Welcome to the NVC Library

Trainer Tip

Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.

—Doris Mortman

Make a clear, conscious decision about what’s important to you, and then live from that place. I used to strive to be liked. I measured my success by other people’s opinions of me. I was in pain for years using this strategy. If someone didn’t like me, I felt bad and I tried to be the kind of person they wanted me to be. If someone didn’t want to spend time with me, I was certain it was because I wasn’t a likeable person. It did not occur to me to clarify my own values and to live from them.

For instance, I value authenticity so I began to speak up when something was important to me, rather than keep quiet so that people would like me. Once I truly understood what was important to me, I began to live more peacefully. Sometimes people still don’t like me, but I know that if I act in harmony with my values, I can be at peace even in the face of conflict.

Live from your values today.

This trainer tip is an excerpt from Mary Mackenzie's book, Peaceful Living, available from PuddleDancer Press.

• values
• decision
• people pleasing
• integrity
• Mary Mackenzie

Even in the pandemic the line between what’s essential for people and what is “essential” for fueling the economy, often gets confused. Capitalist market economies actively undermine attending to needs for the many and for life as a whole. Economic recovery is a mirage leading to continued collective oppression. This article explores possible ways to bring us closer to attending to our actual needs — and caring for self, others and life.

This article is part 5/10 from the "Apart and Together" series.

• pandemic
• Work
• job
• sustainability
• society
• social change
• money
• inequality
• justice
• essential workers
• privilege
• interdependence
• capitalism
• gift economy
• community
• commons
• universal basic income
• universal basic services
• new economy
• oppression
• Miki Kashtan

Healthy differentiation is key to personal growth, learning and thriving relationships. When healthy differentiation is present, you can discern what's true for you and what you are and aren't responsible for in an interaction, and can be fully who you are in the presence of others. There are a number of ways you can become aware of and cultivate healthy differentiation. Let’s look at two here: self-connection and autonomy.

• differentiation
• responsibility
• self connection
• autonomy
• LaShelle Lowe-Charde
• Elia Lowe Charde

There are a variety of reasons, but primarily it's because so many of us don't know how to effectively work through our differences. If you are like most of us, you will need support to re-learn how to transform differences into outcomes that benefit everyone.

During this course recording, you'll focus on learning about and acquiring the skills and practices you need. You'll learn how to engage effectively with conflict and differences, and set yourself up to continue improving your ability to collaborate in ways that work for all.

Explore key aspects of collaborating with others, using examples drawn from the participants' work lives:

• Speaking truth with care and attention to cultural norms;
• Opening to hear and integrate others' points of view;
• Moving from conflict to dilemma: aiming for solutions that work for both of you while attending to the larger purpose; and
• Giving and receiving feedback for accelerated learning.

Keywords:

• Miki Kashtan
• expression
• feelings
• honesty
• needs
• strategies
• compassion
• connection
• dialogue
• listening
• personal growth
• self compassion
• values
• education
• leadership
• parenting
• relationships
• social change
• workplace
• groups
• peace
• truth
• collaboration
• politics
• vision
• community
• interdependence
• enemy images
• purpose
• courage
• self responsibility
• self love
• inner work
• sustainability
• race
• decision making
• culture
• meaning
• NVC & Society

Trainer Tip

To be successful, the first thing to do is fall in love with your work.

—Sister Mary Lauretta

We all have daily activities that don’t seem fun. Mine are cooking, lighting a fire, and cleaning the cat box. For years I grumbled about these things and I could find no joy in them at all, until I started to connect to the needs I was trying to meet with each activity.

Each morning for several months, when I heard my inner critic grumble about cooking, I would say, “I cook because I value nourishment.” When building a fire, I would say, “I’m building this fire because I value sustainability and warmth.” And when cleaning the cat box, I would say to myself, “I am cleaning the cat box because I want my cats to have a happy and clean environment.” Then after each statement, I would ask myself if I still wanted to complete the task.

Some mornings I decided that I could go out for breakfast and the litter could go one more day, or I could put on another layer of clothes instead of making a fire. Each day I connected to the need I was trying to meet, and then I decided whether I wanted to do the activity. It was a simple process that only took a few minutes, and it taught me that I have choices.

I don’t have to do anything. I choose to do some tasks because they meet my needs. By taking the demand out of these tasks and connecting to my needs, I feel more empowered and joyful.

Connect to your values or needs when doing daily tasks today.

This trainer tip is an excerpt from Mary Mackenzie's book, Peaceful Living, available from PuddleDancer Press.

