I love receiving wise words from LaShelle  and her posting today is another example of how she finds ways to  bring NVC alive in our relationships and the thinking and communication habits we have.

Her Connection Gem of the Week takes a specific issue in NVC and walks you through an example of how it is applied in real-life situations. I really recommend subscribing at this link:

http://wiseheartpdx.org/newsletter.php

Connection Gem of the Week

Analyzing Your Partner’s Needs

The same needs are usually met in different ways for you and your partner.  Your partner’s need for love may be met most easily through hearing verbally about your caring for him or her.  Your need for love may be most easily met by help with the chores in daily life. You don’t have to know why. That’s part of the simple beauty of learning to love from this consciousness.

It’s most tempting to analyze your partner when you do something that doesn’t meet a need.  In your mind, taking a nibble of what your partner ordered for dinner may be a reflection of the intimacy and generosity in your relationship.  And for your partner it may show a lack of respect. 

Be very suspicious of the mind that wants to analyze your partner’s issues around scarcity and how it likely started in childhood when s/he didn’t receive consistent nurturing.  Even if Freud were to descend from the heavens and affirm the accuracy of your analysis, it wouldn’t necessarily do much for your relationship.  There’s a good chance that such analysis would be used as evidence for how messed up your partner is and how healthy you are.

I don’t mean to say that understanding your partner’s history and how that shows up now as sensitivities and preferences isn’t useful.  When that information and clarity is offered by your partner, it can help you access compassion.  It is your impulse to analyze on your own that you want to examine.

If asking before tasting your partner’s dinner, meets his or her need for respect then you have one more simple way of meeting that need.  It’s easy to celebrate this when you take yourself out of it.  That is, you remember that your partner’s reaction to you nibbling his or her dinner is about her or him.  It’s not about you being wrong or doing something wrong.  You simply didn’t know that that wouldn’t meet needs.

When you do something that doesn’t work for your partner, offering empathy (a guess about what feelings and needs are up) is not only a gift to him or her, it’s a gift to you.  Offering empathy can help you get out of the habit of taking things personally and then having to make someone wrong or right.

Life gets so much easier when you perceive other’s behavior as about their feelings and needs and not about you.  Here are some "mantras" that might help you remember this in a difficult moment:

-This isn’t about me.

-It’s okay for my partner to be upset. 

-I know my intentions are good.  I am doing the best I can.

-I don’t have to defend, this isn’t about me.

-My partner’s reactions are not my fault.

-What is my partner feeling and needing?

The next time you do something that doesn’t meet needs for your partner remind yourself that it’s not about you, and then get curious about what does meet his or her needs in that context.

I just have to share this from Holly Eckert. If you  like what you read then subscribe to her newsletter – it’s always full of wonderful anecdotes and NVC gems by going to http://hollyeckert.com/

Say you’re having a conversation with someone and you’re feeling triggered. If your emotions are charged enough that you can’t think of anything to say that will support connection your first step is self-empathy. By offering yourself this gift you will find that your heart softens and then yearns to hear what is going on for the other person because connection has been restored inside you. Self-empathy is a gift to both parties.

1. Acknowledge that you are upset and name what you are feeling and needing:

Start by saying something like:

“Oh, something in me is really upset by this situation. It’s feeling and needing…”

This kind of statement gives you some space around the feelings. There are the feelings and needs and then there is you who can offer self-empathy.

You may find yourself using words which imply someone has done something “to” you. This can lead to blaming or a belief they are doing something wrong – then acknowledge this also. Look for the feeling and need underneath.

For example if you hear yourself saying you feel cheated – are the feelings underneath resentful, hurt or angry and are you needing honesty, fairness, justice, trust or reliability? If you hear yourself saying you feel taken for granted are you really feeling sad, hurt, angry or disappointed and needing appreciation, acknowledgment and recognition?

Still feeling disconnected from yourself? Then…

2. Take the other person out of your sentence about this situation to come back to yourself.

“He doesn’t care about me”…try taking the word him out of the sentence and translate into ‘I value consideration’.

“She is so controlling”…take her out of the sentence and translate into ‘I value autonomy’.

“He is so vague”…take him out of the sentence and translate into ‘I value clarity’.

3.Notice what you do enjoy:

Consider identifying one most present need that you have in the situation, and say this to yourself (inside your head; do not say this out loud!),

“I love it when (insert need).”

For example, say you’d like to be heard. In this case, the statement you say inside your head would be,

“I love it when I’m heard.”

It’s amazing how simply connecting to what we want (rather than judging the other or ourselves, or focusing on the needs that aren’t met for us), can help clear the path for greater connection with ourselves and others.

‘Between stimulus and response there is a space.

In that space is our power to choose our response.

