The carrot, the stick, and the underlying need: using Nonviolent Communication to reinvent how we motivate ourselves and others
by Alan Rafael Seid, CNVC Certified Trainer
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
Introduction to Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and Motivation
I was once hired by one of the owners of a large company. When I inquired into the deeper why — his core reason for wanting to hire me — he said, “I want to understand my own and my business partner’s deeper motivations.”
What motivates you, me, or anyone?
Why is it that sometimes when we want to motivate ourselves it seems to backfire?
What is the most effective way to motivate yourself and others?
In this article I clarify the elusive topic of motivation, including why sometimes it doesn’t seem to work, or has the opposite effect. I also explain the significant contributions Nonviolent Communication (NVC) has for understanding motivation.
I first define “motivation,” followed by an overview of NVC, and then look at the intersection of the two.
What do we mean by motivation and why is it important?
For the sake of this article I’m defining “motivation” quite simply: it’s the deeper reason that activates you to do something; the why.
The world is full of bosses trying to motivate workers, teachers trying to motivate students, parents trying to motivate their children, and people trying to motivate themselves.
Sometimes it appears to work, sometimes it backfires, and sometimes it seems to work partially with a mix of success and pain.
When we are clear on the deeper why we are more likely to achieve our goals and objectives.
The purpose gives us clarity of direction as well as staying power.
Lack of clarity on the deeper why can lead to confusion, resentment, disconnection, conflict, and tragic outcomes.
What is Nonviolent Communication (NVC)?
NVC is a process for creating the quality of connection out of which people spontaneously enjoy contributing to one another’s well-being.
The essence of NVC
Quality of connection is not to be underestimated or overlooked!
When the quality of a connection is low, what happens? We don’t trust each other. We second-guess each other’s motives. We assume the worst, and we expend a good amount of energy either fighting or avoiding or both.
Think of someone you find highly irritating… and, what happens? The slightest thing they do is annoying! The way they stand, walk, breathe, dress — if you’re like me, everything about them bothers you! This happens easily when we are disconnected.
Let’s look at the opposite: what happens when the quality of connection is high?
Think of someone you feel very connected with, very close.
Now imagine that person accidentally dents your car or spills coffee on your floor.
What happens? How do you react when the quality of the connection is high, and you feel very connected?
What happens is that you become the most understanding person in the world! Don’t worry about it. It happens to anyone. Don’t be too hard on yourself. We’ll get it taken care of.
“Quality of connection” is not nothing. It has immense consequences for how things move forward in any given relationship, personal and professional, and whether or not we can access mutually beneficial possibilities and outcomes.
The essence of NVC is being able to create a high quality of connection — with just about anyone — so that we can both have our needs met without coercion, manipulation, or violence.
While NVC is commonly taught as an interpersonal tool, its application has massive implications for all of society’s systems and structures as well as for people who want to create positive change.
The consciousness AND the tools
NVC has a “mindset” — that consists of a set of principles and what I would call a consciousness orientation.
This mindset is what people call “NVC Consciousness.”
The orientation is a recognition that we are all interconnected, interdependent, and interrelated — and is based on an understanding that all humans have the same underlying needs.
NVC Consciousness prioritizes connection before outcomes driven by the understanding that when we are connected we are much more likely to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution than if we are not connected.
NVC Consciousness recognizes that blame, judgments, criticism, and acts of violence are tragic expressions of unmet needs — because hurt people, hurt people.
When humans hurt emotionally, the tendency is to lash out or withdraw.
In other words, when we most need others’ love, care, and support is when we tend to act in ways that make it least likely to elicit love, care, and support from others.
NVC teaches you to listen for the underlying values or needs behind or deeper than the words themselves. This supports you to become less defensive, stand in a more compassionate place, and be more likely to defuse any potential conflict.
NVC consciousness supports effective use of the model and the tools, which in turn also support the consciousness.
What I call the “tools” of NVC are things you can practice and get better at.
These include key differentiations, such as distinguishing between an observation and an evaluation, developing feelings and needs vocabulary, and learning how to articulate an actionable request.
The NVC model also contains four components — observations, feelings, needs, and requests — the application of which is beyond the scope of this article (although we will look closely at needs up ahead).
