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How do you know when you’re projecting disowned parts or replaying old relationship dynamics? It’s hard to know for sure, but if you find yourself upset or shutting down and unable to have a dialogue in which you can speak clearly about your feelings and needs and empathize with the other’s feelings and needs, there is likely a projection. The stronger your reaction, the more likely you are projecting.

Mourning, grief and celebration is a way to connect with what we love and want to honor.  In this trainer tip we learn that these three things can become a way for us to understand our emotions regarding our losses and appreciations.

Dear friends,

My book, Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living with Love, Healing and Compassion has been on my mind a lot lately. It turns 20 years old next year, which I feel joyful about. Along the way, I came across this meditation that I wanted to share with you:

November 26
Change your thoughts and you change your world. – Norman Vincent Peale

Developing Tolerance

I used to think that Chihuahuas were dumb dogs and bulldogs were ugly. Then one of my friends bought a longhaired Chihuahua named Tilly and another bought an English bulldog named Emma. Once I got to know these dogs and could see how truly sweet they are, it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with both of them.

In this excerpt from Roxy Manning's 2019 Social Change session at the NVCfest, she explores the application of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to address both immediate conflicts and broader systemic issues. She emphasizes the importance of intervening at multiple levels, from stopping harmful behavior in the moment to driving long-term societal change.

Bring NVC beyond personal growth, explore perspectives that transform how we respond to crisis.

Instead of allocating resources based on needs, we cling to having more money or privilege than others because its close enough substitute for our deeper longing. We may cling to narratives that seem to legitimize this inequality as something we deserved -- such as earning it; having more talent or ability; or needing more for company growth. This soothes our discomfort of having more than others. But these narratives still block us from genuinely getting in touch with the needs of life.

• Learn how every decision we make perpetuates the status quo or brings us closer to the vision of a world that works for all
• Find out about our big brain capacity to integrate needs, impacts, and resources to make decisions that work for everyone
• Understand why power differences interfere with collaborative decisions and what can be done about it
• Discover tools that support collaboration in larger groups and organizations— even across power differences!

• Gain a deeper understanding of trauma through the lens of NVC
• Learn how to connect with ALL needs, even when we’ve been taught to suppress some of them
• Grow capacity to creatively move towards our deepest longings interdependently
• Discover how you can call people back to life when they are in the thick of patterned behavior

Has someone ever talked to you to the extent that you're no longer enjoying it, and you now wonder if they even know you're there? Learn ways to bring in emotional understanding, engage more honestly and open-heartedly, and bridge next steps to the type of conversation that engages everyone's needs.

When we're received with resonant understanding painful moments can lessen their charge and became part of the whole tapestry of life -- important but no longer able to hijack us into the eternal re-run of pain. When held this way, we can touch the memories with our attention the way one touches a newly repaired tooth with the tongue, searching for the old roughness, the old wound, but not finding it.

Empathy alone can be unreliable in guiding compassionate action. As seen in historical events, military training, personal anecdotes, and scientific experiments, empathy alone may not prevent people from harming others. A sense of duty or obedience, often instilled through fear of punishment and shame, might inhibit empathic action. The antidote may be to fostering empathy without resorting to control, shame, or punishment.

Eric Bowers explains how needs and strategies correlate to different brain hemispheres, and how relaxing into our needs opens us to greater possibilities.

Dear friends,

This morning, I woke up thinking about a poignant moment from a few years ago. My wife, Kim, and I were driving down a busy 4-lane road, and we were in a hurry to get somewhere important. Then we saw a mama duck with many small ducklings trying to get across the street. Kim pulled over, and we both hopped out to stop 4 lanes of traffic so Mama Duck could get across with all her ducklings. The last one had some kind of injury, so it took a very, very long time for all of them to make it across.

What drew you to Nonviolent Communication? In this touching reflection, a longtime NVC trainer, Mary Mackenzie, shares the moment that first lit her up with hope.

Learn to foster trust, peace, and cooperation in your family using Nonviolent Communication.

Ask the Trainer: Can NVC transform group conflict? Trainer shares stories and answers the question.

If you’ve ever dreaded attending a meeting – or watched in dismay as your group collapses into conflict – know that a methodology known as Convergent Facilitation offers you possible solutions. It’s based on one simple experience: that people come together at the level of their underlying principles, needs, aspirations, and dreams, not at the level of their surface positions.

Convergent Facilitation is a highly efficient decision-making process developed by Miki Kashtan from the principles of Nonviolent Communication. It enables you to look beneath the surface and find the essence of what’s important to different stakeholders, and bring it together into one set of principles that lead to proposals and ultimately decisions. As a result, it readily produces solutions and decisions that everyone can embrace.

Use Convergent Facilitation to surface shared values and guide groups to supported decisions.