In this session, I'll be giving you an introduction to how I came about the process. I'll be talking about, sharing its purpose, and give you an outline of it. The process I call Nonviolent Communication.
Nonviolent communication consists of a value system that we are trying to live by. Then it outlines a language, thinking, communication skills, and means of influence that support that way of living.
Introduction Nonviolent Communication - Training Course - Marshall Rosenberg
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- Introduction
- Origin
- Process
- Avoid criticism blame insults or demands
- Subsequent Sessions
- Conclusion
- Resources
Hello, my name is Marshall Rosenberg,
I'm very glad to have this opportunity to share with you some skills and some consciousness that have been extraordinarily helpful to me in my life. I'm pleased to say that thousands of people around the world that I've shared it with find it helpful to them, so I'm glad to share it with you, through this program.
In this session, I'll be giving you an introduction to how I came about the process I'll be talking about, sharing its purpose, and give you an outline of the process I call Nonviolent Communication.
I don't like that title. But why do I use it? I use it because, over the years, it connects me with the people around the world that find our training very valuable in their lives, and in their political activities. I have used it because it connects me with those people. Why I don't like the title. One of the reasons is the same reason that Gandhi didn't like the word nonviolent. It says what something isn't, but Nonviolent Communication is all focused on what we do want, not just what we don't want.
Also, communication is only a small part of what I'll be sharing with you. Nonviolent communication consists of a value system that we are trying to live by. Then it outlines a language, thinking, communication skills, and means of influence that support that way of living.
[2:02]
I would trace its onset to my family moving to Detroit in 1943. Just in time for the race riots, my family moved into the center of where these race riots took place. This was quite an experience for me, as a young boy. It was an experience to sit in the house, locked in for four days, not able to go out because of the violence in the streets, to find out later that 30 people were killed in our neighborhood in just about a week.
This stayed with me, that this is a world where people might want to hurt you because of your skin color. When I went to school for the first time in Detroit, Michigan, I learned something else that was rather frightening to me as a young boy. I learned that my last name could be a stimulus for violence.
First day I was in class when the teacher read off the role and said Marshall Rosenberg and I raised my hand. Two boys in front of me spun around and one of them said, Are you a kike? I had never heard that word until then. I said, What? He said, Are you a Jew? I said, Yes. He and his friend were waiting for me after I left school that day waiting to beat me. So this was another lesson that not only is this a world where people might want to harm you because of your skin color, but some people hearing my name wanted to hurt me. This instilled in me questions about why is this? Why do people want to hurt one another, simply because of their name, simply because of their skin color.
[3:58] At the same time, I had another powerful learning experience. Quite a different one, then, to seeing the violence that was going on in the streets. I saw that violence isn't what we human beings are really about. I was fortunate enough to see people exercising compassion under difficult conditions. For example, my grandmother, with whom we lived, was paralyzed. My mother was taking care of her. Each night, one of my uncle's would come to help my mother, and take care of my grandmother. I couldn't wait for him to get there.
I would watch as he took care of my grandmother, as he cleaned her up, and gave her various medical treatments that she needed. What struck me is, the whole time he was doing this, the beautiful smile on his face. Even though to me as a boy it seemed that the work he was doing was not easy. It was difficult to clean up somebody, give them medications, the whole time he was doing it he had such a beautiful smile on his face. I saw this aspect of human beings, human beings who could enjoy contributing to other people's well being.
[5:39] These two questions:
-
what happens to people to lead them to enjoy other people's suffering, and to make them want to contribute to other people's suffering?
-
What happens to us human beings so that we stay with the process of compassion where we enjoy contributing to each other well being?
I wanted to learn about that. I wanted to learn what contributes to violence, so I could do whatever I could to transform it, to prevent it. I wanted to learn about what helps human beings to stay connected, to what I believe is our nature, our compassionate nature. I wanted to do whatever I could to live that way myself and to distribute what I learned to others.
When it came time to decide what I wanted to do in this world, I decided that I would study psychology. Why did I pick that? I thought that subject would help me with those two questions of what contributes to people being violent and what kind of learning helps people to stay connected to their compassionate nature.
I went to the University with the idea of becoming a clinical psychologist. My thinking was that people who are acting violent must have some kind of mental dysfunction, some kind of illness. So I would learn how to cure this illness. In the course of getting my doctor's degree in psychology, I had the good experience with a professor of mine, Professor Michael Hakeem. He helped me to see that the choice I had made clinical psychology had some limits to it.
