NVC has four pillars helping us communicate heartfully, staying in touch with our feelings and needs and communicating in a way that helps us take a step towards meeting those feelings and needs.
The first pillar is Observation. The first step lays the foundation, as observation ensures that the door for future communication with connection remain open. Observe yourself and the other as a witness, a video camera. The way we communicate with ourselves reflects the way we communicate with the outside world.
Renowned philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.”
The profundity of the simple statement left me numb. Almost every action, word and thought of mine, I end up judging, analyzing, or evaluating. And, because this is my natural state of being, I apply the same rule to others too. I realized how acutely difficult it was for me to be a witness, and observe devoid of judgement, criticism or any other form of analysis or evaluation.
I miss meditation a day, I label myself a procrastinator. My daughter misses folding her sheets, she is lazy. My colleague is five minutes late to the meeting, he/she has no sense of time, and it goes on. I am so used to this evaluative, judgemental language, I barely paused to gauge the impact this language was having on my self-esteem, let alone what it was doing to others. Labelling with impunity, I continued to wonder why my relationships were turning sour. Why I was doubting myself and despite being honest why I continued to feel that maybe I could have handled this better.
This is where Marshall Roserberg’s NVC comes to the rescue. Take responsibility for every observation made. Ensure it is without any judgement, evaluation, or interpretation of your own. Foremost, communicate with the intent for keeping the connection alive. If the relationship matters to you, then take the long pause and ask yourself these three questions; can I take the responsibility for what I am about to say? Is what I am going to say take me closer to achieving my end need? Are my words focused on keeping the present connection alive? If the answer to any of these is ‘No’, then Marshal Rosenberg suggests that we extend the pause a little longer, till you have a ‘yes’ to all of the above.
If we observe, like a video camera, and convey our message in a neutral tone, then the chances of misunderstanding, resistance or misinterpretation are less likely, keeping the doors open.
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