Compliments and praise, for their part, are tragic expressions of fulfilled needs

NVC enhances inner communication by helping us translate negative internal messages into feelings and needs. Our ability to distinguish our own feelings and needs and to empathize with them can free us from depression.

People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being.

When people hear needs, it provokes compassion.

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.

However impressed we may be with NVC concepts, it is only through practice and application that our lives are transformed.

My ultimate goal is to spend as many of my moments in life as I can in that world that the poet Rumi talks about, 'a place beyond rightness and wrongness.