First of all, he showed me that the way that psychologists and psychiatrists diagnose people, didn't have any scientific research to document that these words they use could be scientifically diagnosed. He also showed me that by looking at the problem 'why are people violent' as an illness that it overlooks how the structures of our society contribute to people behaving in this way. He helped me to see that by diagnosing people as mentally ill and believing that the violence was a cause of mental illness. We were then taking the focus away from the education that the structures provided, which create the violence.
I learned that after I had already gone just about to the point of graduation with a doctor's degree. It was quite upsetting having spent about eight years at the university, learning this profession and then just as I was about to graduate, finding out from this professor the limitations of that. When I graduated, I decided to go into private practice, and try to help people transform their violence.
I found that the tools that I had learned to do this with the tools of psychoanalytic therapy, and other psychological trainings, which were in current at the time, the first thing I found it didn't work very well. In a sense that it took a long time, and I didn't really see any major transformations occurring. The people, yes, they seem to like coming in and have somebody listen to them. But I wasn't really seeing any major changes occurring in their lives.
So I decided to start off with a couple of questions different than I had been encouraged to ask myself in the course of my training in psychology, instead of diagnosing what it was in people that's wrong with them, that makes them bad, and trying to cure that. I decided to start with a different question.
[10:12]
Where do you find out this information? Well, for about a year, I studied comparative religions, believing that these religions were each trying to define this question How were we meant to live and to let us know this? So through readings and taking some courses, I came to a conclusion after reading about comparative religions that they all were saying pretty much the same thing, that compassion is how we were meant to live.
Contributing to one another's well being willingly, out of the joy that comes naturally, when we exercise our power in the service of contributing to people's well being. They each said this, perhaps in a different way. But I got this same message that our nature as human beings, is to exercise our enormous power in the service of life, to enrich life in ourselves and others.
Realizing this and seeing that this was the core message and all of the religions that I studied, an obvious question came to me if we seem to all agree on this subject, compassionate giving is what we human beings are meant to be, I wondered why we're not doing it. then I started to ask myself the question
[11:54]
Then I saw that the skills that seemed necessary to live compassionately we're quite different than the skills that we were taught. Then when I asked myself, why is that? Then the professor that I mentioned, his words came to me that we were educated, to contribute to the structures we were living, and then these structures in which people claim to be superiors and know what's right for others, and to impose what they believe is right on the others, that way of living requires a certain way of thinking, communicating and using power. I saw that that was the problem, that what created violence was a certain way of thinking, a certain language and certain way of using power.
Then I asked myself,
- what are the skills that are necessary to live in harmony with compassionate giving?
- What kind of language is necessary?
- What kind of communication skills are necessary?
- What kind of thinking supports it?
- what kinds of means of influence support it?
- and where do you find that information?
It wasn't too clear as I was reading about the comparative religions, how specifically we were meant to behave in order to live in harmony with compassionate giving. So I decided to a different kind of research to observe the people that I respected the most, who seemed the most compassionate, who seemed to enjoy giving to others. I tried to see how were they different than the people who seemed to enjoy criticizing, blaming, and attacking others. It was through studying these people, also studying some research in psychology, that tried to identify what characteristics of development contribute to people's behaving in a compassionate way.
I put together from these sources, a process that seemed to me to summarize how we were meant to live and the skills that were necessary to do this. that's how Nonviolent Communication evolved from the research that I did, to identify what kind of human development is necessary for us to live compassionately.
The process that I call Nonviolent Communication consists of:
[14:57]
What I mean by giving compassionately is first of all, that whatever we do is done willingly. It's not done out of guilt, or shame, or fear of punishment, or trying to buy love by submitting to what we think others expect us to do. I saw that the intention I wanted to live by, that I thought was necessary for compassionate giving, is that we give solely out of the joy that comes naturally from contributing to life. Our own life and the lives of others. I organized what I was learning about this into the program that I now call Nonviolent Communication.
At the time, I was in private practice of psychology.
In my private practice, people were coming to me because of depression. Children were sent to me because they were having problems in school. Couples were coming to me because of marital problems. I found that this process that I was putting together was much more effective as a healing tool for people than the way I had been taught to do psychotherapy at the university.