In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’

Viktor Frankl

This space, for me, can be tiny. It can be over in a nanosecond before I make a habitual move or reaction. However, I am celebrating that nowadays I can sense the space. This is more than I could do a few years ago.

And lately, “an opening into the more” comes for me. The stimulus occurs and I notice it as a stimulus. Ahhh…there is freedom and choice in this moment.

In the next few posts I will explore some of “the more” that comes:

1. Making a Clear Observation
2. Connecting with Myself (self-empathy)
3. Assuming positive intent – looking at both of our intentions
4. Guessing what is going on for the other person (empathy)
5. Making useful assumptions
6. Knowing what I want (clear requests)

Observation as presence

What disconnects us from our natural state of compassion is our thinking and our thinking in a particular way. It is running us, we seem unconscious and lost in thought and or thinking in a way that is judging, blaming – that is when we are caught in thought.

Observation is being the witness to that thinking. I try and make a clear statement about the stimulus- not adding judgements, interpretations, feelings, thoughts or past experiences. I try and keep it simple.

How do we step out of our mind-stream?

1. Drop into the physical sense of feeling in the body as awareness of feeling. Practice mindfulness of body.
2. Observation as being with pure perception. E.g. seeing a thought going through our mind or what we are hearing, seeing, sensing. We are being the observer of our experience vs. being the thinker of our experience.

Practicing observing our outer world

Exercise: Look around the room you are in. look at anything, an object and see if you can see it without even labelling it, without any thoughts about that object. Notice if you hear the words for the object, see if you can let them go by and come back to being the observer. Being the emptiness of your mind that the thoughts and the objects are the content of.

We are used to noticing the world through the frame of language, how we think, what we say.

How does this exercise relate to NVC?

Thinking and the jackal thinking is what disconnects us from our natural compassion. So if we can witness and observe and be that observer it gives us space to choose something else other than our conditioning.

We can observe what is outside of us or observing our own thoughts. We can be the witnessing presence of our own thinking. Then we can choose a response rather than a reaction. It is like strengthening a muscle that is crucial in NVC and to see that thinking with love – so as not to judge our thinking but rather enjoy the jackal show because they are conveying needs and every judgement is an expression of a need. If we get to the need then we find our living energy. Another word to describe the jackal voice is our ego voice.

Practicing observing our inner world

1. Observation language; being able to differentiate language that is just saying what is; evaluation is any interpretation that I am putting on top of it, any kind of story or meaning.

Exercise: Watch your thoughts, watch whatever is going on in your mind. It might help to focus on your 3^rd eye, out your attention there. It is like you are internally looking there and rest there with awareness. We become the container in which the thoughts occur.

Language causing suffering:

There are 2 kinds of feelings: ones where we are directly connected to our needs – there may be pain or sadness, but it is a sweet feeling. But when we feel suffering NVC says it is our thoughts that are doing that. What we are observing outside, the stimulus, is related to what we are feeling but the feeling is connected to our needs being met or not met.

Part of the difficulty of observing is:

1. Our language is static because of the verb “to be” we say “people are this or that” implying that it won’t or doesn’t change

2. Verbs are connotative (they imply good/bad etc): “Mary dawdles”.

3. Implications/opinions are often expressed as facts: eg

a. “She won’t get fit” rather than “I don’t think she will get fit”.

4. Confusing predictability with certainty eg.

If you go out in the rain you will catch a cold.

5. Failure to be specific:

“Young people don’t know the value of money.”

6. Imply ability:

“She’s not a good typist” rather than “she types at 30wpm with 50% accuracy”

7. Use of adverbs and adjectives:

“She’s fat”  rather than “She is 160cm tall and weighs 100kg”

Exercise in language awareness:

Notice the difference between each of the sets of sentences below. Sat them out loud so you can hear and feel the impact on your body.

You are too generous.

When I see you give your lunch money to others, I think you are too generous.

Doug procrastinates.

Doug started studying for the exam the night before.

She won’t get her work in.

I don’t think she’ll get her work in.

You don’t eat balanced meals.

If you don’t eat balanced meals, I fear that your health will be your health will be impaired.

Renters don’t take care of their property.

I have not seen the family living at 1679 Ross St mow their lawns for 2 weeks.

Take 3 statements you regularly make that you now believe have evaluations mixed with observation and translate them into clear observations.

1.……………………………. ………………………………………….

……………………………. …………………………………………….

……………………………. …………………………………………….

2.……………………………. ………………………………………….

……………………………. …………………………………………….

……………………………. …………………………………………….

3.……………………………. ………………………………………….

……………………………. …………………………………………….

……………………………. …………………………………………….

Now say each statement to yourself twice and notice how you feel in your body saying a mixed observation
vs a clear observation.

“Our thinking causes our suffering.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice”. 

