Making Life Wonderful – 3

These were VHS tapes 5 and 6.

Making Life Wonderful – Part 3 (raw text capture)

so does someone have a situation they are eager to work on this morning right you want to come up here and who is this other person going to be in this dialogue my sister okay does this dialogue start with me saying something or do you start the dialogue she starts and what do i say in my loving sisterly way you are not the king oh yes yes you are not the king you’re just like dad you’re just like dad and it doesn’t stop you you know it may it may be a shock to you but there are other people in this world that have some intelligence too and you know we were not put on this earth to do what you think is right this is the most intelligent conversation we’ve ever had about time you learn to shut your mouth do you feel that i don’t listen to you oh no oh no that poor baby jeremy he’s hiding he’s hiding come on out of there i pay you good wages come on out of there do you need to talk to me [Laughter] what’s this person feeling behind that message let me help you it isn’t happy it isn’t it isn’t happy she’s not happy so i’ll give you that much help but what is she feeling when she talks this way anxiety are you feeling anxious okay we don’t have to be right remember we just have to be sincerely interested in connecting with what’s in the person’s heart we don’t want to be a giraffe parrot who just does the mechanics no we’re we must do this only if we are sincerely interested in connecting with what’s alive in that person so are you feeling anxious then why because are you feeling anxious because uh i don’t listen to you are you feeling anxious because you don’t get a chance to hear to say what you want are you feeling anxious because you need you are you need to tell me something i need to be respected i need it to be recognized that you’re not the only one who knows how to do things you think you’re the only one that knows how to do things you’re the only one who has any intelligence you’re just like dad it’s it’s disgusting do you need to tell me more i need respect that i have an opinion that i have a life that i can that i have some intelligence do you need to feel more respect exactly and how would that look first it would look like not be in too much of a hurry to resolve don’t jump to fixing until you’re sure that this person has had all the empathy she needs at this moment and it’s far from it we’ll get to the question you just asked about what she would like in terms of doing this in about 10 minutes but she’s going to need more of what you just started to get so let’s erase that and just leave it with what you said so do you feel you need more respect from me yes but you can’t give respect because you’re just like dad you have this egomaniac idea that you’re the only one that knows anything that you know everything better than everybody else so you know there’s no way that i’ll ever get respect from you i’ve long since given up the hope of getting respect from you or dad do you feel you need me to listen to you more you can’t you can’t lift now we’re going to see something i love about jackals you see if we don’t give them empathy they need the first time they’ll give us another chance so she’s going to repeat herself word for word now because he didn’t connect so that takes all the pressure off we don’t have to get it right because they’ll keep giving us another chance another chance another chance so isn’t that nice about jacqueline it’s her sister too that’s her sister too so you’re you’re trusting that you’ll hear it again if you don’t hear it the first time okay see i wouldn’t lie to you so i say it again so it was good that you tried but it wasn’t accurate so you know you couldn’t listen you couldn’t listen if you wanted to uh because you have this idea that only you know anything nobody else has any intelligence except you do you feel i need to do you feel you have more to say i feel that you can’t listen even if you want to because you have this egomaniac idea that only you have any intelligence and nobody else are you feeling hopeless are you feeling hopeless yes yes i’ve been trying my whole life to be understood and there’s just something about you that i don’t know what it is that you’re so hard-headed that you can’t hear anybody else except your own opinion do you feel anxious about telling me something no i feel that you’re so hard-headed that you never get any it’s impossible to get anything through to you this feels pretty hopeless yes and you’re going to hear it again because you got just the feeling not the need as well see the feeling is about ten percent of the connection the need is really the connection you feel this is hopeless and you you need me to help you you need to say more about it i need to feel as though it’s possible to be understood that it that there’s any hope of it but i’ve given up this there’s no there’s no chance you and dad just there’s something about your mentality that you can’t listen if you wanted to you feel hopeless about this and you need to say more i need you i need just some understanding of how horrible it feels not to be able to get through to your own father and brother you feel hopeless that you can’t get through yes i’ve been wanting a connection my whole life and i just about given up what’s the use you feel totally useless and helpless right now and you need to feel better about that i needed a connection with you and dad my whole life i’ve wanted i’ve done everything i knew to get it now i just about given up here’s the need the need was very important you feel like you’re never going to connect and you need to connect with us i’ve wanted to my whole life tried everything i knew how ever since i’ve been a little girl now i just get not give up you feel ready to give up because you can’t connect yeah now you’re at a critical point you see she’s gotten a lot of understanding and maybe that’s all she needs maybe she needs now to hear from you maybe not so this is a giraffe rough point to know whether just to be quiet and see if the person wants to go deeper or to help them uh to get clear by saying is there more you want to say or is there something you want to hear from you try that is there more you want to say or is there something you want to hear from me so i let you what’s your feeling about what i’ve said my feeling is i didn’t understand that before and i feel like no no no no no no no but somebody asked for your feelings to give them a cognitive response is painful for them physically painful she asked for your feelings and you said i didn’t understand notice the verb is a head verb she’s wanting to know what’s in your heart right now she’s very vulnerable is she asking for an empathetic she’s asking for never your feelings she’s asking for your feelings you were giving her i didn’t understand that’s what goes on in your head i didn’t understand but it doesn’t say what’s in your heart somebody can say i didn’t understand and be furious somebody can say i didn’t understand and feel helpless they can they can feel anything so it’s really not telling her what’s alive in you to tell her you didn’t understand she needs to hear how you feel right now i feel bad that i didn’t understand that’s a good baby giraffe i feel bad that’s how most of us start with the two-word vocabulary for feelings i feel good i feel bad but that could be about 500 different feelings and so to really help a person understand what’s in your heart what kind of bad do you feel i don’t know exactly how i feel except that i feel bad that that we didn’t connect let me let me help you narrow it down do you feel sad do you feel guilty do you feel discouraged do you feel hopeless i feel discouraged okay that i didn’t i didn’t know this before now you see tears in her eyes because she’s wanted this for many years just this just the understanding and the connection one of the things that gives me seriously great pleasure is how little it takes to make human beings happy later today i’ll do some work on gratitude with you and i ask people all the time tell me something that’s happened in their life that really made life better in some way and it is incredible to me to have asked that question to so many people because the kind of things that people say were some of the most precious gifts they ever got in their life were things like this my brother told me he felt discouraged and didn’t understand something one woman in santa barbara when she thought of something that her father had done 30 years before she cried and cried because it was still so much wither what had he done 30 years before she was very lonely on a certain day he was at the other end of the room he looked across the room and winked at her 30 years later she’s still crying about i mean we human beings doesn’t take much to make life wonderful anything else you want to say to sister while she’s in this mood or have her here i can put some giraffe ears on her if you want to say anything else don’t worry about how you say it she’ll hear it i’d like you to know gene that i felt terrible when dad died also and it was a very confusing time for me too and that it still feels confusing yeah so dad’s death left you with many feelings in addition to the sadness just a lot of confusion and things unresolved within yourself yes and unresolved in the rest of the family yeah yeah requiring us to really look at our relationships and get them real clear yes yeah i can’t tell you how grateful i am at the work you’re doing to make that happen thank you sister you seem to have some strong feelings about this you want to express them i i feel um really sad about how much separation we have had to live through and i need to have a way of i need to have a way of connecting with you and my request is that we um that we find a way to do that boy with these ears and i feel so touched when i see how much you want to do that it it meets a strong