[16:27]
At first I was shocked by this because it was so different than how I had been trained to analyze people and provide psychotherapy. It seemed too simple to just show them how some different ways of behaving, different ways of thinking, communicating, using power, how quickly this could correct problems that were taking me months and not getting the same result. Then when I really saw the power that the program had. I also saw that the way I was offering it to people was not the way that I wanted to continue. By offering it in a private practice as a psychologist, the people who were coming to me, were defining that there was something wrong with them, something mentally ill about them for which they needed healing. I was seeing more and more how that very concept of mental illness was a destructive concept because it implied something was wrong with people that needed fixing. That very concept, as I'll talk about in subsequent sessions, I see gets in the way of people's evolution and human development.
[17:50] I wanted to offer what I was finding very valuable in some way other than through private practice of psychology. How to do that I didn't have any real idea at the time. But I started to talk to people, who found it helpful when they had come to me, and ask for their support.
So people who had come to me and benefited by the process would invite others that they thought would invite it. The next thing I knew, I was traveling around the United States, because word spreads. People that I had helped in one community to learn the process, and apply it in their lives would tell people that they knew and other communities, and before I knew it, I was spending much of my life traveling around the United States, to different groups of people who are wanting me to share the process with them. In those days, many of the people were concerned with racial relationships. They were seeing the cost of racism and wanted to know how Nonviolent Communication could be supportive in, first of all, helping people liberate themselves from the kind of thinking and cultural learning that contributed to racism. I was working on that issue with people in many states in the United States, particularly the southern states because, at that time, the country was going through desegregation in the schools and many problems were occurring. People were finding Nonviolent Communication very helpful, both in transforming racist kinds of thinking into thinking which was more respectful of differences and also helps reconcile warring groups within communities on this subject.
[20:07]
When the word got around about how valuable Nonviolent Communication was with dealing with racism, began to be invited to work with people who are concerned about sexism. Here again, found that the process was very helpful in the work that the people were doing in that area.
One of the problems I faced was that working with the people in those areas, racism and sexism, often did not have much money to offer me for providing the help that I was giving them. When I was in private practice, I was getting a lot of affluent people coming to me for my services, but just to go out and offer it to people around that would invite me into their community, having heard about it, the initial groups were not very affluent people.
To get around the United States, it was pretty costly for me to stop overnight and be in a hotel. So much of the time I had to sleep outdoors as I was traveling from city to city. This was no problem when the weather was good because I had a pretty good sleeping bag, but of course it could be quite uncomfortable in the wintertime, or when it rained. One day as I was driving through Kansas, and I was about to stop cuz it was nighttime and I needed some sleep and on my way back home. The problem was it was raining very hard. When it did that, I would need to go into the nearby town and find some overhang on some building that I could sleep under.
So, I went into a place in the nearest town that I could find with a little overhang from the roof that I could be protected from the rain. I got my sleeping bag out of the car and started to sleep. But now the police came by and wonder who is this strange person who just chooses to get out and sleep underneath that overhang. They seemed a little worried about me. They had me up against my car with my hands on top and they were searching me and asking me why I was there.
[22:32]
I told that story to some friends of mine. A couple months later, they were in a workshop with me and teasing me about that. They said, Marshall, have you frightened the police with your sleeping habits, sleeping out under roof tops? and the woman who attended this training, when she heard this, she asked me martial law. Why do you sleep outdoors like that? I said, Well, you know many of the people that invite me into their communities don't have much money. Sleeping in a motel is pretty costly for me. I don't mind sleeping outdoors. It's just that sometimes that rain is awkward. So that's when I go into town and sleep under the overhangs.
The last day of the workshop, this woman came up to me and said to me, I have something I want to offer you. She gave me a check for a good sum of money. I was shocked. I said, What's this about? she said, it has some strings attached. Oh, I said, What are they? She said, You're not to sleep outdoors anymore. You're to use this money to sleep in hotels and be more comfortable.
I thanked her for her kindness, but I gave her back the check. She said, Why are you giving this back to me? I said, Oh, if I was to have that much money, I certainly wouldn't want to use it to make hotel owners more wealthy.
She said, Well, what would you do with it? I said I'd use it first to buy a car I could sleep in. Second, I would use it to buy a computer because I'm finding that these computers can help me make mailing lists and get a lot of the work I need to do to spread the word around. It could make it a lot easier.