The Buddha.

Talking about conversations ~ here is a great contribution from Ian Peatey at Quantum Learning.

Read on:

Do you hate it when people interrupt you? You know those situations – when you’re half way through expressing your thought and someone butts in and starts jabbering themselves?

I confess I do it, myself. Yes, it’s true. I am an interrupter!

Why do people interrupt

I’ve been thinking about this for some time and there are several possible reasons, why I interrupt:

• I want to annoy you and guess this will do the trick
• I know what you’re going to say and I’ll express it better than you possibly could
• I disagree with you and can’t wait to find out what it is I’m actually disagreeing with before telling you
• I’m so excited about my idea and I don’t have the patience to wait for you to finish
• I’m not listening to you and don’t even realise you’re talking.

Some of these are not reasons I’m happy with and I’ve worked pretty hard on developing more patience, greater attention to others and generally growing up to avoid those. From time to time I forget and still do it, but it gets better.

Interrupting is not always ‘bad’

In many cultures it’s considered a ‘bad’ thing to interrupt. Most of the time I agree, because if I’m interrupting then I’m not listening.  I consider listening to be the core skill in communication (maybe even more important than expressing myself).

If I’m not listening to you then it is not necessarily about my lack of attention or skill! It could be that you’re  just not saying anything that touches or interests me in any way. Usually there’s no life in the conversation and I’m not feeling any connection between us.

A few years ago I would have politely allowed you to finish what you were saying, feigning interest, nodding my head and laughing in what I judged to be the right places. Sometimes I’d get caught out and laugh at what I thought was a joke, but was in fact a serious comment. I’d either try to escape at the earliest opportunity or to at least steer the conversation onto something more interesting.

Isn’t life too short to pretend to listen to someone for the sake of politeness (which after all is culturally specific)? Aren’t there better things we could both be doing instead of staying in a dead conversation? I’ve grown to believe that it’s ‘bad’ to allow someone to continue talking when there’s no life in the conversation.

Isn’t it better to find a way to interrupt with style and grace?

How to interrupt

Here’s my own guide to interrupting in a way that’s, at the very least not going to do any harm, and might even improve the conversation.

1   Why am I not listening?

I want to be clear what’s going on that’s making it hard for me to listen.

Is it about my stuff?

Perhaps my own thoughts have been triggered by something I heard and I want to share those. Or maybe I’m distracted, tired or impatient and would prefer to be somewhere else.

Or is it about what I’m hearing?

Perhaps I’m not clear what’s motivating the speaker to share. Maybe the story is longer than my interest level. Or it could be that I’m just struggling to connect with any life in what I’m hearing.

Ideally, I’ll be able to bring my attention back to you and not have to interrupt at all.

2   What’s my intention in interrupting?

It’s important to me that I can connect with my own positive intention in interrupting, otherwise I’m just going to come across as rude and selfish. Yes, I want to interrupt to look after my own needs, but I also want to pay attention to the speaker’s needs. After all, they are giving me a gift by trying to express something. I assume it’s important to them or they wouldn’t be making the attempt to communicate it.

At the very least I guess they want to be heard, and right now that’s not happening.

3   Get attention

This can be tricky, especially if the speaker is not very aware of their audience. I find the best approach is usually a straight forward:

“I’d like to interrupt you”

I might also do some kind of signal (stand up, put up my hand etc.).

4   Quickly explain what’s going on

Before the speaker can get upset, I explain in a couple of sentences what’s going on and why I’ve interrupted.

I find it important to stay with the interruption itself rather than pretend I haven’t done it. That’s what happens if I just launch into saying what I want to say. Each situation is different, so just as an example I might say something like:

“I’d really like to be giving you my full attention, and I guess you’d like that too. Right now I’m lost in the detail I’m hearing and I’ve stopped listening.”

5    What I want to happen now

The final thing I want to say is to make a clear request about what I want to happen now.

It could be something related to the topic, such as:

“Could you summarise in a couple of sentences the key points you wanted me to hear?”

Or it could be related to the interruption itself, such as:

“I’m concerned you might have heard some criticism. How is it for you that I’ve interrupted you?”

There are times we owe it to ourselves and those around us to interrupt. It is possible to do it with grace, and I found the times I’ve used this way have greatly improved the conversation.

I would much rather be interrupted than have you fake listening to me.

Post from: Quantum Learning

Thank you Ian!

F. Scott Fitzgerald said:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

To which I’d add that the test of a first-rate capacity for empathy is the ability to hold two opposed positions in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to think for yourself. 

The Buddhists capture this approach when they say,

“Truth waits for eyes unclouded by longing.” 

