I try never to hear what another person thinks of me. I enjoy life a lot more when I spend as little time as possible hearing or thinking about what other people think about me. I go to the needs behind the thoughts. Then I'm in a different world.

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.

You don't have to be brilliant. It's enough to become progressively less stupid.

The key to fostering connection in the face of a 'no' is always hearing 'yes' to something else.

To do this, you can bring in nothing from the past. So the more psychology you've studied, the harder it will be to empathize. The more you know the person, the harder it will be to empathize. Diagnoses and past experiences can instantly knock you off the board. This doesn't mean denying the past. Past experiences can stimulate what's alive in this moment. But are you present to what was alive then or what the person is feeling and needing in this moment?

Whether I praise or criticize someone's action, I imply that I am their judge, that I'm engaged in rating them or what they have done.

People don't make us angry, how we think makes us angry.