Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes About Communication
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Every message, regardless of form or content, is an expression of a need.
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If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it.
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When we express our needs indirectly through the use of evaluations, interpretations, and images, others are likely to hear criticism. When people hear anything that sounds like criticism, they tend to invest their energy in self-defense or counterattack. It's important that when we address somebody that we're clear what we want back.
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People don't make us angry, how we think makes us angry.
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People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being.
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In our culture, most of us have been trained to ignore our own wants and to discount our needs.
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Enemy images are the main reason conflicts don't get resolved.
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Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs.
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Avoid 'shoulding' on others and yourself!
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What others do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but never the cause.
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Judgments of others contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies.
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When people hear needs, it provokes compassion. When people hear diagnoses, it provokes defensiveness and attack.
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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.
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Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.
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Use the words "I feel because I" to remind us that what we feel it isn't because of what the other person did, but because of a choice I've made.
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Unless we as social change agents come from a certain spirituality, we're likely to create more harm than good.
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When we listen for their feelings and needs, we no longer see people as monsters.
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As we learn to speak from the heart we are changing the habits of a lifetime.
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Fear of punishment diminishes self-esteem and goodwill.
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Use anger as a wake-up call to unmet needs.
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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.
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We recognize that real educational reform is essential if today's and tomorrow's children are to live in a more peaceful, just, and sustainable world.
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Depression is the reward we get for being 'good'.
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Always listen to what people need rather than what they are thinking about us.
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If we ask two questions, we will see that punishment never works. First: What do we want the other person to do? Second: What do we want the other person's reasons to be for doing as we request?
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The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.
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What all the basic religions are saying is this: Don't do anything that isn't play.
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Understanding and connection can transcend conflict.
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Once you can clearly describe what you are reacting to, free of your interpretation or evaluation of it, other people are less likely to be defensive when they hear it.
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Most of us live in a Jackal world where we take turns using the other person as a waste basket for our words.
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Marshall B. Rosenberg
- Born: October 6, 1934
- Died: February 7, 2015
- Occupation: Psychologist