Because having a tool and being skillful with a tool are very different things, I emphasize skill-building with the tools so that you can actualize NVC consciousness consistently.
In other words, as you become more skilled you create connection and win-win outcomes on a consistent basis.
However — and this is a massive however — practicing the tools without NVC consciousness results in “weaponized NVC” — something that is not NVC at all!
The purpose of NVC is to create a high quality of connectedness with others — and as a result, we more easily co-create mutually beneficial outcomes.
Using the tools without the consciousness becomes a form of manipulation and something that will destroy relationships. Once someone realizes you are manipulating them they lose trust — which is hard to gain back once it’s lost.
So the consciousness is primary — and you can work the tools to build your skills over time.
Developing your NVC skills
NVC is typically taught in a workshop or classroom setting — and there are many options, online and offline.
You can learn more about the basics of NVC, here.
This book is a classic text for learning the principles and concepts of Nonviolent Communication.
As I mentioned above, having a tool and being skillful with a tool are different! I recommend building your NVC skills through online or in-person workshops and attending a practice group.
Besides workshops and a practice group, if you want to go deep, I highly recommend attending an International Intensive Training (IIT) put on by the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). At an IIT you live immersed for about 9 days with a group of people sharing the intention to learn NVC — which is one of the most effective ways to deepen your understanding and skills.
The Heart of NVC: Defining Universal Human Needs
Understanding universal human needs is at the core of NVC!
That said, I find the word “need” a bit problematic.
The way the word is used in the English language has a connotation of lack and sometimes desperation. That is not what we mean in NVC! Additionally, in English we have a judgment: “that person is so needy.” That is also not what we’re talking about.
Like the wisdom story of the blind men and the elephant, I find that approaching needs from different angles gives us a more robust sense of what we’re talking about.
Understanding universal human needs:
- Conditions for human thriving
Needs are the conditions necessary for life to thrive in any human being, regardless of cultural background or geographic location.
They include survival needs — air, food, water, clothing, shelter — but go beyond, to include that which we need to thrive. I think of them as thrival needs: love, safety, autonomy, belonging, trust, and so forth. These are universal to all human beings.
- How Life is seeking to show up in this moment
During a break at a workshop years ago, I approached Marshall Rosenberg, the originator of NVC, expressing my confusion about needs. “Can I have another definition?” I asked. He said, “needs are how Life is seeking to show up, in this moment, in me, in you, in him, in her, in them.”
What is alive in someone!
A couple of decades later, my understanding has become even more nuanced: needs are a bit like flavors of life energy.
Here’s one way to think about it:
When you take light and run it through a prism, the light refracts into the various colors of the visible light spectrum. Likewise, when you take life force and it moves through a person, it “refracts” into all the various universal human needs.
When people refer to NVC as a “language of life” — universal human needs are implied, since they are seen and experienced as how Life is showing up, inside me or you, right now.
- Energies that want to flow, not holes to be filled
Needs are not static. They are dynamic, shifting, flowing.
More importantly, because the word need carries this connotation of lack, this phrase reminds us that they are not holes to be filled. As expressions of Life itself, they flow.
Needs are energies that want to flow, not holes to be filled.
- Understanding the present need
We all have all the needs all the time — but not all the needs are up all the time.
I think of it like looking out on choppy water: the present need is like a “wave” of aliveness. One moment what’s up for me is belonging, and the next moment it could be trust, and the next moment it could be safety, and then connection, and so forth… There may even be multiple needs up at once.
The important part is understanding that, while we have all the needs all the time, there is often a present need that has risen to the surface in the present moment.
- How needs relate to feelings
Needs are like a flower and feelings are like the scent of the flower.
In other words, the feeling comes from the need, and can lead you to it. For example, I might notice sadness in me. I stay with it — patiently, very present — and it might reveal that the need is connection.
When my need for safety is met, I have certain feelings. When it is not met, I have other feelings. Same with belonging, trust, love, and all the other needs.
- The paradox of needs: it’s always my need, and yet needs are 100% impersonal.
Needs contain this fascinating paradox.
On the one hand, it’s always my need.
