Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes

I never have to worry about another person's response, only how I react to what they say.

Understanding the other persons' needs does not mean you have to give up on your own needs.

My ultimate goal is to spend as many of my moments in life as I can in that world that the poet Rumi talks about, 'a place beyond rightness and wrongness.

You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.

I wouldn't expect someone who's been injured to hear my side until they felt that I had fully understood the depth of their pain.

Never question the beauty of what you are saying because someone reacts with pain, judgment, criticism. It just means they have not heard you.

I don't think you can have an authentic connection when one person is diagnosing the other.

Don't hate the circumstance, you may miss the blessing

Judgments of others contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies.

People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being.

Get very clear about the kind of world we would like and then start living that way.

What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but never the cause.

All human actions are an attempt to meet needs.

When we listen for their feelings and needs, we no longer see people as monsters.

My anger tells me firstly that there's a need of mine that's not getting met.

Empathy gives you the ability to enjoy another person's pain.

When people hear needs, it provokes compassion. When people hear diagnoses, it provokes defensiveness and attack.

With every choice you make, be conscious of what need it serves.

Always hear the 'Yes' in the 'No'.

I believe that the most joyful and intrinsic motivation human beings have for taking any action is the desire to meet our needs and the needs of others.

Compliments and praise, for their part, are tragic expressions of fulfilled needs

We use NVC to evaluate ourselves in ways that engender growth rather than self-hatred.

A need is life seeking expression within us.

To practice NVC, it's critical for me to be able to slow down, take my time, to come from an energy I choose, the one I believe that we were meant to come from, not the one I was programmed into.

To practice the process of conflict resolution, we must completely abandon the goal of getting people to do what we want.

Often, instead of offering empathy, we have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling.

Fear of punishment diminishes self-esteem and goodwill.

Blaming and punishing others are superficial expressions of anger.

Empathy before education.

Avoid 'shoulding' on others and yourself!

It's harder to empathize with those who appear to possess more power, status, or resources.

Classifying and judging people promotes violence.

Intellectual understanding blocks empathy.

In these long-standing conflicts, I find that most cases it gets resolved in about twenty minutes after each side can tell me the needs of the other.

Make your goal to attend to your underlying needs and to aim for a resolution so satisfying that everyone involved has their needs met also.

Depression is the reward we get for being 'good'.

Ask before offering advice or reassurance.

People do not hear our pain when they believe they are at fault.

When we judge others we contribute to violence.

We can't win at somebody else's expense. We can only fully be satisfied when the other person's needs are fulfilled as well as our own.

Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it.

Empathize, rather than put your "but" in the face of an angry person.

Anger tells us we've disconnected from life. The purpose in anger is to use it to come back to life.

You'll find people less threatening if you hear what they're needing rather than what they're thinking about you.

Four D's of Disconnection: 1. Diagnosis (judgment, analysis, criticism, comparison); 2. Denial of Responsibility; 3. Demand; 4. 'Deserve' oriented language.

We need empathy to give empathy. When we sense ourselves being defensive or unable to empathize, we need to (a) stop, breathe, give ourselves empathy, (b) scream nonviolently, or (c) take time out.

Criticism, analysis, and insults are tragic expressions of unmet needs.

When we listen for feelings and needs - we can see that people who seem like monsters are simply human beings whose language and behavior sometimes keep us from seeing their humanness.

Our survival as a species depends on our ability to recognize that our well-being and the well-being of others are in fact one and the same.

NVC self-forgiveness: connecting with the need we were trying to meet when we took the action that we now regret.