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

Never hear what a jackal-speaking person thinks, especially what they think about you.

Power-Over leads to punishment and violence. Power-With leads to compassion and understanding, and to learning motivated by reverence for life rather than fear, guilt, shame, or anger.

Public education for some time has been heavily focused on what curricula we believe will be helpful to students. Life-Enriching Education is based on the premise that the relationship between teachers and students, the relationships of students with one another, and the relationships of students to what they are learning are equally important in preparing students for the future.

All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.

By maintaining our attention on what's going on within others, we offer them a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves. We would stem this flow if we were to shift attention too quickly either to their request or to our own desire to express ourselves.

NVC is a reminder; to focus our attention where we are most likely to get our needs met.