For example, I see someone who is very ill and suffering, and I feel something — disgust or compassion or something else.
Let’s say that the feelings are coming from my need for health. But I am perfectly healthy!
Yes. But it is still my need!
If I’m feeling something, what is up for me is my need! If you are feeling something, it’s your need!
You see someone get hit — you feel concerned because of your need for safety. But you are safe! That’s right — if you felt something, the life-force (the need) coming up is yours!
It’s always my need.
If you are feeling something, it’s coming from a need that’s showing up for you.
And here is the paradox:
At the same time, needs are 100% impersonal. Weird, right?
For example: you are reading my words. I chose these words and I typed them out on my laptop using my fingers. So they are my words.
Except that in another, very real way — these are not my words at all! How? Because I did not invent the English language.
The English language existed before I was born and will continue to exist after I die.
Because I did not create the English language, it’s also true that these are not my words at all!
So needs are like that. We experience needs personally but they reside in a collective field, much like language.
- Figuring out your needs versus contacting your needs
It’s easy for me, and many of us, to try to figure out our feelings and needs as an intellectual exercise, rather than making direct contact with them.
Feelings and needs show up in your body, and you can feel them — make contact with them — directly. This will help you be more self-connected in an embodied way. Being able to do it consistently, as a way of being, will accelerate your progress in NVC.
- Needs versus strategies.
This is one of the core differentiations in NVC.
Needs are, by definition, universal to all human beings.
Strategies are very important because they are the specific ways we attempt to satisfy needs.
And yet strategies are not universal!
We easily get into trouble when we don’t differentiate between the two.
For example, in a relationship someone might say, “You are my need!” I would agree if all eight billion humans needed that person!
Contrast you are my need, with: “I have needs for love, affection, closeness, intimacy — and I would love to have those needs met with you (in a way that also meets your needs!).”
Another example of this important differentiation:
I have needs for safety and protection. My strategy might be to go out and get to know all my neighbors, in hopes that that will contribute to my needs around safety and protection.
One of my neighbors has the same need, and buys two assault rifles!
Same needs, totally different strategies!
My need is not to get to know my neighbors! That is my strategy. If all human beings needed to get to know my neighbors then perhaps it would be a universal need.
Buying weapons is not my neighbor’s need, that is their strategy.
Among my other neighbors: one got an expensive alarm system, one surrounded their house with razor wire, and one got two big, scary dogs. Same needs — safety and protection — completely different strategies!
For any set of needs there could be dozens of strategies!
At the core of preventing and resolving conflicts with NVC is the understanding that conflicts occur at the level of strategies, not at the level of needs!
When you can distill the essence of a conflict to the underlying universal human needs, that facilitates the people in the conflict seeing each other’s humanity!
If we can connect at the level of needs first — then we are more likely to come up with a solution, together, that we can both live with.
So, to be clear: I’m not motivated to run a marathon. I’m motivated by learning and growing, or health, or status. The marathon is a strategy.
Which brings us to the next definition: needs as core human motivators.
Needs as core human motivators
This is the definition of needs that most pertains to our topic.
Needs are what impel us to speak or act.
Whenever someone speaks or acts they are doing so in service of one or more needs — whether they are aware of it or not!
Another way of expressing this: whenever someone speaks or acts they are attempting to serve life!
Understanding this helps me look beyond the surface words or actions, and helps me stand in a more compassionate place about someone’s deeper motivation.
If you would like to see a list of universal human feelings and needs, you can access that here.
What is Life-Disconnected Thinking and Language?
Before we dive deeper into the topic of motivation — and especially the healthiest and most empowered and empowering ways to motivate ourselves and others — let’s first clarify the unhealthy and un-helpful ways we try to motivate ourselves and others.
It turns out that Nonviolent Communication has its counterpart. You could call it violent communication, though its classic name is Life-Disconnected, Life-Alienated Communication.
One of the characteristics of life-disconnected, life-alienated thinking and language is holding rigid conceptions of good/bad and right/wrong.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of calling life-alienated thinking and language “bad” or “wrong.” So let’s define it another way:
It is the way of thinking and speaking that is least likely to get us to the quality of connection that would lead to mutually beneficial outcomes.