Want more truth about your social situation?  Put yourself in other people’s shoes. But to do that, you have to get out of your own.  Our eyes are clouded by the longing to see ourselves in a favourable light. If you can’t afford, or refuse to relinquish your authority, self-conferred exemptions and specialness, it becomes next to impossible to get next to yourself, in other people’s shoes.  When you put yourself in another person’s shoes you risk seeing yourself as others would see you—not quite as special as you think. But the pay-offs are worth it.

Most of us think we’re already great listeners and fabulous empathizers, but thinking it doesn’t make it so.  So what does?  Here are three practices:

Uncloud your Mind:

This state is often called Presence. It is a quality of emptying out in order to fill up or one elegant way to describe it is:

“full heart ~ empty mind”

Active Listening:

You probably have heard of this technique. It’s about as powerful a skill as I’ve ever seen come out of psychology. And it’s very simple.  If you find yourself in a conflict or rift with someone, stop the decision-making for a moment and simply repeat in your own words, the other person’s argument as persuasively as possible. Then ask whether you heard it right. And then wait for an answer.

“Wait Nicole, before we go any further here I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. Please tell me if I’ve got this right:  You think I’m being too nosey here, that it’s your decision to make and that though I have concerns, now that I’ve declared them, I should back off.  Is that what you’re saying?”

Here you are capturing their gist, showing you understand their meaning and hearing them how they would like to be heard.

Sense for and guess underlying needs:

Starting where we left off with Nicole we might then, after hearing from her that we have reflected back what she meant us to hear, sense for her needs.

“Wait Nicole, before we go any further here I want to make sure I understand what you’re saying. Please tell me if I’ve got this right:  You think I’m being too nosey here, that it’s your decision to make and that though I have concerns, now that I’ve declared them, I should back off.  I wonder if you are really needing some privacy and autonomy here?”

It’s happened to all of us. We start a conversation with someone and it unravels in front of us. We end up with misunderstandings, conflict or confusion. And, in reverse, sometimes all our mental energy and effort when we are listening to someone, is focused towards trying to figure out the purpose of the conversation they have started, not the message.

In order to help your conversation partner cooperate with you and reduce possible misunderstandings , your could try starting important conversations by inviting your listener to join you in the specific type of conversation you would like to have.

In other words, explain your conversational intention and then invite the consent of your intended listener.  When people agree to talk with us, and they know our intentions, then they can be more present in the conversation and more able to either meet our needs or explain why they can’t.

This is a 2-step process. First we offer an explanation of our intent and then we finish with an invitation to consent.

For example: We can start with the intention

Hi….I would like to …….

• share information
• give instructions
• make plans
• negotiate about
• explore possibilities
• make a request
• ask for support
• clarify
• tell you about my experiences/feelings
• hear what’s happening for you
• entertain you with a story/joke
• coordinate/plan our ….
• express my affection for you
• check/clarify/confirm my understanding about…
• resolve…
• make an offer
• accept or decline an offer
• persuade or motivate you…
• make an apology
• offer an interpretation of/in regard to…
• offer an opinion on…
• change the subject
• have some time to…
• leave/end this conversation so that I can…

and then invite consent to participate:

• have you got time to talk?
• is that ok?
• can we talk about it?

Here are some examples:

Hi Roxanne, I need to get some specific information on the project I am working on. Have you got time to talk about it right now?

Hey, Maria, I’d love to tell you about something funny that happened on the weekend – are you curious to hear more?

Hey Hamid, I need to explain the next stage of this job. I think it will take about 10 minutes.  Is now a good time for you to hear it?

Hey sweetie, I have some appreciation I’d like to share with you around doing the gardening this weekend. Would you like to hear how I feel?

It takes your breath away when you are at the receiving end of blame, judgement, criticism, cynicism, and sarcasm or when you are interrupted, talked over or given unwelcome advise.

You can feel it in your body – the retraction, the numbing or the rising emotions, the tightening or bracing.

You can hear thoughts coming ranging from “maybe they are right” leading to disconnection from your own inner knowing or “how dare they!” making the other person an enemy to be defended against.

How can you manage this? One tried and true method is feeling compassionate.

Strange as it may sound, when you feel under attack, compassion can be the best form of self-defence.

It not only disarms the attacker, it provides a safe space for you.

Compassion provides a powerful defence against psychological harm. Through perspective taking, it changes false meanings about self  we may infer from the behaviour of others because compassion keeps your attention on the person behaving inappropriately or causing the hurt. Thus the abuse/comments are not internalised but seen as the abuser’s or critic’s problem.

For example if my spouse tells me I am selfish or calls me a terrible name compassion for him protects me from internalising the hurt. Rather I can see that he is hurt or fearful and I can then be with him from that space.

This, then disarms the defences of the person attacking you. The attention is brought back to them and what they need and not on you and what you need to do.