Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes

Depression is the reward we get for being 'good'.

It's never what people do that makes us angry; it's what we tell ourselves about what they did.

To practice NVC, it's critical for me to be able to slow down, take my time, to come from an energy I choose, the one I believe that we were meant to come from, not the one I was programmed into.

Your presence is the most precious gift you can give to another human being.

We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves. As author and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested, "'What will they think of me?' must be put aside for bliss." We begin to feel this bliss when messages previously experienced as critical or blaming begin to be seen for the gifts they are: opportunities to give to people who are in pain.

There are the two main reasons we don't get our needs met. First, we don't know how to express our needs to begin with and second if we do, we forget to put a clear request after it, or we use vague words like appreciate, listen, recognize, know, be real, and stuff like that.

When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.

Plans to exact retribution are never going to make us safer.

If we ask two questions, we will see that punishment never works. First: What do we want the other person to do? Second: What do we want the other person's reasons to be for doing as we request?

Fix-it jackals can't wait to fix it, because they don't know how to enjoy pain. And until you learn how to enjoy pain, you can't enjoy intimacy.

Often, instead of offering empathy, we have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling.

Anger is a signal that you're distracted by judgmental or punitive thinking, and that some precious need of yours is being ignored.

Avoid 'shoulding' on others and yourself!

Understanding the other persons' needs does not mean you have to give up on your own needs.

NVC can be effectively applied at all levels of communication and in diverse situations: intimate relationships, families, schools, organizations and institutions, therapy and counseling, diplomatic and business negotiations, disputes and conflicts of any nature.

The more we use words that in any way imply criticism, the more difficult it is for people to stay connected to the beauty within themselves.

Translate all self-judgments into self-empathy.

The kind of spirituality I value is one in which you get great joy out of contributing to life, not just sitting and meditating, although meditation is certainly valuable. But from meditation, from the resulting consciousness, I would like to see people in action creating the world they want to live in.

If you are a jackal, you will try to reassure. Jackals try to fix people in pain. They can't stand pain, but make matters worse by trying to get rid of it. Put on giraffe ears. Try to hear what they are feeling and needing.

Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other. Being aware of these feelings and needs, people lose their desire to attack back because they can see the human ignorance leading to these attacks; instead, their goal becomes providing the empathic connection and education that will enable them to transcend their violence and engage in cooperative relationships.

Praise and reward create a system of extrinsic motivations for behavior. Children (and adults) end up taking action in order to receive the praise or rewards.

We're not taught to think in terms of needs. We don't make nice dead people when we're in touch with needs. Domination structures cannot maintain themselves when citizens are educated to be alive.

If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it.

Labeling and diagnosis is a catastrophic way to communicate. Telling other people what's wrong with them greatly reduces, almost to zero, the probability that we're going to get what we're after.

We need empathy to give empathy.

Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.

In nonviolent communication, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs, and requests. Then we may wish to reflect back, paraphrasing what we have understood. We stay with empathy, allowing others the opportunity to fully express themselves before we turn our attention to solutions or requests for relief.

Upset? Ask yourself what this person does that is a trigger for judging them?

It's harder to empathize with those who appear to possess more power, status, or resources.

The number one rule of our training is empathy before education.

As we learn to speak from the heart we are changing the habits of a lifetime.

Fear of corporal punishment obscures children's awareness of the compassion underlying the parent's demands.

The Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu stated that true empathy requires listening with the whole being: The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or to the mind. Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind.

If the other persons behavior is not in harmony with my own needs, the more I empathize with them and their needs, the more likely I am to get me own needs met.

Miracles can happen when we can keep our consciousness away from analyzing and classifying one another.

Keep in mind that other people's actions can never 'make' you feel any certain way. Feelings are your warning indicators.

Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.

Always hear the 'Yes' in the 'No'.

Regardless of our many differences, we all have the same needs. What differs is the strategy for fulfilling these needs.

How I choose to look at any situation will greatly affect whether I have the power to change it or make matters worse.

Never give advice to your children unless you have it in writing and notarized.

Conventional compliments often take the form of judgments however positive, and are sometimes offered to manipulate the behavior of others. NVC encourages the expression of appreciation solely for celebration.

Once you have access to key people in an organization, if you go into a meeting with enemy images of those people - then you are not going to connect.

Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.

The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.

If people just asked: "Here are the needs of both sides, here are the resources. What can be done to meet these needs?" the conflict would be easy to resolve.

We want people to change because they see better ways of meeting their needs at less cost, not because of fear that we're going to punish them, or 'guilt' them if they don't. This applies to ourselves as well.

I have tried to integrate the spirituality into the training in a way that meets my need not to destroy the beauty of it through abstract philosophizing.