As an orientation to life and relationships, life-disconnected thinking and language has specific characteristics. These include:
- Communicating through judgment, criticism, and labels,
- Blaming and avoiding responsibility,
- Expressing demands (rather than requests),
- Justifying reward and punishment, and, importantly for this article,
- Life-alienated motivations. These include fear, guilt, shame, duty, obligation, to get a reward, to avoid punishment, and acting from stories that include “shoulds” and “have-tos.”
These are real energies people use to motivate their words and actions. Is there a cost to acting, or asking others to act, from fear or shame, etc.?
The cost of life-alienated motivations
The reason life-alienated motivations are so problematic is that they come with a very high cost to the relationship any time we try to motivate ourselves or others using them.
Resentment
If I do something for you — but I’m coming from fear, guilt, shame or the other life-disconnected motivations listed above — it won’t be long before I resent it.
It’s ok to want people to do what you want them to do. The deeper question is what do I want their “why” to be?
As soon as someone does something for you because they have to, they will likely resent it.
And in any human relationship, resentment is like a toxic energy.
Imagine that someone associates me with trying to motivate them out of fear, fear, fear, shame, shame, shame… In the long run, it’s very likely that my needs won’t matter to them.
Another example: let’s say I’m doing the dishes at home, but I have a story that I have to, I have no choice. So I’m doing the dishes with a grumpy or irritated energy. I’m creating a lot of tension in my body, I’m resenting the task, and I’m likely resenting others in relation to the task.
Contrast this scenario with one in which I’m doing the dishes because I’m connected to the underlying needs: health and hygiene, or order and beauty, or perhaps the need is contribution.
When I’m connected with the needs it’s a completely different energy!
So at my house, if we notice we’re doing something out of an energy that will lead to resentment, we back off (on a good day!).
If I’m doing the dishes, and resenting my partner about it, she would rather I not do the dishes! After all, what’s more important, the relationship or the dishes?
If my partner is vacuuming, and resenting me about it… I would rather she not vacuum! Again, what’s more important, the vacuuming or the relationship?
However, at my house the dishes still get done and the carpet still gets vacuumed — but we try to do it out of connection to the underlying needs that the activity supports.
There have been times when I have gone to bed with the kitchen a mess but with a smile on my face — relieved that the situation isn’t a clean kitchen plus someone resenting me about it.
Demands
In NVC we use requests as opposed to demands. In a true NVC request you can receive a no with as much love as a yes.
Life-alienated thinking and language expresses demands instead of requests.
In a demand, the action itself is more important than whether or not it goes against the other person’s needs. In other words, in a demand the other person’s needs don’t matter that much, I just want the thing done!
And when someone perceives a demand it gives them two main choices: to submit to the demand or to rebel against the demand.
If I express a demand, or try to motivate someone with one or more of the life-alienated motivations… and if the other person says yes — the relationship will suffer.
The costs of life-alienated motivations include the erosion of trust and an increase in resentment and disconnection.
And this brings me to one of the most cherished insights I have received from NVC:
The energy with which we do anything for each other is just as important as the action itself.
Please read it again — and consider getting it as a tattoo.
Please do as I’ve asked — but only if it also works for you!
In a culture largely based on obedience to authority, and in a society in which the few control most of the resources, this paradigm shift can be confusing, dismissed as pollyanna, or experienced as threatening.
This makes sense to me because we are literally describing two different worlds. Undoing old patterns that don’t serve us puts us in a position of not knowing, which can be scary or unsettling.
And before I go deeper into this new way of being with yourself and others, let’s complete our description of the old paradigm, the one that leads to disconnection and violence.
The Old Paradigm for Motivating Yourself and Others
We’ve covered life-alienating motivations — the core of the old paradigm for motivating yourself and others: fear, guilt, shame, duty, obligation, to get a reward, to avoid a punishment, shoulds, and have-tos.
So how does it work, or what does it look like?
Take a part of our psychology commonly referred to as “The Inner Critic.”
Does it communicate with kindness and compassion?
Imagine a time in which you messed up.
Generally speaking, how do you treat yourself when you are less than perfect?
Do you beat up on yourself? Do you go into a shame or guilt spiral?