• joy
• choice
• chores
• errands
• demand
• duty
• obligation
• self connection
• Mary Mackenzie

One NVC principle is "stimulus vs cause" - our may be the stimulus but never the cause of another's feelings. When we're upset this principle can help us express pain without blame. However, when others are upset it's easy to slip into blaming them using this principle. Instead, we can hear their pain with care and heartfelt mourning - without guilt nor defensiveness, and whether or not we agree. All this is important if we're sincerely applying compassion. Read on for more.

• blame
• responsibly
• care
• unmet needs
• stimulus vs cause
• defensive
• compassion
• Miki Kashtan

Whenever we make mistakes, we're often beating ourself up in a way that breeds guilt, fear and/or shame. Nonviolent Communication offers a model based in self-empathy that lets you reflect, process and move forward without the guilt, fear and shame.

Keywords:

• Trainer Tip
• Shantigarbha Warren
• self empathy
• self compassion
• mistakes

Notice when you start to defend. Is your body tensing up? Feeling desperate for the other to understand you or your intentions? Find yourself explaining your behavior, giving all the good reasons why you did what you did? Trying to convince the other of your good intentions? If so, ask yourself: “Is this what I want to be doing right now? Is this really helping?” then practice one of these eight options.

• defensive
• reactivity
• conflict
• judged
• criticized
• accused
• misunderstanding
• LaShelle Lowe-Charde
• Elia Lowe Charde

Trainer Tip

Friend, there’s a window that opens from heart to heart And there are ways of closing it . . .

—Rumi

One of the swiftest ways to close the heart is critical or judgmental thinking. How open are you when you are judging another person? The goal in peaceful living is to approach our relationships with an open heart.

Years ago, I asked another trainer of Nonviolent Communication to help me come up with a request that would help me meet my needs for intimacy in my relationship. I wanted to create a dialogue that would help me get what I wanted. The trainer said, “Mary, I hope that you are entering this conversation with a desire to connect to your partner. Your goal should always be to connect with someone, not simply to get your own way.”

I realized in that moment that I hardly ever had conversations with people simply to connect with them or to understand them. My motivation was to get what I wanted. No wonder so many people saw me as manipulative and questioned my motives.

Now, when I want to talk to someone about an issue that might be emotional, I start with the intention to connect and a desire to find ways to value both our needs. I try to keep my heart open to all the possible ways we can do this. The truth is, I have had years of training on how to close my heart. Now I am learning new behaviors to keep it open. I have achieved such great happiness in this new paradigm.

Start conversations today with an intention to connect with other people.

This trainer tip is an excerpt from Mary Mackenzie's book, Peaceful Living, available from PuddleDancer Press.

• judgement
• connection
• dialogue
• intention
• Mary Mackenzie

Sure, you can close the bedroom door.

But if my sexual connection with my significant other this morning had been a bummer…

…I would carry that energy with me all day. It would color every interaction I have.

The energy of the most private events of your private life ripples outward and affects everything you do, like the ripples of a rock thrown into a pond.

Those of us who want to make a difference in the world would do better by living integrated lives, rather segregating -or sometimes denying- parts of ourselves.

In my workplace trainings or with my coaching clients, I don’t mind working on communication issues in intimate relationships if that is what is alive for them at that moment — what, if dealt with, would take the biggest load off their mind. After all, the skills transfer to most interpersonal situations – including workplace, teamwork, and leadership settings.

So work on yourself, work on your relationships, bring your blind spots and your shadows into the light — and from there, let it rip. But don’t be fooled into thinking that what you do behind closed doors has no effect.

That’s why my late mentor, Joe Dominguez, used to say: “sex is the least private act.”

• sex
• privacy
• personal growth
• Alan Seid

Trainer Tip

In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.

~Dante

Have you had times in your life when things seemed dire and impossible to resolve, where every direction you could imagine had consequences you deeply didn’t want? The mind goes round and round searching for an answer. You try different things, but nothing brings relief or salvation. The fear and panic that grips the soul awaits the quiet of the middle of the night. Uncertainty and doubt pierce the heart. As Dante famously writes in the quote above it’s like being in a dark wood where the way is wholly lost.

I know this territory very well in my own experience. One of the biggest life lessons I have learned is to stay in the conversation. It’s so tempting to in one way or another shut down the conversation because it’s too painful and overwhelming. It’s just so difficult to continue facing our deepest fears and pains and the void of not knowing, to speak out our truth, and to stay open to hearing and being moved, to being broken open into a new possibility.

What has given me strength in the middle of the night and in the middle of an intensely heated moment of interaction is to remember the “triad of conversation.” The triad is self and other and then awareness on the third side of the conversation. Awareness holds us in its gentle strength, an ocean of aliveness within and surrounding. With this support I can keep returning to connection, to the space between filled with what we share and need in common, to a searching together for the way forward.

