Nonviolent Communication. Reading notes

preface

I don’t know why this book always reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian god of war, who was impressed with his idea of non-violent disobedience. There is no doubt that the opportunity to read this book is the word “communication”, no matter what kind of occupation, interpersonal communication is extremely important, especially in China where human relations are complex. And this book basically tells you how to say it better. The simplest way to think about it is to turn a low-eq, obnoxious thought into a high-EQ thought that is easier to understand and comfortable to hear. In simpler terms, it is to learn how to empathize.

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Recommended language

Language is an art, and learning how to better express language has become a compulsory course for everyone. Nonviolent communication illustrates a unique communication process with four focuses on observing, feeling, needing, and requesting the charm of nonviolent communication. Non-violence means more than non-violence to others. From this book, you can learn how to “love yourself” with non-violence.

Recommended level

4 out of 5 stars, the practical parts of the book are the exercises that accompany each of the non-violent communication, which are useful to understand the author’s point of view and to better understand the characteristics of non-violent communication.

The cases in this book, though “routine”, are simple enough to express the author’s point of view. With children’s illustration, the whole book is very easy and enjoyable to read.

Contents summary

As stated in the recommendation, the core contents of the book are as follows:

  • Observation:

    • Distinguish between observation and comment
    • How to distinguish observation from comment

  • Feeling:

    • Distinguish feelings from thoughts
    • Learn to express your feelings

  • Need to:

    • Learn to express need
    • Learn to Listen
    • Learn to Love yourself

  • request

    • Learn to ask
    • Grasp real needs

To observe the

Observe the first message of nonviolent communication. While many people can’t distinguish between observation and comment, for example “this person is lazy” is a typical observation mixed with comment. This confusion is likely to lead to misunderstanding, which is why it is important to distinguish between observation and comment in the first place, because this is one of the most common mistakes people make in communication.

Distinguish between observation and comment

An important way to distinguish between observation and comment is to avoid “profiling” and “tagging” others. It is not the same thing to speculate about others’ thoughts as it is to observe them. Here’s an example from the book: “He is too generous,” this is clearly the label for a person, become the label “generous”, according to the difference between observation and comment on the way, into a “he often ask others to eat (watch), I think he is a rich man (review)” after a break up, so we can clear the decomposition of the observations and comments, such a resolution at the same time, We can look at a person more objectively, because eating out regularly doesn’t necessarily mean you’re rich. But we often unintentionally confuse observation with comment for simple thinking.

How to distinguish observation from comment

If there is to be a distinction, I think the distinction between observation and comment is as follows:

  • Does your description contain “side effects”?

  • First describe the course of the action, then describe the view of the action

  • Look before you leap

It may not be easy to meet the above points, because communication often does not have a short period of time to think, which requires careful practice.

feeling

Whether or not we feel right determines how well we communicate to meet the needs of others.

Distinguish feelings from thoughts

Feeling often means the personal description of the mood, he has a rich emotional color. Thoughts are often the “perception” of the consequences of an event, so feelings and thoughts are often confused.

About feelings of this part of the content of personal touches is bigger, because most of the time we are not used to express their feelings, for the impression the deeper part of the book is the author to ask for a college student roommate the feeling of the night listening to the volume is too large, and college students think his roommate singing in the volume is too large to influence the people around you is not good, In fact, this is “thought” rather than “feeling”. The correct feeling should be: “You are listening to the music too loudly, I can’t sleep. Could you please turn it down a little bit?” and so on.

Another aspect of feeling is empathy. Sometimes we tend to feel the thoughts of others in order to comfort others and express our own feelings, but in most cases this is more likely to hurt others. When we give advice to others based on our own ideas, it is often irresponsible because we don’t distinguish feelings from thoughts, and we don’t hear what the other person really needs.

Learn to express your feelings

Learn to express feelings, in fact, is simply four words: perspective-taking.

In the book, the author describes four ways to respond to unpleasant words:

  • Blaming yourself

  • Blaming others

  • Be aware of your feelings and needs

  • Empathize with the feelings and needs of others

Obviously this is a progressive process, most of the time people will stop at the first or second point, either blaming themselves for saying the wrong thing or blaming others for not understanding them, but it is clear that this is just expressing thoughts rather than feelings. So what does it mean to express feelings? In most cases, when we calm down, we reflect on our actions, we think about why we were so angry in the first place and we even think we were ridiculous. Therefore, the third point is basically satisfied. After we understand our own feelings and real needs, we can resolve the conflict and get back together. When we correctly explain our feelings and thoughts about things at that time, the problem can be solved.

However, the last point is the most important one. To understand the feelings and needs of others means to look at the problem from the perspective of looking in the mirror. “Why did he say that at that time?” The more we try to feel what the other person is feeling, the more we find that the problem is not who we are, but how we communicate.

So from various cases, the most important thing to learn to express feelings is to learn to empathize.

Need to be

This part is at the heart of Non-Violent Communication, and need is at the heart of communication, because communication is mostly about meeting personal needs, like when we’re bored, we use small talk to pass the time, we want to sleep when we’re sleepy, those are the most superficial needs, and sometimes, We often keep our most real needs bottled up deep within ourselves.