Most people are really harsh toward themselves! (By the way, have you noticed that how people communicate with themselves often translates into how they communicate with others?)
What many of us don’t realize is that that voice — the inner critic — is actually trying to meet needs! It’s trying to help you! Sadly, it just hasn’t learned a better way.
Its function is to contribute to needs — often needs for learning. It’s a voice that gives us feedback.
But because it’s using life-disconnected, life-alienated thinking and language the message is not clear! Instead of “I wish I were more aware more of the time” the message is “I’m SO stupid!”
In hundreds of workshops I’ve asked people how they communicate with themselves when they screw up. The list is one most of us probably know well: “I’ll never learn!”, “There I go again!”, “I’m such an idiot!” — and so on, and so forth.
This way of communicating with yourself erodes self-esteem and self-confidence. Furthermore, whenever I’m in shame or guilt I am no longer learning!
So this approach to motivating yourself — through blame and criticism, for example — not only misses the needs and therefore fails at addressing them — it actually backfires by blocking the learning that part of you would like you to accomplish.
After years of working at it, I have transformed my inner critic so that it now speaks to me much more kindly!
As a Certified Trainer since 2003, I’ve taught hundreds if not thousands of NVC workshops — and the pattern is clear after 20 years of working with thousands of people.
In summary: Life-Alienating Motivations contribute to you thinking you’re a bad person, and to experience guilt, shame, or depression. They short-circuit learning, and prevent you from harvesting the lessons you might need. They also leave a relationship riddled with resentment.
When you motivate yourself in this way, you lose juice for the thing you thought you wanted to do!
Even the most life-serving activity — if I tell myself I should or have to, suddenly I don’t want to do it!
If you want to motivate yourself and others, harshness, blame, judgment, criticism — not only do they not help, they often make things worse.
If you want to motivate yourself and others, going straight to the deeper, universal, core human motivators — the needs — will orient you in a life-serving direction.
When you are connected to needs — rather than judgments — you are more likely to select life-serving strategies.
The New Paradigm for Motivating Yourself and Others
NVC offers a much more useful, practical, and effective paradigm for motivating yourself and others.
When you train in NVC, you naturally and consistently:
- focus on needs as core human motivators,
- seek to understand the underlying needs,
- distinguish needs from strategies,
- prioritize connection first,
- focus on requests rather than demands,
- avoid blame, criticism and judgment as approaches to motivating yourself and others,
- are less harsh and more empowering of yourself (and others) when you, or they, are less-than-perfect.
The old paradigm — beating up on yourself, manipulating or threatening others, thinking that you or others “should” do anything — creates inner resistance and it leads to doing things with unclear motivations or for the wrong reasons.
This new paradigm allows for buy-in and alignment, healthy mourning, and connection with needs as a pre-cursor to exploring strategies.
Free yourself from cultural programming
In order to avail yourself of this new paradigm you need to set the intention to free yourself from unhelpful cultural conditioning.
When you were growing up, how did people motivate themselves or one another?
Much of the culture has taught us to look toward extrinsic motivators — factors outside of ourselves. For example, getting good grades at school. At work, it might be the praise, the plaque, the watch, the special parking spot, or the corner office — all of these are extrinsic motivators.
NVC, on the other hand, invites you to look at intrinsic motivators — those that come from the inside. What are the needs that impel you to take a specific action? When you act a particular way, what needs are you attempting to contribute to?
I see this in the workplaces in which I coach. The attaboy and the attagirl have limited durability compared to the intrinsic satisfaction someone feels when they know they are deeply contributing.
Notice the autopilot
Part of freeing yourself from cultural conditioning is slowing down and becoming aware of the moments you are running on “autopilot.”
How often during the day do you do things simply out of obligation and routine?
Most mornings one of the first things I do is make myself coffee. Am I intentional? Do I notice the quality of things inside and outside — or do I amble in a slumberous stupor, not present to life?
I am a creature of habit as much as anyone! And my intention is to keep bringing myself to awareness, presence, and intentionality — again and again — patiently, persistently, and with kindness.
