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If you are a jackal, you will try to reassure. Jackals try to fix people in pain. They can't stand pain, but make matters worse by trying to get rid of it. Put on giraffe ears. Try to hear what they are feeling and needing.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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Marshall B. Rosenberg
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Not getting our needs fulfilled is painful - but it's a sweet pain, not suffering, which is what comes from life-alienated thinking and interpretation.
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When people hear needs, it provokes compassion. When people hear diagnoses, it provokes defensiveness and attack.
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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.
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Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word 'no' without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence.
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If the other persons behavior is not in harmony with my own needs, the more I empathize with them and their needs, the more likely I am to get me own needs met.
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We want people to change because they see better ways of meeting their needs at less cost, not because of fear that we're going to punish them, or 'guilt' them if they don't. This applies to ourselves as well.
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As radical as it may seem, it is possible to do things only out of play. I believe that to the degree that we engage moment by moment in the playfulness of enriching life- motivated solely by the desire for its enrichment- to that degree are we being compassionate with ourselves.
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If we ask two questions, we will see that punishment never works. First: What do we want the other person to do? Second: What do we want the other person's reasons to be for doing as we request?
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Anger is a signal that you're distracted by judgmental or punitive thinking, and that some precious need of yours is being ignored.
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