With every choice you make, be conscious of what need it serves.

If you think ahead to what to say next - like how to fix it or make the person feel better - BOOM! Off the board. You're into the future. Empathy requires staying with the energy that's here right now. Not using any technique. Just being present. When I have really connected to this energy, it's like I wasn't there. I call this "watching the magic show". In this presence, a very precious energy works through us that can heal anything, and this relieves me from my "fix-it" tendencies.

In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs, and requests.

Before we tackle the gangs and the basic story, we have to make sure that we have liberated ourselves from how we have been educated and make sure we are coming from a spirituality of our own choosing.

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.

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

NO is always a YES to something else.