Learn to express need is the most important, and observation and comments, it’s easy to confuse your feelings and needs, people sometimes can deceive oneself, many times we feel there is no appropriate we need, we can borrow from other things out of our troubles, we will often we don’t like the habit of imposed on myself, For example, some people don’t like cooking, but they have to cook. This contradiction constantly hurts their feelings. When we change ourselves and our needs, we will find that the problem can be solved by finding a faster way to cook, or even buying some convenient dishes occasionally. Satisfy our occasional desire to be lazy (but please don’t indulge).

Learn to express need

The key to learning to express needs is this: ask yourself the most pressing thoughts in your heart. Needs are sometimes confused with feelings, and often we need to distinguish between feelings and needs. For example, “I need to be quiet” is a superficial meaning to ask others to be quiet. In fact, it is obviously not expressing my own need (more like complaining), because it does not express my need clearly. If this sentence is changed to: “The ambient noise here is too loud, I need to go to a quiet place for a while.” This sentence is slightly translated to ask his true thoughts, so that his needs can be accurately conveyed to others without causing misunderstanding.

Learn to Listen

Without understanding the needs of others, we should put down our own steps and fully listen to the needs of others.

Listening requires us to guess and feel the thoughts of others, and experience their personal feelings and needs. If we cannot understand the full emotional needs, we need to gradually guide the communication in a non-violent way according to the guess and feedback.

The core of learning to listen is:

  • Guessing and trying to figure out the true intentions of others.

  • Feel and experience the hidden needs of others.

  • If you can’t guess, ask for feedback

Learn to Love yourself

This may be a little curious at first, why the need to love oneself is related to, later by explaining that one’s self-confidence is frustrated because one’s efforts do not achieve one’s goals, this seems to be a part of the book of Self-control. People in the frustration of the time is usually not more defeat more brave, but will therefore degenerate escape and unable to recover after a fall. So loving yourself naturally means learning to listen to your true feelings and needs, counteracting these negative emotions, not blaming yourself but learning how to forgive yourself through non-violence, so forgive yourself even more when you encounter setbacks and regroup.

request

A request is the last step in non-violent communication. A request means that we understand the needs of the other person or want the other person to understand our needs. A request is also unknowable, because personal thoughts tend to distort the request, which requires more thinking about the need for the request.

What is the relationship between request and need? I am thirsty, I need water, please give me water can clearly express our need, whereas “I hope you understand me” is often difficult to convey because it may not be the actual need. Here is a specific case in the book, about an elderly couple in a hospital bed, the husband wanted his wife’s care, and the wife was angry because of her husband’s illness and their children’s inaction, the two deeply fell into the trap of “false need”, this seems to be a request but actually not on the point of the situation is very common.

Learn to ask

So how do you learn to ask? The first thing the book asks you to do is to avoid non-deterministic words, such as desire/hope/feel, a series of misleading words, which need to be avoided at all costs.

Learn to express the request of the other way is to ask for help, appropriate request help can achieve win-win effect, if we still can’t solve problems by exhausted all means, the use of asking for help is a good way, we use a sincere request to impress others hope to get the help of others (of course others refused to help treat) should also be normal.

Express request can be done by request feedback, sometimes we “speculation” the request of others sometimes can not accurately grasp the needs of others even lead to deviation from the original idea, this time by request feedback can more easily grasp each other’s feelings and needs, request feedback is also a good way, also achieve the purpose of the transposition thinking, Let the other person recognize that we are doing our best to feel the other person’s feelings and needs.

In addition, the examples in this section are very interesting, and it is worth examining the way you speak and how you change your mind when communication is not going well.

Learn how to ask:

  • Consider whether each word has multiple meanings and try to use the exact word.

  • Switch your thinking and ask for help to get through the tough times

  • Feel the other person’s feelings and needs deeply, and ask for feedback if you can’t

Grasp real needs

The real need is often elusive, what is the real need?

The real first needs us to start from observation, here recommended to see ** “War and Peace” ** actor’s performance, the actor’s performance is the most easy to exercise our view of the character’s action and performance to reflect the character’s psychological vision.

Secondly, we need to elaborate our opinions according to the comments. This part is relatively subjective. Every event has its own right and wrong standards, and we can never guess the answers of others.

Real need finally needs to experience feeling, feeling means to experience the mood of the person, such as an umbrella when it rains, a cup of coke when it is hot. Feeling is sometimes close to people’s instinct, and the subconscious mind will drive the brain to work along with this real feeling.

conclusion

To observe comments, to feel ideas, to feel needs, to express requests, is my ultimate understanding of the book.

Everyone has different personalities. Communication is easy for some, but difficult for others to master. It takes a lot of training to push yourself. When it comes to communication, life is undoubtedly the best teacher.

The language of Nonviolent Communication is very simple but very cut to the point, and of course, because it is a book, the criticism is that theory trumps practice and lacks meaning. But what skills can be learned without practice? Now the study of the society seems to fall into a misunderstanding, saw the representative will, saw the representative to learn. However, no matter reading or studying, even learning 10% of the book is better than a flash of 100%.