She gave me back the check and she said, Please and buy a car and buy a computer. She said, but you know, what would help if you had a not for profit organization. I could deduct that. So it would be very helpful to me if you could do that. I said, Well, you know, some other people have been telling me there'd be some advantages to my forming a not for profit organization.
so I did,
[24:58]
Then I thought, how do you start an organization where it was getting overwhelming for me to be doing all this by myself? So I sent out a letter to people around the United States and Canada who had been finding my training helpful. I invited them to come together if they would be interested in sharing with me the challenge of how do we distribute Nonviolent Communication in a way that it could be helpful to people most in the United States and Canada. I was delighted to find that 23 people came together. They had this interest in working with me on how we could as a team, make the training more available. But then they were so effective in inviting me all over the United States and Canada.
I was seeing day after day, how valuable the process could be, how many people were using it and how many ways. I saw that it was far too valuable to make it dependent on my availability.
Just at this time, I was reading of the work of Paulo Freire. He was then the head of the department of education in Brazil, at a very low rate of literacy. He came up with a very creative program for increasing literacy in Brazil. Instead of having to depend on well educated teachers to teach reading, developed, very clever program and very simple in which people who are learning how to read could turn around and teach other people how to do it. Through this process, he rapidly spread literacy skills throughout Brazil. But he did something else that was also very clever. He integrated into this literacy teaching to get people to think more about how their government was working and what power they had to change things that were not in harmony with their values.
[27:13]
Within a short time, he was getting about 85% of the people literate. Whereas when he started out, it was about 3%. Well, this really stimulated me and I thought, could I make this process so clear that I could teach people how to teach other people the process. I started this experiment in three cities that I was working in a lot of time, San Francisco, California, Toronto, Canada, and Norfolk, Virginia. I found a team of citizens in each area that were finding the process very helpful and shared with them how I offered it, and showed them how they might teach it to others.
Before I knew it, these teams spread to other teams in the United States. Then a woman in one of the cities in California, who was originally from Switzerland, she thought that this process might be very helpful to the people in Switzerland. She said, If I go over there and describe it to the people in my town that I lived in, and some of the people are interested, would you be willing to go there and offer the process?
She went, found people who were interested. I then went to Switzerland and offered the process and when people in the United States heard that I was doing that. Some people said, Well, we know people in Germany. How about while you're over in Switzerland, offering it to people in Germany? I did. That started me then in Europe. That was about 30 years ago.
In the 30 years since our process has been spreading throughout the world, so that now we have projects going in about 50 countries. We have a team of about 200 people who I've trained to offer our training to other people and in their countries, they're training other people to train other people. So we're seeing a very rapid distribution of this process of Nonviolent Communication.
[29:45]
Now I have outlined the purpose of Nonviolent Communication:
to provide us with the language with the thinking, communication means of influence that support and connecting with ourselves and others in a way that promotes compassionate giving.
In subsequent sessions will be looking at these components in greater detail. But for the moment, let me just give you an overview of what Nonviolent Communication consists of to help support us in creating compassionate giving.
[30:33]
First, it requires a radical transformation of language.
For about 10,000 years over most of our planet, people have been operating according to what I call domination structures, structures in which some people claim to be superiors and have the right to control others because they know what's best. Some of these people call themselves kings. Some call themselves czars. But whatever they call themselves, it's very important for their structures to sustain themselves, that people be educated to be obedient to them. So how do you educate people to be submissive and obedient?
Well, you need to teach them a language in which they get disconnected from their own power and look outward to authority to guide how they are meant to live. To do this requires a language that is static that describes what people are, whether they are good or bad, right or wrong, normal or abnormal.
- a core component is to educate people with such a static language that uses the verb to be in ways that judge people, their behavior, their appearance, their intelligence.
In addition to this language that I call a language of domination, it's also important to teach people retributive justice.
- Retributive justice basically implies that if you are judged as bad by the authorities, you deserve to suffer for it to receive punishment. If you are positively judged by authorities is good, then you deserve to be reward.
It's my belief that this combination of teaching people To think in a static way, in terms of good, bad, right wrong, normal, abnormal, appropriate, inappropriate, mentally normal mentally ill. That way of thinking combined with retributive justice based on punishment and reward, I believe is at the heart of violence on our planet.
[33:24]
Nonviolent communication offers us a different language than a language that implies whether people deserve to be punished or reward. Nonviolent communication focuses our attention on human needs, whether human needs are being fulfilled or not. When they're not, obviously what is called for, is to find ways we can behave that nurture these needs. This is radically different way of thinking.
