The Book in Three Sentences

Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is a practice that is has four components: 1. observations 2. feelings 3. needs 4. requests. To communicate using NVC, we observe without evaluating, we identify and expressing feelings without over-analyzing, we accept needs without judging, and finally, we make requests using positive language. Following these principles highlighted in the book, one can have deeper meaningful relationships not only with others but also with oneself.

P.S. – Highly recommend Readwise if you want to get the most out of your reading.

Nonviolent Communication (A Language of Life) Chapter Notes and Summary

My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from each chapter in the book. The passages in italics are highlights on highlights and the ones in bold resonated with me the most.

2 Communication That Blocks Compassion

• The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves—to outside authorities—for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good, and bad. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.

  3 Observing Without Evaluating

• I can handle your telling me what I did or didn’t do. And I can handle your interpretations, but please don’t mix the two. If you want to confuse any issue, I can tell you how to do it: Mix together what I do with how you react to it. Tell me that you’re disappointed with the unfinished chores you see, But calling me “irresponsible” is no way to motivate me. And tell me that you’re feeling hurt when I say “no” to your advances, But calling me a frigid man won’t increase your future chances. Yes, I can handle your telling me what I did or didn’t do, And I can handle your interpretations, but please don’t mix the two.—Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD
• I’ve never seen a lazy man; I’ve seen a man who never ran while I watched him, and I’ve seen a man who sometimes slept between lunch and dinner, and who’d stay at home upon a rainy day, but he was not a lazy man. Before you call me crazy, think, was he a lazy man or did he just do things we label “lazy”?

  5 Taking Responsibility for Our Feelings

• Taking Responsibility for Our Feelings People are disturbed not by things, but by the view they take of them.—Epictetus
• Distinguish between giving from the heart and being motivated by guilt.
• If we don’t value our needs, others may not either.
• From Emotional Slavery to Emotional Liberation
• At the third stage, emotional liberation, we respond to the needs of others out of compassion, never out of fear, guilt, or shame. Our actions are therefore fulfilling to us, as well as to those who receive our efforts
• n the course of developing emotional responsibility, most of us experience three stages: (1) “emotional slavery”—believing ourselves responsible for the feelings of others, (2) “the obnoxious stage”—in which we refuse to admit to caring what anyone else feels or needs, and (3) “emotional liberation”—in which we accept full responsibility for our own feelings but not the feelings of others, while being aware that we can never meet our own needs at the expense of others.

  6 Requesting That Which Would Enrich Life

• we get depressed because we’re not getting what we want, and we’re not getting what we want because we have never been taught to get what we want. Instead, we’ve been taught to be good little boys and girls and good mothers and fathers. If we’re going to be one of those good things, better get used to being depressed. Depression is the reward we get for being “good.”
• Yes, it can be difficult to make clear requests. But think how hard it will be for others to respond to our request if we’re not even clear what it is!

  7 Receiving Empathically

• Instead of offering empathy, we tend instead to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, on the other hand, requires us to focus full attention on the other person’s message.
• Behind intimidating messages are merely people appealing to us to meet their needs.

  8 The Power of Empathy

• People are not aware that empathy is often what they are needing.

  10 Expressing Anger Fully

• Anger is a result of life-alienating thinking that is disconnected from needs. It indicates that we have moved up to our head to analyze and judge somebody rather than focus on which of our needs are not getting met.

  12 The Protective Use of Force

• Fear of corporal punishment obscures children’s awareness of the compassion underlying their parents’ demands.
• Question 1: What do I want this person to do? Question 2: What do I want this person’s reasons to be for doing it?