Greetings friends, And warm wishes on this national holiday of gratitude! To support peace and connection this Thanksgiving, please consider these tips for navigating your celebration with peace.
Start with gratitude! (Details below!)
Empathy before Education. Consider reflecting what is important to the speaker before educating them on your view. For example:Guest A says: “I’m so happy Trump was elected! Now we can get our country back!” You respond: “So, for you, you are feeling hopeful that the results of the election will help our citizens?” Guest A says: Yeah! You say, “Thank you! For me,
I feel ____________________, because ________________ is important to me! I imagine you share that value as well! How do you feel hearing that?” Then, back to “Empathy Ears”!
At the end of the day, consider ending with
gratitude and a celebration of our connection. “I’m so grateful that we had this opportunity to share some time together. It met my needs for community, celebration, and inspiration!”
Expressing Gratitude
Compliments are often judgments – however positive – of others, and are sometimes offered to manipulate the behavior
of others. With a compliment we are telling someone what they did right as opposed to wrong. Both are judgments and are life-alienating statements. NVC encourages the expression of appreciation solely for celebration.
Three Components of Appreciation
What specifically did someone do that
made your life more wonderful?
What need(s) were satisfied?
How do you feel right now as you consider the fulfillment of those needs?
"When we connect at the heart level-it will work out whatever it is."
~ Marshall B. Rosenberg
Article
How to Survive Thanksgiving Drama With This Smart Conflict-Management System
By Kate Blanch | Vogue Magazine
This year, self-care theories abound on “ways to deal” with the current political and cultural turmoil—and finding a way to cope is never more important than during the holidays, when issues so often come to a head. From full-moon dance circles to female-only support spaces that offer
a slew of wellness classes such as meditation, sound baths, breath work, and aura clearings, the options to heal after this challenging, and at times painful, year can seem never-ending, slightly out-there and, for some, a bit stagnant. The truth is, I don’t want to get out of bed at the crack of dawn for a new workout that combines kickboxing and aerial training just so I can feel like a superhero before my 10 a.m. meeting. And I’m not sure that Vaginal Kung Fu—an online course that aims to
strengthen the pelvic muscle to such a degree that it may, one day, allow my pussy to grab back—is the answer either.
Earlier this fall, the Brooklyn wellness boutique Maha Rose quietly advertised its first six-week course in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), a decades-old method for living with compassion whose name was coined by the psychologist Marshall Rosenberg in 1999. The practice is rooted in the
idea that humans are motivated by attaining a common set of shared needs—self-expression, friendship, shelter, hope, acceptance—as opposed to thinking we do things because we are good, or evil, or selfish, or because we should. And because we live in a world of judgment, Rosenberg has created a language that he says can help people communicate more effectively and, inevitably, see past their differences—even when agreeing is nowhere close to being on the table.
Another Wonderful Article: When CEO Satya Nadella first joined Microsoft he started diffusing its toxic culture by handing out a copy of this book!
By Mark Abadi | Business Insider
When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he inherited a company whose culture was known for hostility, infighting, and backstabbing among its top executives.
To turn the company around, he made the members of his senior leadership team read the 2003 book "Nonviolent Communication" by the psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg. Nadella handed out copies at his first executive meeting.
It was a
sign Nadella planned to run Microsoft differently from his predecessor, Steve Ballmer.
"As long as you think you should you won’t or with less than desirable
energy"
~ Marshall B.
Rosenberg
Article
Recovering Teens to Teach Others How to Use 'Nonviolent Communication'
By Lindsey Wright | Indiana Public Media
Overdose Lifeline wants to help parents and loved ones better communicate with teens who are addicted to opioids.
The addiction advocacy organization received a nearly $100,000 grant from the Anthem Foundation. The money will help cover training for recovering teenagers, who will then teach parents how to use “nonviolent communication.”
Overdose Lifeline Founder Justin Phillips says parents often speak to their kids from a place of fear when talking about substance use.
"We learn in nonviolent communication to listen at a different level and clarify what we're kind of observiing and how we are affected with our emotions in what we're observing," Phillips says. "So that we're not speaking from an emotional space but rather a compassionate space."
The Ultimate Guide to Positive Discipline (Using NVC)
By Tiffany Naemura | Fabric
If
you’re a parent, you know full-well how much airtime is spent on the topic of child raising, and especially on the subject of discipline. We all want to constructively teach our children to be kind and to pay attention at all the right moments.
But let’s be honest: much of parenthood is spent keeping small, belligerent humans
from self-destructing and the rest can be an endless attempt to keep ourselves sane.
In 15 years of working with children in my former career as a nanny, I’ve noticed one important thing: our attempts to discipline can often impair emotional connection.
