• Moralistic judgment and static thinking block human connection and create violence.
  • All people's actions are to meet needs we all share as human beings.
  • Expressing our needs is a gift of giving and receiving freely from the heart.
  • People’s actions are the stimulus, never the cause of feelings and actions.
  • Communicate from internal need and joy to enrich/serve life, rather than for external rewards or to avoid punishment.

Compassionate Communication

The Blame Game

The Blame Game is something most of us are familiar with and often play when something happens that we don't find out whose fault it is, so we can fix it. This idea is like rearranging furniture in a room so that the exterior looks different, but the inner workings of the house remain static. To do the same thing and expect different results is a definition of insanity. If we want a different result, it requires choosing a different strategy. The something different could be compassionate communication, aka nonviolent communication (NVC)

Compassionate Communication Tools

The tools of NVC provide a way for us to get into the inner workings of our mind so we can choose our responses rather than react. With choice comes empowerment. The choice is ours to continue doing what we are doing and getting what we are getting, or to risk something different to get different results.

Using the language of NVC to focus on connection instead of solutions we can translate judgments, evaluations and interpretations and choose to relate to one another with:

  • Inner compassion for ourselves and outer compassion for others.
  • Empowerment where we can make a difference (inside rather than out).
  • Mutually satisfying resolutions of conflict.