Welcome to the NVC Library

Trainer Tip: Overwhelmed with all that you want to do? If so, what are you working to change? Is it a behavior or a consciousness? Where were you with this issue when you first decided to create change? And now where are you? Celebrating your progress can encourage you to keep trying. You wouldn’t expect to jump on a treadmill and jog three miles the first time. Don't have the same expectations for your emotional fitness either!

Here's a daily self-acceptance practice you can bring into your life whenever you are experiencing pain, tension, contraction, lack of fulfillment, or unmet needs or values. Giving your often undesired experiences space can be a path to greater inner connection and peace.

For this exercise choose a situation in which you have said a “yes” to someone‛s request but you didn't experience your “yes” as given freely or joyfully. Then explore judgements, feelings, needs, and alternate strategies that come up in relation to your “yes”, your “no”, and in relation to what the other person might be experiencing.

Judging or criticizing others indicates pain, unmet needs and a coping strategy. It distracts you from yourself and can give you the illusion of control. You may think you see more than they do, imagining criticism will bring change. But even a correct analysis won’t inspire change if they hear criticism. Instead, the moment you notice judgments or criticism turn towards yourself with compassion. What are your feelings and needs?

Trainer Tip: When we feel resentment toward others, we are harming our own emotional health. Surprisingly, when we own up to our part of an uncomfortable situation, we can release the pain and resentment. Such honesty can provide healing. Read on for a related anecdote of how this can play out.

We all know what it’s like to be on the end of feedback that we receive as clumsy, unbalanced or even spiteful. We don’t have any control over the skill level of people who give us feedback, or their motivations. So how do we receive feedback without taking it personally, in a way that we can learn from it?

When an entity or system has authority or power and mandates something we don't agree with we may submit or to rebel. If we submit, we give in or give up, often out of fear. If we rebel, we're in reactivity which may not help our cause, and reduce our power. This may result in others' resentment, anger, and pain. Gandhi and Martin Luther King didn't submit nor rebel. Instead, they were in choice and advocated for their cause.

Sharing more vulnerably provides opportunities for fulfilling connection. As social beings we rely on feedback to see our effect on others. We can get that feedback through body language, facial cues and words. To expand your capacity to share more vulnerably you can create supportive conditions and timing. You can ask for feedback by making in-the-moment requests of others and yourself before and after you share.

Trainer Tip: We feel our freedom when we are willing to look at others’ needs and our own, evaluate all of them and work toward valuing everyone’s needs. Take the time to demonstrate that you value everyone’s needs as much as your own today.

In moments where we would like to see change, personal growth or spiritual transformation, rather than immediately acting to make a change, Robert suggests we practice unconditional self-acceptance through a spacious presence to our inner experience. Robert asks us to give our attention and spacious awareness to our own judgments, inner contractions, and other experiences we often regard as undesirable.

Jori and Jim Manske explore strengthening your empathy "muscle" for your own well being. Empathy can be a means to strengthen your own resilience, as well as being present for another person.

Connecting with self and other is key to care and creativity. Before dialogue connect with your intention and needs for being with grief, fear or pain, and empathy. Dialogue when you're both rested, fed, and have spaciousness. Start by expressing care and desire to find mutually satisfying solutions. To deepen connection you may repeat what you hear and ask the other person to do the same.

In this Life Hack, we take a closer look at 'values-based' feedback and give you 7 practical tips that will help you provide useful feedback.

Trainer Tip: Identify one goal and take one small step toward achieving it today. It doesn’t matter how much or how often. The reward is in taking the first step, and then the second and third until you’ve attained your goal.

With this exercise you'll choose an experience you had with someone where your needs were not met. You'll work with the related feelings, judgements, values, and feeling the fullness of the need even though it was not met, plus any sadness that may arise.

Use this exercise to stay in dialogue and connect to needs while facing a “no”. Identify a situation where you have low confidence that you'll get your needs met, and it'll be hard hearing a “no” to your request. Explore your response to the “no” by working with feelings, needs, request and alternate strategies. Thus you can work towards meeting your needs while also releasing the idea that your needs “have to” be met.

This exercise brings forth presence, awareness, and witnessing regarding what you observe. And also the inner form of experiencing: thinking, feeling, sensing, longing, and noticing any inner resistance. This exercise is designed to allow self-compassion to clear the inner space, and to help you feel it as a flow of energy, presence to the other, and bring in a more relaxed experience and more availability to vulnerability.

In these exercises, you'll transform your urge to rebel with punishment or reward. Punishing can include withholding love or other necessities, attacking verbally with insults or name calling (directly or with others), giving a "dirty look," or attacking physically. With these exercises you'll allow space for your urge. You'll also explore needs, benefits, consequences, and lternatives.

Self responsibility is owning what's yours. It involves identifying your observations, evaluations, feelings, longings, and more. When we identify what's truly ours we are unlikely to mistake it as coming from outside of us. Self responsibility is not self blame. Without self responsibility, we project, blame and judge. Self-responsibility is central to clarity and full self-awareness. This exercise will guide you there.

Giving feedback can be a difficult task, sometimes we try to avoid getting to the point and instead end up spending a long time attempting to communicate. We find there are mostly two types of feedback. The first focuses on what is wrong with the person's behaviour and tends to feel more judgemental whereas the second is values-based feedback, focusing on the needs of the people involved.