• conflict
• avoidance
• shutdown
• John Kinyon

Trainer Tip

This is how a human being can change: There’s a worm addicted to eating grape leaves. Suddenly, he wakes up, call it grace, whatever, Something wakes him, and he’s no longer a worm. He’s the entire vineyard, and the orchard too, The fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy That doesn’t need to devour.

—Rumi

The world’s people are consuming its resources at an alarming rate. We consume more than we replenish at astronomical speed. This is a form of violence, of not valuing everyone’s needs. It is not OK with me if my needs are met while people in other countries, or even in the house next door, do not have enough to sustain themselves.

People can feel overwhelmed imagining a shift in this course we are on, so I suggest we simply shift our own over-consumption. Consider how you can change your life so that you take less from the earth’s resources and replenish more.

Respect everything that lives. Consider how you can support its life and yours. Shift your consciousness to consider how you contribute to the earth’s ability to flourish. No action is too small. Start today.

Take an action today to better support the earth’s sustainability.

This trainer tip is an excerpt from Mary Mackenzie's book, Peaceful Living, available from PuddleDancer Press.

• sustainable
• environment
• climate
• Mary Mackenzie

Gratitude keeps us connected to what is working, rather than dwelling on what is not working.

When used in its purest form – as a celebration – gratitude keeps us connected to the natural joy of giving that comes spontaneously when we are connected to how powerful we really are in our capacity to enrich each other’s lives.

Besides being a form of celebration, receiving gratitude also serves the function of feedback, and lets us know that we have hit the mark. Most of us want our words or actions to serve or contribute to life, and without this feedback, we can be tempted in certain situations to stop trying. Who wants to put energy into something that seems to bear no fruit?

• gratitude
• celebration
• Alan Seid

Untethering from dominant culture and internalized oppression takes releasing attachments and persistence inspite upheavals -- all with insufficient support. Even in community building we can bring oppression into our efforts to untether. The more we walk towards vision, the more tethers of patriarchy we undo, the more the cost. By exacting such high cost, patriarchal societies reproduce and sustain themselves. To untether we need fortitude.

• patriarchy
• oppression
• activism
• domination culture
• Miki Kashtan

Trainer Tip

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

—Albert Einstein

In Nonviolent Communication, we strive for win-win resolutions. That means that no one loses. We don’t decide things by the majority, because that would mean that the minority loses.

Compromise is similar. In fact, in a compromise both people could feel dissatisfied with the resolution because it usually involves an element of giving in. An alternative is shifting; both people connect to the needs they are trying to meet, and in doing so, one person makes an honest shift to contribute to the other person’s needs.

For instance, a young woman recently asked me for a large discount on one of my classes. At first I was reluctant because I had already given many discounts. But she began to tell me how much she wanted to take the class and how much she wanted to learn new tools to communicate with her child. Her money was very tight because she was a single mom earning less than she needed to support herself and her son.

Her passion and earnestness shone through like a beacon. Seeing this, I shifted and agreed to let her take the class at no charge. I didn’t begrudge this decision. I did this joyfully because, although I still have a need for financial security, I also have a need to contribute to young parents who want to learn effective ways to communicate with their children.

I shifted from my original need for financial security to a desire to contribute to her and her family. My decision met both our needs.

Be aware of opportunities to shift to a different need in order to contribute to someone else’s life today.

This trainer tip is an excerpt from Mary Mackenzie's book, Peaceful Living, available from PuddleDancer Press.

• win-win
• compromise
• conflict
• shift
• negotiation
• Mary Mackenzie

Although we are evolutionarily designed for collaborating with others when attending to our basic needs, the weight of the systems and cultural messages we have inherited interfere. Many of us are doubtful that collaboration is possible or effective, and most of us lack both the faith and the skills to live collaboratively, regardless of cultural imperatives.

Learn to notice ways in which you've internalized cultural messages, and how to open yourself to the wide vista that becomes available when you engage collaboratively. Look specifically at the particular challenges to embracing collaboration within an organizational context built on competition and control. Each session of The Inside Job of Collaboration focuses on one key element through examples from participants' work lives:

• Why collaboration? Transcending either / or thinking;
• Moving from separation to shared purpose;
• Shifting from scarcity to creativity; and
• Embracing conflict as opportunity.

