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Everyone clings to their history with a vengeance, because it anchors their identity.
It’s not what you do that counts, it’s the quality of your attention.
The only way to resolve all violence is to give up your story.
Words Are Windows (or They’re Walls)
NVC guides us in reframing how we express ourselves and hear others.
We are led to express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectful and empathic attention.
I find that my cultural conditioning leads me to focus attention on places where I am unlikely to get what I want.
When you give to me, I give you my receiving.
what we are observing, feeling, and needing, and what we are requesting to enrich our lives.
In the world of judgments, our concern centers on “who is what.”
Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting.
Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values.
Value judgments reflect our beliefs of how life can best be served.
Classifying and judging people promotes violence.
We deny responsibility for our actions when we attribute their cause to factors outside ourselves:
Gender roles, social roles, or age roles
We can replace language that implies lack of choice with language that acknowledges choice.
We had just been practicing how to introduce language in the classroom that heightens consciousness of responsibility for one’s actions.
“I choose to give grades because I want to keep my job,”
“But I don’t like saying it that way. It makes me feel so responsible for what I’m doing.”
We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.
Communicating our desires as demands is yet another form of language that blocks compassion.
We can never make people do anything.
Thinking based on “who deserves what” blocks compassionate communication.
The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose:
When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.
Life-alienating communication also obscures our awareness that we are each responsible for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Tell me that you’re disappointed with the unfinished chores you see,
And tell me that you’re feeling hurt when I say “no” to your advances,
evaluations are to be based on observations specific to time and context.
When we combine observation with evaluation, people are apt to hear criticism.
if we don’t mix up what we can see with what is our opinion.
observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.
They had never made reference to specific behaviors—such as his storytelling—and they agreed to bring these up when we were all to meet together.
Words like frequently and seldom can also contribute to confusing observation with evaluation.
When we combine observation with evaluation, others are apt to hear criticism and resist what we are saying.
Instead, observations are to be made specific to time and context,
So you’re reacting to my not having said that the process can be difficult for me at times?
Are you feeling annoyed because you would have liked some sign from me that indicated that I have some problems with the process myself?
