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.

Needs are the expression of life through us.

The only time a message (label) can scare us is if we think there is such a thing, and that such a thing is a disgrace.

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.

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.

Social change involves helping people see new options for making life wonderful that are less costly to get needs met.

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.