When I attended an International Intensive Training (IIT), Marshall Rosenberg issued this exact challenge: notice when you are acting on autopilot and then stop; do nothing until the next thing to do becomes clear inside you and you are connected to the needs it would meet.
That very day I noticed that I started to go to the next workshop session simply because it was in the schedule! There I was, acting on autopilot! What did I do? I stopped and did nothing, until the next clear and compelling thing to do arose. I sat on the bed for about 40 minutes, and finally the next step, and which needs it would meet, became clear. And I did that. This is now one of my practices.
Notice the shoulds
Why do you do things? Why do you do anything?
NVC would have you move away from shoulds and toward the needs.
“I should take my child to school” becomes “I choose to take my child to school because it meets my needs for love and support.”
Have you ever made a list of how many things you do out of shoulds or have-tos? If you choose, you could turn this into a powerful exercise! For each thing you write on your list, “I have to ______,” you could then translate it into, “I choose to _____, because ______.”
Marshall Rosenberg, developer of NVC, described doing this in the 1960s while still in his clinical psychology practice.
On a pad of paper he drew a line top-to-bottom, and on the left side he listed all the things he told himself he had to do. Across from each one, he wrote, “I choose to _____, because ______.”
He got to the line that said “I have to write clinical reports,” and across from that line, as he got clear on his deeper why, he realized that it was for the money.
He disliked writing clinical reports so much, that the money wasn’t enough for him. That is when he quit his private practice and started driving a taxi while he continued to develop Nonviolent Communication!
The point is not that you will emulate what Marshall Rosenberg did.
The whole point is to be conscious and intentional — and this is more likely when you can connect to the underlying needs.
Get connected to the needs
So how do you get connected to the needs?
One of the keys is to develop needs vocabulary — because without the language for universal human needs it’s almost impossible to clearly identify what it is, let alone connect with it!
Language is the software of thought.
Thought is something the mind uses to direct attention.
What usually happens is that I feel something in my body and it feels uncomfortable — and if I don’t have the words for it, it remains sub-conscious or semi-conscious.
When I have the words for what is happening inside me, that allows me to bring it to the conscious mind, and now I can work with it!
For example, I feel some heaviness in my chest. My old self would act with aversion, and do something to distract myself from this uncomfortable feeling. When I do this I’m not transcending or resolving anything, I’m only pushing it down or bypassing it, but it remains.
With my NVC training I can slow down and identify a feeling… in this case sadness. I let myself feel it and try to identify the need it’s coming from: in this case it might be connection.
Deep breath: I feel sad coming from my unmet need for connection. I let myself have my experience. I’m not looking for who to blame, or who to make wrong — I’m not judging myself or anyone else. The need I’m calling connection — that is a beautiful energy, independently of the sadness I feel when that need is unfulfilled.
Now that I am tapped in to that need I continue to stay present. Once I feel very connected to it, often the question arises spontaneously, what, if anything, do I want to do about this?
The answer might be nothing.
And I also have dozens or hundreds of strategies at my disposal for connection! Of course, I might prefer some over others… but at least now I can brainstorm possibilities for meeting the need.
Do I call my sister, or a friend? Do I go to the bar to be around people, and maybe run into someone I know? Do I reach out to my son and ask if he wants to kick a ball? Do I call an empathy buddy?
Either way, connecting to the needs — rather than the shoulds or being in autopilot — I predict will give you much better results!
Again: slow down, breathe, let yourself feel the feelings! Then allow the feelings to take you to the needs. Identify the needs and be with them before going to a strategy.
And — developing your needs vocabulary is what will enable you to identify needs readily and accurately!
Crafting strategies from self-connection and connection with others
The most effective strategies emerge from clearly identified needs.
If the needs are not clear, going to strategy would be like trying to make your way while blindfolded. You don’t actually have certainty that those strategies will meet the needs.
Get self-connected — and connect with the other people involved. Understand the deeper motivators — the needs — in any given situation. Act accordingly.
When you understand others’ core motivators you can often integrate into your strategies a way both of you can have your needs met. With a high enough skill level, you can do this consistently.
Be Soft, Do Hard
I recently learned this expression — be soft, do hard — and here is what it means to me.