Discipline as we know it is fairly easy; it's connection that's hard.
I feel proud and grateful when I see my NVC trainer deliver this Ted Talk. He is the person that inspired me to want to share Nonviolent Communication with the world. And I am happy with this introduction, which I receive as a concise, yet very complete explanation of what Marshall Rosenberg’s legacy is all about. Which I can now easily share with others in hope of inspiring them
too. I have thoroughly enjoyed watching this TEDxTalk and which brings me a lot of inspiration, hope and new insights upon every new viewing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!
PuddleDancer Press and Kindle-Hart Communication are
celebrating the translation and publication of The No-Fault Classroom in Beijing, China, by Huaxia Press. The No-Fault Classroom, by Sura Hart and Victoria Kindle Hodson (PuddleDancer Press, 2008) is a scope & sequence curriculum with blueprints for creating and using The No-Fault Zone® Game in classrooms.
We are also celebrating the production of a bilingual Traditional Chinese-English edition of The No-Fault Zone® Game, in Hong Kong (contact: nfz@bgif.co).
"Never jump in until we check with the speaker to see if they are finished."
~ Marshall B.
Rosenberg
Other Good Stuff
Pinteresting
Misc
Thanksgiving Blessing
By Rachelle Lamb
Perhaps you are in the midst of preparing Thanksgiving dinner for family or loved ones. Or perhaps you are choosing to spend the day alone or even doing without food altogether. Perhaps you are somewhat cynical about days that the western calendar highlights as reasons to celebrate or remember. Understandable. Even so,
here we are .. and it might be that you are fortunate enough to be able to open a pantry or fridge and find food there. May it be so. No matter what your beliefs are, the human ability to live comes directly from earth's bounty. No food and soon enough no breath.
A few years ago I wrote a poem for Thanksgiving. That poem has been read as a
blessing at many dinner tables. Perhaps it will make its way to your table as well. May we know deeply that our lives are made possible by what our precious earth provides.
Thanksgiving Blessing
Might I consider and remember As I sit down to the blessed feast table All those who join us as we raise our glasses The ones on our heirloom serving plates The bird who picked grain from the dirt The potatoes who hid in the cool dark The cranberries who huddled in the dreaming bogs The choir of peas and carrots who sang in the garden The squashes who boasted of being flaming suns The birthing, the pruning, the weeding,
the tending And the generous dying from which they all came All now gathered together in magnificent symphony All now returning to the holy mystery As one day too I surely will and must So much to remember as I bow my head Thank You, Thank You, Thank
You
Metro Detroit NVC talking about Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg on Instagram
@metrodetroitnvc
Dr. Marshall B. Rosenberg grew up in inner-city Detroit and was confronted with violence on a regular basis. He became interested in where violence stems from, and what could be done to reduce it. While pursuing this interest, he first studied and received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of
Wisconsin. Nonviolent Communication then emerged as he saw a need for a peacemaking skill set accessible to all in personal, professional, and political areas of life. His personal training has touched 60 countries and has contributed to bringing compassion and empathy to many lives. A great place to start learning about Nonviolent Communication, or to find support in integrating Nonviolent Communication into your life, is his book: "Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life". Marshall
contributed heaps of work towards developing a more peaceful language, that many are able to learn and integrate into their lives to have and to show more compassion and we are filled with hope, gratitude, & tenderness.
Here is a simple daily practice. Research shows that if you follow this practice, you will experience more happiness and resilience.
We
suggest you commit to this practice for 30 days.
Marshall Rosenberg, the developer of NVC, cultivated a habit of keeping a gratitude journal. This practice is inspired by Marshall’s suggestion. We have modified the practice based on research done at the
University of Pennsylvania, reported by Martin Seligman, PhD in his book Flourish.
Write down something specific someone did that made your life more wonderful. (This gives you practice making observations.)
Write down what need that action contributed to. (This helps build needs vocabulary and needs consciousness.)
Write down how you feel RIGHT NOW, as you write the gratitude. (This helps build feelings vocabulary and feelings awareness.)
Savor the feeling. (This helps you practice Presence.)
Write down what you did that helped to make the action possible. (This gives you practice making observations and increases your
awareness of sharing power and interdependence.)
We suggest you write and savor 3 examples per day.
For example:
Sean ordered a taxi for us this morning to take us to the airport.
This contributed to ease and support.
Right now I feel warm and thankful.
Savoring warmth, enjoying gratitude.
I helped to make this happen by making a request of Sean for help last night.
Please join us in this practice
Jim Manske
Certified Trainer, Center for Nonviolent Communication CNVC.org President, Network for NVC www.networkfornvc.org (a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization)
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