use words that in any way imply criticism, the more difficult it is for people to stay connected to the beauty within themselves.
Never question the beauty of what you are saying because someone reacts with pain, judgment, criticism. It just means they have not heard you.
Fix-it jackals can't wait to fix it, because they don't know how to enjoy pain. And until you learn how to enjoy pain, you can't enjoy intimacy.
Use the words "I feel because I" to remind us that what we feel it isn't because of what the other person did, but because of a choice I've made.
We are compassionate with ourselves when we are able to embrace all parts of ourselves and recognize the needs and values expressed by each part.
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.
You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.
Once you have access to key people in an organization, if you go into a meeting with enemy images of those people - then you are not going to connect.
We recognize that real educational reform is essential if today's and tomorrow's children are to live in a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world.
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.
I believe that the most joyful and intrinsic motivation human beings have for taking any action is the desire to meet our needs and the needs of others.
When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion.
I have tried to integrate the spirituality into the training in a way that meets my need not to destroy the beauty of it through abstract philosophizing.
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.
My ultimate goal is to spend as many of my moments in life as I can in that world that the poet Rumi talks about, 'a place beyond rightness and wrongness.
In a Giraffe institution, the head nurse job would be to serve the nurses, not to control them. Teachers are there to serve the students, not control them.
As soon as you say, "are you feeling X because I ..." Then the Jackal starts to salivate because he can educate the person that he's the cause of his pain.
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.
Time and again, people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically.
Four D's of Disconnection: 1. Diagnosis (judgment, analysis, criticism, comparison); 2. Denial of Responsibility; 3. Demand; 4. 'Deserve' oriented language.
If people just asked: "Here are the needs of both sides, here are the resources. What can be done to meet these needs?" the conflict would be easy to resolve.
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.
Two things distinguish nonviolent actions from violent actions. First, you don't see an enemy and second, your intention is not to make the other side suffer.
If the other persons behavior is not in harmony with my own needs, the more I empathize with them and their needs, the more likely I am to get me own needs met.
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.
Once you can clearly describe what you are reacting to, free of your interpretation or evaluation of it, other people are less likely to be defensive when they hear it.
Most of us grew up speaking a language that encourages us to label, compare, demand, and pronounce judgments rather than to be aware of what we are feeling and needing.
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.
All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.