Two questions help us see why we are unlikely to get what we want by using punishment... The first question is: What do I want this person to do that's different from what he or she is currently doing? If we ask only this first question, punishment may seem effective because the threat or exercise of punitive force may well influence the person's behavior. However, with the second question, it becomes evident that punishment isn't likely to work: What do I want this person's reasons to be for doing what I'm asking?

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.

Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values

When we understand the needs that motivate our own and others behavior, we have no enemies.

Fear of corporal punishment obscures children's awareness of the compassion underlying the parent's demands.

Ask before offering advice or reassurance.

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