When I first started to read Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life book, I knew that I would learn a lot, but also that it would take me a while to read. I found the book to be challenging—not because the writing is complex, but that I needed to reorient how I think and process my interactions with people.
Rosenberg ends most of his chapters with a short quiz that is a recap of what you learned. Even with the answers right on the same (or next page), I found myself wanting to go back and question why I kept choosing the wrong answers.
What I took away from this book is that if we focused on having more empathy for others, we could more easily solve our disagreements with people. Instead of setting up the “us vs. them” mentality that creates walls between people, Rosenberg teaches how to ask questions to get at the heart of how someone is feeling.
In one section of the book, he relates a story of an angry inmate and by using the nonviolent communication (NVC) technique, helps the inmate to get to the core issue of why he’s upset with the administration at the prison. Such insight helped me to not only better understand what that man struggled with, but it helped me see the bigger picture: If I could learn NVC techniques myself, I would have happier relationships and be could solve disagreements.
What I didn’t expect to find in the book is a revolutionary way to better express anger and to solve my problems with others.
In Rosenberg’s chapter on anger, he recommends these four steps to expressing anger:
“Stop and breathe
Identify your judgmental thoughts
Connect with our needs
Express our feelings and unmet needs”
The key point is to change blaming others (“I am angry because they…”) to uncovering your needs in the moment: “I am angry because I am needing…”
The simplicity of the idea, and yet its power, is extremely thought-provoking. How many hours of my life have I wasted in blaming others when I was angry, instead of defining what I needed in that moment?
The lesson found within Rosenberg’s book are too many to list here. If you’re looking to find a better way of communicating with others, the NVC technique is challenging, but will revolutionize the way you interact with others.
Truly listening and being empathetic is not easy, but Rosenberg teaches you how. The challenge is: Do we want to learn?
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