I'm Saving My Life With Non-Violent Communication (NVC)-Free NVC Fl...

Today I'm hiding from the Texas heat after spending part of the early afternoon in a local co-op's garden with a sunny gal named Lisa. She walks me around the reclaimed housing lot that is lousy with weeds but the good ones. The kind of weeds that tell a discerning eye " Tear me up and plant here!". I listen to Lisa intently about the co-op's goals in the community and what her organization has been able to do on a shoestring budget from razor thin profit margins. In this moment, looking at the land, hearing a passionate person speak, I realized I'm getting something I needed. Something that mattered.

Moments like this would have passed me by 3 weeks ago. In fact they wouldnt have happened at all because of how out of touch I was with my needs.

Consistently I thought that I wasn't interested in doing things, like writing, because I was too into my emotions and that if I just learned to push those things away I would be more successful. I would tell myself my interests dint matter because I would get distracted from them, that my passions were just fantasies because nothing was manifesting.

I was caught in a cycle of finding external motivational highs and then crashing when they couldn't sustain me. Something inside me felt broken but I didn't know what it was, I didn't know what needed to be fixed. My memories are rife with feelings of shame over being an emotional mess and not being able to grin and bare with daily life, like everyone around me, in order to be productive.

I never imagined that there wasn't actually anything broken and that I just didn't understand my emotions and needs.

Enter NVC or Non-Violent Communication from Marshall B. Rosenberg, PhD. This book is helping me save my life. I have found that emotions are guides, not hindrances, towards the things that I want. I understand people so differently and its reflected in the quality of my writings. There is so much to learn about myself and other people using the gems between the pages of this book.

I really can't say enough positive things about this book without slipping further into incoherent fan-boying so I'll just let my readers discover it on their own.

If you already know about NVC and are looking for tools to help you learn or spread it take a look at @scottermonkey's blog here on Steemit as well as his card game based off NVC Play to Evolve.

Additionally I have made some flashcards for Anki to help you expand your inventory of:

Negative Feelings and the needs associated with them

Positive Feelings

Just Negative Feelings

Just Needs

Life Preserver: http://ibpf.org/blog/life-preserver

Captain Jack: http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/captain-jack-sparrow/images/35851913/title/love-those-moments-photo

NVC: (c) 2005 by Center for Nonviolent Communication
Website: www.cnvc.org Email: cnvc@cnvc.org
Phone: +1.505.244.4041