This book is a purely practical application of concentration and mindfulness to everyday life. It discusses focusing on process, not the end result; tThis book is a purely practical application of concentration and mindfulness to everyday life. It discusses focusing on process, not the end result; taking things slowly and staying in the present moment, rather than getting lost in thoughts. Treat everything in life as a practice, of gradual and constant improvement, with no fixed destination. Treat mistakes as information to help you make adjustments, rather than proof that you're a failure. Those kinds of thoughts do nothing but get in the way of progress. At just 100 pages, this book is one of the most concise and to-the-point books I've ever read....more
This is the best book I've ever read on communication. It's also one of the best I've read on psychology and spirituality, which are really just formsThis is the best book I've ever read on communication. It's also one of the best I've read on psychology and spirituality, which are really just forms of intrapersonal communication, and this book shows how to do that just as we communicate with one another.
This book is deceptively simple, but by no means easy. Imagine learning to walk for the first time. You could read a book that explains it, literally step by step. One foot in front of the other. But training your mind and body to move in that new way takes years of training and practice. Likewise, training your mind to think about communicating in this new way, takes a lot of work. It requires overcoming a lifetime of conditioning that is based on coercion, judgment, and punishment.
This book teaches you how to communicate from the heart. The entire NVC process is four steps: observations, feelings, needs, and requests. Everything anyone says or does involves these four things, implicitly or explicitly. That's why the subtitle is "a language of life." Learning to communicate to these four things directly creates the greatest chances for meeting our needs.
Read this book. Then read it again. Then take an NVC class. You'll be amazed how it will transform your worldview and relationships.
UPDATE: I've now read this book five times, taken an NVC class, and attended several NVC practice groups. I've learned a lot, and my communication has improved drastically. However, upon this most recent reading, I've found that I have a number of criticisms. These are more like caveats, and in no way are intended to sound as though I now think NVC is bunk. Maybe just incomplete.
1. Because it's so different from normal communication, speaking this way feels extremely awkward and unnatural, which can serve to inhibit communication. This gets better with practice, but I've had conversations with extremely experienced people, and I still felt very uncomfortable. It really did feel like they were working from a script rather than just speaking genuinely.
Perhaps the most important approach is to "think in NVC," and then to talk normally. I've found this so much more effective. As I hear someone talking, I like to ask myself, "how are they feeling?" "what do or did they want that led to that feeling?" Occasionally, only when it feels natural and I think it will helpful, I'll ask if they're feeling something or wanting something. I often ignore NVC completely, and then only start trying to tune into it again when I sense that they or I aren't feeling heard. Basically, just a tiny dose of NVC is often all I need to get things back on track.
2. The philosophy of this book is fairly radical. All people are considered having the same, universal feelings and needs, and all we have to do is communicate in such a way that brings empathy to them. No consideration is made for sociopaths, or just poisonous or dangerous personalities that love to abuse people, especially the kumbaya people who believe everyone just needs love.
3. The philosophy and community of NVC are extremely liberal. Conservatives or even moderates will feel very uncomfortable. Sometimes, people's NVC skills go right out the window when faced with someone who disagrees with their politics.
4. NVC completely overlooks, or rejects, the influence of thoughts in peoples' experiences. Only feelings and needs matter. Stay out of your head, and stay in your heart. I've found it extremely effective to also empathize with people's thoughts, as it meets their need to be heard and understood.