Rather than have a hard exterior or interior — out of self-protection, to try to keep myself safe — I can soften, feel my feelings, connect with the underlying needs. I can let myself be human, with the vulnerability, tenderness, and messiness that being human entails.
But allowing myself to be soft as a tender human in no way connotes weakness or victimhood! It’s a conscious acknowledgment that our reality is also emotional and connected.
While allowing myself to be fully human can I step up and make difficult decisions?
Courage is not the lack of fear. It’s called courage precisely because there is fear!
Will I do the things that contribute more to my needs, even if these things are challenging?
Will I stand up for those being abused and bullied?
How do I show up in my fullness, to make my unique contribution to the world?
Giving in to fear and complacency is low effort. High suffering but low effort. It’s often the easy thing to do.
Marshall Rosenberg had this phrase I love: “Be willing to have the other people in the room look at you like you were the one who put the turd in the punch-bowl.”
Are you willing to give up acceptance in belonging in exchange for acting with courage and standing in your truth?
Do hard means summoning my courage and my strength.
I still want to be soft. I want to welcome love, connection, and healing — and not shy away from the things that will meet more needs even if they will be challenging and require extra effort and determination.
Marshall Rosenberg on NVC & Motivation
I grew up with shoulds. I always knew what I should do. And it hardly ever felt good. I should get ready for school, I should clean my room, I should do my homework…
Then many years later I met Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, and he spoke a phrase that resonated deeply inside me, and also made me laugh at the ridiculous simplicity of it:
A guaranteed recipe to not do something is to tell myself I should.
That was the phrase. I had been experiencing this my whole life, but never saw it so clearly!
Every time I have the energy of should, a part of me resists and resents it! (It’s the energy of should — duty, obligation, the “right” thing to do — much more than the words themselves. If I’m in NVC Consciousness and connected to the needs around a particular action, and I happen to use the word “should” it has a very different feeling in my body.)
With regard to his journey as a father, Marshall Rosenberg would bemoan how challenging it was to live in NVC Consciousness all the time. He would ask his children for help or support which sometimes wouldn’t come, and he concluded:
I can’t make my children do anything. I can only make them wish they had.
This phrase was 100% tongue-in-cheek — and he was pointing to the futility of coercion and punishment.
When I met Marshall Rosenberg he had been traveling the world for decades — training people in NVC and mediating conflicts everywhere he went.
He said all over the world, in every culture, people are playing one of two games.
The first game is called who’s right and who’s wrong.
The second game is called how can I make life more wonderful?
It turns out that this last one is something people love to do!
Human beings LOVE to play the game of making life more wonderful, but it only works when we have choice!
As soon as you tell me I have to or I should — or as soon as you use life-alienated motivations such as fear, guilt, shame, or threats — suddenly I don’t want to!
Even if it’s something that I know would be good for me! If you try to force me, I will resist it.
Why?
Because there is a deep core human motivator, a universal need — called autonomy or choice or agency — that is essential to human thriving and dignity.
Whenever my children fought over a toy, I taught them to consider each others’ needs and try to find a win-win. After all, I would say, why would you try to get something by force when you could get it out of love?
PuddleDancer Press Books on Compassionate Communication, Motivation, and Living Your Best Life
PuddleDancer Press is the foremost proponent and publisher of books on Nonviolent Communication and healthy motivations.
NVC has shown time and again that human beings are capable of developing clarity about each others’ deeper motivations, and using that to arrive at mutually crafted solutions.
Because of the trust-building process involved, and the fact that the solutions include everyone’s buy-in, using NVC to clarify motivations predictably gives you outcomes that meet a greater number of needs and are more durable.
Our books on life-serving motivations can help you:
- Create exceptional personal and professional relationships,
- Offer compassionate understanding to others,
- Know when and how to ask for that same understanding for yourself,
- Prevent and resolve misunderstandings and conflicts,
- Speak your truth in a clear, powerful way more likely to lead to harmony than conflict,
- Create mutual understanding without coercion.
Whether you are a long-time student — or are brand new to NVC — PuddleDancer Press has the educational resources, including the books on healthy motivations, to help you grow your emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, and communication prowess.
Check out our catalog of books on healthy motivations… and give yourself the gift of Compassionate Communication!
