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Trainer Tip: We often find ourselves slipping into old behaviors that we would rather change. This is because we don’t have a new plan for responding to the same old situations. In that case, notice whether you are slipping into old behaviors today. Connect to your unmet needs and then identify a new strategy for the situation.

Trainer Tip: Be aware of opportunities today to choose empathizing over arguing with someone who is angry, and notice how it affects your ability to resolve the situation. Read on for more.

• Understand the dynamics of power struggles
• Explore practical strategies for navigating power imbalances
• Discover ways you can share power in various relationships
• Explore how NVC supports a move away from domination, into shared power

Trainer Tip: Even if we don't agree, acknowledging others' realities can help demonstrate that we're including their feelings and needs in the conversation. Creating space for your reality and theirs can also bring a sense of connection, understanding, inclusion, abundance and fullness in life. Try it today. Read on for an example.

For many, spending time with relatives over the holidays may be challenging. In addition to the love and care we may feel, family gatherings can bring up old hurts or expose painful differences. How many family meals have been marred by tense silence or devolved into harsh argument?

Trainer Tip: People’s choice of words may be difficult to hear. In fact, we may feel downright aggravated by them. Whether we enjoy these statements or not, we can begin to recognize that behind each statement is a desire to meet needs, either by saying please or thank you. In this way, we are more likely to feel compassion because we have connected to their humanness. Listen for the please or thank you in your conversations today.

• Celebrate and nurture your relationship to the Earth — and each other! 
• Explore your connections to family, partner, work, nature, self and more 
• Discover new ways to grow in community and work together to make this world a better place  
• Engage and immerse yourself in NVC while making new friends! 

How excited do you get about connecting with people who are proving themselves right and who act like they know it all? Do you prefer the company of not-knowers who are in awe of the mystery of life and exploring with humility and innocent curiosity? Masking our vulnerability in not-knowing can point to deep wounds inside us, where perhaps the common denominator is our desire to prove our worth.

We can create processes that encourage resources (particularly money) to flow to where they are most needed. Engaging in "money piles" is one new way that can refocus conversations on real, practical problems to solve -- rather than ideological or abstract discussions about who "earned", "deserved", worked "harder", or merits more. It can tilt conversations based on transaction and obligation towards care and relationship. Read on for three examples that further illustrate how this new way of operating may even bring us closer to the type of world we all want to live in.

• Inscrease compassion for yourself through understanding why your capacity may lag so far behind your commitment and what you can do to bridge the gap
• Higher Compassion for your children as you understand better what life is like from within their own experience rather than from the outside looking in
• Surge in energy that you can put into new conversations with them designed to make agreements that are based on the truth of where you all are rather than on any "should"

Much like other asymmetric relationships (such as therapist and client), there are complications related to power dynamics that can arise with any NVC trainer having sex with a participant. For one, there's (counter)transference. And there's potential for things that may not move outside this asymmetric relationship -- such as projections where the participant, and/or the trainer, is guided by un-healed pain of their "inner child".

Whether its pandemics, climate change, damage to the environment or other massive challenges that humanity faces, what are we to do if we can't agree on even the most basic information and knowledge? From empathic understanding we can focus on shared, universal human needs (where there is no conflict or disagreement) underlying our perceptions, and feelings. Then we can see if there are ways we can agree on to meet those needs.

• Learn how to use empathy to dissolve conflict
• Deepen your NVC skills to help let go of judgments
• Explore approaches for asking for what you want
• Listen to the conflict within yourself

If you answer yes to at least one of the questions below, then this course may be key to building the relationship you want with your children:

• Do you know in your bones that you want to build a relationship in which both your needs and those of your children are fully included?
• Are you tired of seeing yourself time and again using methods to get your children to "cooperate" that you don't actually subscribe to?
• Do you struggle to imagine how to find enough hours in the day to collaborate for real with your children?
• Do you brace for any conversation with extended family and community who criticize you for being too soft with your children? 
• Do you often feel all alone and wonder if you are actually on the right path?

• Uncover the expansive possibilities of Nonviolent Communication in growing compassion for a more empathic world
• Engage with 17 global trainers on 17+ unique topics
• Connect with an international audience from novices to experts
• Immerse yourself in a festival of learning, fun, and community

• Discover how to bring resonance into your conversations with others
• Learn how resonant language and NVC empathy come together
• Practice consent and saying “no”, even when it is difficult
• Feel the movement into more intimacy in your relationships!

Join Mary Mackenzie, Certified NVC trainer, as she offers a simple approach incorporating NVC into everyday conversations. Her observation is that sometimes speaking NVC empath guesses of feelings and needs can feel un-natural or robotic. A possible solution is to slightly shift the way a person applies their NVC skills, focusing on the flow of conversation in a modern way. This technique has become known as Street Giraffe. Her short video is packed with useful ideas that are sure to become useful tools you can add to your repritoir.

Trainer tip: Empathy, hearing feelings and needs behind someone’s words, can be incredibly healing -- and it can help us come to better understanding and resolution. Empathize with at least on person today. Read on for an example of applied empathy.

Trainer Tip: Thinking someone is bad, wrong, or evil can make it more difficult to connect with them. If we focus on this kind of thinking, we stay in the problem or conflict. The minute we step out of judgement and listen for the needs underlying their actions, we begin working for the solution. Put your focus in the direction of the result you want. Read on for an example.

There are many polarizing issues we can resist and fight over. The word "resistance" can mean fighting against what we don’t agree with in counterproductive ways. It can also be the illusion and futility of mentally fighting against reality of 'what is'. But acceptance, non-resistance, of what is doesn’t mean powerless resignation. Another way to resist is to accept and love whole-heartedly, with empathy and care for the people doing the things we are resisting.