Learn how Nonviolent Communication (NVC) can improve the quality of your personal and professional relationships, one interaction at a time.

Here are some very basic forms and distinctions of NVC. It covers the 4 D's, OFNR, some NVC distinctions, tips, quotes from Marshall Rosenberg, and "feelings and needs" lists, and more. As with any art, these rudiments necessarily must be learned, practiced, understood, embodied and then let go of so as not to become rote and block creativity.

Here's a list of words that pose as feelings, but are actually interpretations of what you think someone is doing to you. They trigger defensiveness in another thereby preventing a connected dialogue. Behind each of these words are precious feelings and needs. This sheet includes ways to distinguish feelings from interpretations.

Effective and connected dialogue requires significant self-awareness, mindfulness, and skill. You can focus on any of these six areas that most often escape your awareness: anchoring and staying grounded; boundaries; thoughts and beliefs; stuckness or attachment; feelings and needs; and requests. Read on for a list of questions to help you focus on how to do that.

Have you ever gotten a fishing line all tangled up? You got so frustrated you just started yanking on the different loops of line, which of course made the knots and tangles even tighter and more difficult to untangle. Wouldn’t it be great if you could notice the minute you were starting to tangle things up in a discussion with your loved one?

Workplace relationships are complex. Each employee brings their unique self to work. Their background, perspective, emotional triggers, and working style. Add to this the dynamics of power relations, and the fact that often workplace communication now takes place at our computer keyboards rather than face-to-face. Sylvia Haskvitz offers practical tips to make today's complex workplace relationships more satisfying and effective.

John Cunningham provides support to deepen your understanding and practice of NVC, including a sketch of the participatory and onlooker modes of consciousness, lists of feelings, needs and sample dialogues.

 Connection requests focus on the quality of connection between people instead of on any particular strategy or solution. While the core motivation for a connection request may be connection with the other person, varied internal states and needs may help guide us toward different types of connection requests. Self-connection and understanding of our motivation in making a connection request can therefore greatly support our capacity for discovering and articulating what specifically we want from the other person that we believe may contribute to connection.

In a recent vacation in a Mexican village, I was surprised to find myself in the midst of a community in mourning. Two days before I came, a 21-year-old girl had died in a car accident. Everyone in the town knew her and was openly affected by her death.

Have you been nice? Well then you must be enjoying the reward: depression, intermittent explosiveness, job meaninglessness, ambiguous anxiety, low resentment and subtle self hate. The antidotes: honesty, passion and compassion.