Instead of judging right or wrong, to determine whether people are punished or not, are rewarded or not Nonviolent Communication focuses on what is happening to our needs.
- If our needs are not being fulfilled by what is happening, let us take action that fulfills our needs.
- If our needs are being fulfilled, let's celebrate.
This is a radical departure from the language of domination, a language of judging what people are.
Nonviolent communication shows us three other important forms of communication that support expressing our needs and understanding the needs of other people.
First Nonviolent Communication suggest clarity about actions that are supporting needs being fulfilled or not.
Nonviolent communication suggest that we make clear observations that we can tell people when their actions are meeting our needs, and when their actions are not meeting our needs.
Another component of Nonviolent Communication are feelings, feelings are manifestations of what is happening to our needs. When our needs are not being fulfilled. We feel unpleasant feelings. When our needs are being met. We feel pleasureful feelings
A fourth component of Nonviolent Communication are requests. When we see that our needs are not being fulfilled, we need to request of ourselves or others, what actions we would like taken to better meet our needs.
[36:09]
The most basic, our needs, and then observations of what is fulfilling our needs and what isn't. Feelings to identify the results of what's happening to our needs now, whether they're being met or not. Our feelings reveal that to us. A request what we would like done about our needs that are not being fulfilled.
These four components are rather different than the language that I was taught. I went to schools for 21 years. In those years of schooling, I was never asked, for example, what my needs were, or what my feelings were. Very rarely was I ever asked what my requests for. The schools I attended were basically schools in which the teachers use the language of judgments. They told you whether what you did was right or wrong, good or bad. In such an environment, we don't learn a language of life. We learn a language that orients us to what authority wants us to believe and do.
Nonviolent communication shows us both how to make these four components clear to people.
What's alive in us? When we say what is contributing to our well being, how we feel and what our needs are that are behind our feelings, that answers the question of what's alive in us at a given moment.
a second question that Nonviolent Communication directs itself to is what would make life more wonderful? that's where our requests come in. We say what we would like to make life more wonderful.
[38:20]
So Nonviolent Communication involves sharing what's alive in us. What would make life more wonderful? To receive the same information from other people, to connect with what's alive in them, and what would make life more wonderful for them. It has been my experience that when we connect at this level, what's alive in each other and what would make life more wonderful for each other, and we avoid the following, we can find ways of getting everyone's needs fulfilled compassionately.
- First, we need to avoid any language that sounds like criticism or blame or insults.
- Next, we need to avoid presenting our request to others in which they hear as a demand.
I have found through my working with people over the years, that anytime people hear criticism or demands, makes it very difficult for people to enjoy contributing to one another's well being.
[39:38]
Nonviolent Communication suggests that we avoid at all times the following strategies for trying to influence people to do what we are requesting. We want people to know that we never want anything done that we request out of guilt or shame created by criticism they hear coming from us.
I believe that anytime we influence people, like criticism, blame insults, even if they do what we request, it will be very costly to us. Because then they're not giving compassionately from the heart. They're giving to avoid shame or guilt. Giving done out of that energy, I believe is costly to both parties in any relationship.
Nonviolent communication also suggests that we avoid at all times any use of punishment.
Now that shocks many people around the world that I work with, they have the idea that without punishment, you have anarchy. You'll have violence, you'll have all kinds of horrible things happen. They believe that the only way you can have order is through a justice system in which people punished if they don't do what the authorities think is right.
In subsequent sessions, I will show how we can resolve conflicts without any kind of punishment. But that's not easy for many people to feel comfortable with, that I work with, because they have been in schools, families, governments, are all set up on the basis of retributive justice, the idea that there are certain things you must do and if you don't do them, and you deserve to suffer for what you have done, and if you do these things, which are defined as right by authorities, then you deserve to be rewarded.
[41:44]
When I suggest other alternatives to conflict resolution, then punishment and reward. It's enormously shocking to people. One of the things that helps is, I say to people,
what are these two important questions?
- Question number one, if somebody is doing something you don't like, what would you like them to do differently?
Now, if you answer only that question, it can lead you to think that punishment sometimes works. Because certainly we can all think of evidence, I would guess, of a time when maybe we were influenced to do something out of fear of punishment, or we were able to influence our children to do things that because they were afraid they'd be punished if they didn't. So if you define works as simply getting people to do what you want, punishment sometimes works.
If you ask a second question of yourself, I believe you will see that punishment never works.