5. I've learned the hard way the dangers of getting too good at giving empathy. I had a whole friendship based on the foundation of my empathy. I got very good at it. But I wasn't always "on my game." When I went through a period of discouragement and low energy, the friendship blew up because suddenly I wasn't meeting that empathy need that was expected of me....more
This is considered the definitive book on assertiveness. It's okay, it covers most of what you'd need to know, although this new edition covers severaThis is considered the definitive book on assertiveness. It's okay, it covers most of what you'd need to know, although this new edition covers several unnecessary and common sense topics. It isn't written very well, and I think sometimes gets it wrong. Some of what is suggests seems too passive, too aggressive, too judgmental, or just worded poorly. It doesn't emphasize communication enough. It has an obvious political bias that has no place in such a book....more
20 years ago, I suffered from a heartbreak that devastated me. I had trouble eating, and frequently awoke in terror at what I'd lost. I cried endlessl20 years ago, I suffered from a heartbreak that devastated me. I had trouble eating, and frequently awoke in terror at what I'd lost. I cried endlessly. After weeks of this, I had an epiphany: I needed to teach myself how to love. I realized that love isn't something I can own, or have someone else do to me. Love is an act. It's a behavior. It's something I can do, and I can choose to do it anytime, rather than waiting for that special someone to create love in my life.
So, I stopped crying and started loving. I loved everything. I loved my friends, but then I started loving the trees, and strangers, and life itself. I gave everything I could to help people and make their lives better, rather than being upset that someone in particular wasn't there to make my life better. It may sound cheesy, but this was my therapy. Giving love instead of wishing I could get it. It was an incredibly healing practice, and it changed my life.
Years later, long after that failed relationship had torn me down and I'd built myself back up, someone recommended this book to me. It was exactly that epiphany I had, spelled out in words. If only I'd had this book back then. Teaching myself to love would have been so much easier. I would have had a guidebook, and plenty of exercises to help me love better.
The suffering I experienced wasn't caused so much by the loss, but by my beliefs. The problem I had, really, was a limited conception of love. If someone asked me to define it, I would have had trouble, but it probably would have sounded like something resembling a pop song. This book described love as "a heartfelt yes." It's about accepting the world and life on its own terms. I gives thirty words to describe love, things like affection, awe, caring, alertness, curiosity, enthusiasm, joy, peace, wonder, and thankfulness. We don't need to wait someone or something special to start experiencing these.
Then it talks about the myths people have about love: the myth of romance, for example: "To many people, the word loving means only powerful romantic or sexual attraction." Or the myth of being loved: "that what is really important is not to love, but to be loved and approved by others."
Chapter 3 is about reactive and intentional loving. Reactive love is what most people do. They only love in reaction to something that strikes them as particularly lovable. This book says you can take a more proactive approach, and seek out lovable aspects of ordinary things, people, and experiences.
Much of the rest of the book addresses specific aspects of loving: habits, loving others, loving yourself, grieving, loving through action, etc.
There are a lot of practices in this book. It's kind of ridiculous. Out of 225 pages, there are 144 practices. That's more than one practice for every two pages. This got pretty overwhelming, and I gave up trying to do them. I can't imagine anyone doing all of them. For one thing, it would take ages. But also, many of these practices aren't really practices. They're more like perspectives. And some of them are very specific to certain circumstances, which might not be relevant for everyone.
I don't think doing practices like this, just for the sake of doing them, is all that useful anyway. It's probably better to pick only a few that you feel inspired to do, and do those few a lot. Think of it like choosing between hundreds of therapies. This book would be especially therapeutic during a time of crisis, sadness, or loneliness, but it's even better to be proactive than reactive, as this book discusses. Still, I can imagine that during such dark times, these practices would be much more effective and powerful.
This book is really quite relevant for a lot of situations, since they can all involve loving: being a better partner or parent, doing a better job in a helping profession, recovering from a divorce, grieving a death, etc. I'd also recommend this to anyone who's experience heartbreak or loss and it devastated them like it did me. If I saw someone in pain, feeling depressed or lonely, I'd definitely recommend this book. Especially in those circumstances, I can imagine this book could be life altering.
A lot of the wording in this book is cheesy and silly. It can feel like syrupy, new age pop-psych, which turns me off. Shit really gets woo-woo when he starts talking about God as a path to loving. But loving is cheesy. That's just how it is. It's soft and tender and warm and fuzzy. It's hearts and flowers and sunshine, all the dumb Care Bear stuff that makes us roll our eyes and laugh. That's fine, you can laugh. Just read it anyway, and feel free to ignore anything that isn't relevant or useful....more
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