Keywords:

• Miki Kashtan
• business
• expression
• feelings
• honesty
• needs
• strategies
• compassion
• connection
• dialogue
• listening
• personal growth
• self compassion
• values
• education
• leadership
• parenting
• relationships
• social change
• workplace
• groups
• peace
• truth
• collaboration
• politics
• vision
• community
• interdependence
• enemy images
• purpose
• courage
• self responsibility
• self love
• inner work
• sustainability
• race
• decision making
• culture
• meaning
• NVC & Society

Sometimes our craving for love, acceptance, and approval leads us to show only parts of ourselves and hide others. This lack of authenticity actually breeds disconnection and mistrust, leading to those very needs not being met.

What judgments are you afraid other people might have of you, such that you hide a part of yourself? Make a list.

Any chance these align with judgments you have of yourself? Make a list.

Your success in the game of work and the business of life — to borrow a phrase from David Allen — will benefit tremendously from your connection with yourself, from your self-acceptance, and from your ability to be authentic.

Having the perfect external appearance of “having it all together” no longer cuts it. We want more. We want the real you.

Become friends with yourself. Invite yourself out on date, and get to know yourself all over again. Reignite the love affair with your Self. This is not narcissistic self-involvement. This is: Know Thyself.

After all, self-acceptance can only begin through self-knowledge.

Once I accept myself, being authentic is easier. And the people in my life can love me for who I really am, warts and all.

• people pleasing
• being nice
• anxious attachment
• authenticity
• self connection
• self acceptance
• self awareness
• self love
• vulnerability
• connection
• relationship
• Alan Seid

Today in the U.S. is the holy-day each year we celebrate and honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., his nonviolent approach to social change calling society towards the soaring ideals enshrined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence of freedom and equality for all. Dr. King was a tremendous light shining out from a long lineage going back to Mahatma Gandhi in India, transcendentalist philosophers, and many of the greatest leaders and spiritual teachers of history.

“Nonviolence” is not just a political tactic. It is a “soul force,” a courageous and compassionate stand in the face of what seems to us unjustly unequal, oppressive, and violent. It is the force of love meeting and transforming what appears to not be love.

How do we bring this spirit of nonviolence into our communication and conversations today, where on all sides of issues the other side can seem dangerous and wrong?

Many around the world now are doing this, in myriad ways, as we meet the growing threats and challenges we face. The way I have found is to seek to hear and understand each other where we don’t agree. If you are speaking and I am listening, then I ask myself, can I understand you even though I disagree, perhaps very strongly disagree? And can I do this in a way that you feel my understanding? Then when it is my turn to speak, can I express what is true in me in a way that doesn’t demand or try to convince, that simply asks you to understand my experience even if you disagree?

I have found that doing this can take great fortitude and courage, the greater the differences between us that are disturbing and, at the core of our beliefs, frightening. It is the willingness to move towards rather than away from what angers and scares us in others, moving towards with an open mind and heart while staying deeply rooted and connected with our own experience of truth and reality.

Are we not each individual and evolving streams of life’s emergence in relationship with itself?

As we meet in these differences that divide us, it is also possible to connect in the underlying commonalities that unite us. At a deeper level, are we not all part of the same wholeness and oneness? Aren’t we all formed out of the same energy of this living beautiful planet, and of our galaxy and the universe?

There is a way to use language and awareness that connects us with this commonality and allows us to be moved by universal care for one another and the desire to cooperate. Through awareness we can translate from thinking and language that triggers our fight-flight-freeze survival system of violence to language that returns us to empathic connection and compassionate action.

Thank you Dr. King for the incredible example and inspiration you gave us of this possibility and a path to reach that mountaintop and that dream.

• polarization
• nonviolence
• inequality
• social change
• Martin Luther King
• John Kinyon

With more and more news coverage on the increase in climate events around the world, climate change is slowly becoming accepted as an emergency. But how do we stay sane amongst all the chaos and to go one step further how can we take action whilst being grounded and calm?

Keywords:

• Trainer Tip
• Shantigarbha Warren
• climate crisis
• climate
• social change
• social responsibility
• inner peace

Trainer Tip

Tenacity is when you follow your heart—when the whole world is screaming to get back into your head.

—Sonia Choquette

Not long ago I was talking with a friend who told me that he wanted to come to a mutually satisfying resolution with another friend, but didn’t think it was possible. He was thinking about calling his friend even though he had no hope that the friend would be able to hear him. This expectation was a setup. He convinced himself that he wouldn’t succeed before he even started. When we enter into conversations with this attitude, we contribute to our lack of success. When we start conversations that might be challenging with the intention of success, we shift the energy immediately toward it.We will not always be successful by starting with this attitude, but we will have greater opportunity to succeed if we do.

Set your intention before starting a conversation today.

This trainer tip is an excerpt from Mary Mackenzie's book, Peaceful Living, available from PuddleDancer Press.

• intention
• attitude
• conversation
• Mary Mackenzie