- What do you want the other person's reasons to be for doing what you request of them?
[43:10]
When people ask the second question, what do you want other people's reasons to be for doing what you want them to do? They soon see that anytime we get people to do things out of fear that we're going to punish them if they don't, or out of shame or guilt. It's very obvious then that whatever we got that person to do is costly. Because we are then experienced as a source of violence. Somebody who is prepared to make them suffer if they don't do what we want.
[43:49]
it's pretty obvious to everybody that that is very costly because to whatever degree people see us as violent rather than compassionate it that much harder for them to enjoy compassionately relating to us.
Now people wonder why I put rewards into this same category of something that if you ask, what do you want people's reasons to be that you won't use it? They say, well aren't rewards nice? Doesn't it make people want to do things? I say it may motivate people to do things. But that's not getting people motivated to do things out of compassion, out of enjoyment that comes naturally from contributing to people's well being. Rewards get people to do things out of a whole different energy, not out of a desire to enrich life, but out of a desire to gain something that they want to gain. I like very much Alfie Kohn's book punished by rewards for clarifying how we rewards are equally violent as punishment, or Nonviolent communication then suggest that we not only avoid criticism, rewards punishment.
[45:25]
I often refer to this language that denies choice by using the German word Amtssprache. I started to use that phrase Amtssprache, having read about the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.
At his trial for war crimes in Jerusalem, Eichmann was asked was it difficult for you to send thousands of people to their death?
[45:55]
Eichmann on answered very honestly, he said to tell you the truth. It was easy. Our language made it easy. That answer shocked his interviewer and his interviewer said what language and Eichman said, my fellow Nazi officers and we came up with a name for describing the language of its we were taught in schools to us and especially to us in our position as officers in the military. We called this language Amtssprache up between us. Well, in German, Amt means office and sprache means language. So what they were referring to then was a language of bureaucracy.
Eichmann was asked for some examples of Amtssprache, and Eichmann said it's a language in which you deny responsibility for your actions. If you don't feel responsible for your actions, you don't feel so bad when you do things like send people to their death. It was asked for some examples of this. Eichmann said, Well, if somebody asked you why you do it, you say I had to, I had no choice. if people question that and say, Well, what do you mean you had no choice then you say, superiors orders, company policy. It's the law.
dangerous, dangerous language, a language that denies choice. Nonviolent communication is designed to help us remain conscious of choice every moment to believe that every action we take, we choose to take. We don't necessarily like some actions that we take.
That bothers a lot of people when I say that in our trainings around the world.
[47:58]
For example, a story that clarifies this occurred in city in the United States where I was working with some parents and teachers. When I suggested that words like have to, should, ought, must, can't, are dangerous, as I would define danger, because they turn out people who don't feel responsible for their actions. One of the mothers who attended this session got very upset, and she said, but there are some things you have to do, that you have no choice of. There are things I do every day that I hate to do, but there are some things you have to do and it is our job as parents and teachers to see that our children do what they have to do. I said to her, could you give me an example of something you do that you believe now that you have no choice?
She thought for a moment and said, oh, there's so many things But okay, here's one. When I go home this evening, I have to cook. I hate to cook, I hate it with a passion. But I have done it every day for 20 years, even when I've been sick, I do it. There just are some things you do. I told her I was very sad to hear anybody do anything even one time out of that kind of thinking, thinking in which you believe you have no choice. I told her that I was hoping that if I made clear the value of Nonviolent Communication and she applied it, she would see many more options open to her in her life. I'm pleased to say she was a very rapid student and applied Nonviolent Communication very quickly in her life. She went home that very evening from the workshop and denounced her family that she no longer wanted to cook.
[50:03]
I got some feedback from her family. The feedback happened three weeks later, when I had another introductory session I was doing in town who shows up but her older two sons, she had four sons. They came up to talk to me before the session started. I said, I'm really glad you came up to visit me before the session started. I'm very curious as to what's going on in your home. Your mother has been calling me up about every other day, telling me about the major changes she's been making in her life since the training. I'm always very curious as to how other family members respond to this, when one family member comes home speaking a rather different language.
I said, for example, that first night when she said that she no longer wanted to cook, I'd like to know what reaction you had to that? the oldest son said to me, Marshall, I just said to myself, thank God. I said, How did you come to that? He said, I said to myself now maybe she won't complain at every meal. That very clearly communicated. What concerns me about any language that denies choice. It leads us often to be slaves of authority when it is not to the well being of people to be slaves of authority.
[51:40]
Nonviolent communication is a language that heightens our consciousness that we have choice. Every moment of our lives, we have choice. Nobody can make us do anything. My own children taught me that from the time they were two years old. They taught me I couldn't make them do anything. If I were to say, please put your toys back in the toy box. Now it's time for dinner. They might say no. I would say, Don't you hear what daddy said, Please put your toys back in the toy box. "No."
My children taught me I couldn't make them do anything. All I could do is make them wish they had. If I would do that, they've taught me another lesson that if I made them wish they had, they would make me wish I hadn't made them wish they had. In other words, violence creates violence, punishment creates counter violence.
[53:00]
In session two, I will be describing how Nonviolent Communication helps us to stay conscious of how we choose to live and how we can liberate ourselves from any cultural indoctrination that interferes with our living moment by moment in harmony with values of our own choosing. In other words, session will show us how to live the life within ourselves. That mirrors the kind of world we want to live it. If we're not able to live within ourselves in a way that we choose. It will be very difficult for us to contribute to creating an outside world that is acting in harmony with our values.
[53:52]
In session three, I will be describing how Nonviolent Communication supports us to be honest with each other, without any criticism, without any blame, without insulting. So how we can be honest, by revealing what's alive in us, and what would make life more wonderful, but without ever using any criticism, or demands.
[54:22]
In session four, we'll be looking at how to empathically connect with other people's messages. Now by empathic connection, be referring to how do we see what's alive and other people? what would make their life more wonderful? How do we connect with them in that way, regardless of how they communicate. That's one of the things that people value very much about Nonviolent Communication. It doesn't require the other person's cooperation for us to reach this connection where everybody's needs can get met. Compassionate giving our ability to hear what's alive and people and what would make life more wonderful for them, regardless of how they communicate greatly opens up the possibilities that we can resolve any conflict without violence.
[55:19]
In session five, we'll be looking at how Nonviolent Communication supports our ability to get our needs for love met in intimate relationships.
In session six, we'll be looking at how we experience authority and how we exercise authority. How we do this by seeing people in authority as offers of nurturing not as controllers and we will see how this applies:
- In our role as parents.
- Our role as teachers
- as managers, or in any role in which we are defined as some kind of authority.
[56:07]
In session seven, I'll be showing how Nonviolent Communication can contribute to healing, emotional healing. We'll see how each of us has the power to contribute to each other's healing when we can engage in empathic connection and honest expression. We'll also see in session seven, how Nonviolent Communication can assist when we are mediating between other people's conflicts. Either whether we've been invited to do that, or when we are present, and can offer mediation skills without people even being aware that we're doing it. We'll also see how Nonviolent Communication can support us in helping bring about reconciliation between groups in pain with each other, whether these groups are within the family business place, or different groups within warring countries.
[57:12]
In session eight, I'll be describing how Nonviolent Communication can support us in our social change efforts. We need to not only know how to influence individuals who are behaving in ways we don't like. We need to also know how to do all of the transformation that's necessary for social change to take place. That means that it's not just individuals that we need to know how to transform. But groups of individuals, whether these groups call themselves gangs, whether these groups call themselves Corporation, governments. We look in that session on how Nonviolent Communication can support us in social change.
[58:03]
In session nine, we will look at how to keep the energy and the consciousness that Nonviolent Communication requires. We'll see the role of celebration and gratitude and giving us the energy that it takes to sustain a compassionate life. In a world that often makes it quite a challenge.
First, they say how simple it is.
Because it basically focuses on these two questions that I described what's alive in us? what would make life more wonderful? and to hear that same information and others what's alive in them and what would make life more wonderful for them. So people say how simple this is.
At the same time they say how difficult it is.
Now, how can something be so simple and so difficult? Well, it is simple. Nonviolent communication is a more natural way of being. It simply says, Let's stay connected to life, the life within us. Like any other form of life, whether it be a tree or animals, life requires being connected enough to live to know how to fulfill our needs. So in that sense, Nonviolent Communication is a very simple process. But the second thing that people say about is how difficult it can be. The reason that it's so difficult is that it requires liberating ourselves from centuries of education that have buried what's alive in us behind cultural education that is designed to make us nice Dead people, not compassionate living people.
I look forward in our subsequent sessions to seeing how we can connect with Nonviolent Communication in a way that helps us to live our lives more fully.