need of mind to feel valued strong need can you tell me the kind of things i say that make it hardest for you to connect with me when you interrupt while i’m speaking with you i get flustered and i lose my center i get angry um when you’re really hopeless and pushing away anything that i try to do to hear i you’re suffering i feel um i also feel hopeless then so when i say things like leave me alone yeah don’t talk to me don’t talk to me uh don’t phone me i don’t want to have anything to do with you i don’t want to have anything to do with you you make me feel bad you make me feel lost you bring up too much pain for me yeah that’s really when i need you to have the giraffe ears on the most so let’s practice one of the most important messages to hear with giraffe ears is no or it’s associated messages i don’t want to talk about it leave me alone the person walking out of the room see if we have giraffe ears the other person cannot not communicate even though walking out of the room is a loud message to hear with giraffe ears even the hanging up of the phone we don’t hear that as a cutoff we hear that as just a continuation of the dialogue what is that person feeling and needing at the moment they walk out of the room what is that person feeling and needing when they say i don’t want to talk about it are you feeling angry and need to have some quiet space to yourself no why talk about it you never listen you never listen you don’t care about what i feel why talk about it are you angry do you need to be heard yes and i’ve tried and i’ve tried and i’ve tried but i never get understood so why talk about it are you frustrated because no one’s heard you because you need to be heard and you haven’t gotten that need met and you see we don’t want to connect the other person’s feelings with what others do that creates pain for them to keep thinking that it’s their pain comes from other people so we’re not going to teach them and you know like in workshop file you’re responsible for your own feelings we do it gently by helping them connect their feelings with their needs so try it again nobody listens around here i i’ve given up on on brother and and i gave up on father but i at least hope my sister would listen but no no are you feeling hopeless and do you need to be listened to yes it can’t happen in this family so why talk are you in a lot of pain because you haven’t been understood because you need to be understood it’s beyond that you need to protect yourself from the pain of trying to get your need for understanding men and not have it met so now you’d rather follow the philosophy you can’t fall out of bed if you sleep on the floor i wouldn’t put that in there so are you in a lot of pain and do you need to do you need to have your potatoes do you need to protect yourself from feeling that yes yes and so if i just have no contact with you or the rest of the family then i just then i don’t suffer so much so now you see we’ve translated the message i don’t want to talk about it you see how much this person did want to talk about how much this person is talking but she needs to have somebody hear what the feelings and needs are behind i don’t want to talk about so now give me back these ears you keep the microphone give me the ears so sister how do you feel when you hear this i i feel in touch with my own pain about not having you in my life and i i feel a lot of uh suffering because you are suffering so much jackal what’s going on take these ears off why jack because i just hear how much she wants connection with yes why is that so petrifying to you jack i don’t know but it’s petrified it’s what i’ve always wanted why am i so scared it’s pretty scary for jackals to have these ears on and and actually open up to the possibility that our deepest needs can be met pretty scary them off no jaguar why i like to terrorize jackals i do i do i remember terrorizing my father dad there’s a lot of gratitude i’d like to appreciate to express to you oh look you’re a good son never mind we were walking you know long ago i said dad please this is important for me to hear for you to hear you know i i really when i think of when i told him some things he did and uh i’d like you to hear what that has meant to me over the years oh yes yes yes yes no dad i don’t feel you’re hearing me terrorize the man absolutely terrorize them to get him to hear that it was like pulling teeth you know he told me later many years later how grateful he was that i terrorized him made him hear that as scary as it was for him the thing here in the last few couple of days that has um that i picked the most for myself to work with is to wait and listen and be with the feelings that come up out of talking to each other that um i never really knew how to hear you or how to um wait inside myself through um through this pain or the suffering or the anger or whatever feelings were present yes and when you mentioned about how i interrupt i realize that same thing goes on for me at those times when i’m interrupting it’s because i’m in such pain and fear and hurt and if i could only just take a breath i can see what it would mean to you to hear you first but it’s just very hard for me to give myself that space and breathe and become aware of just how much i’m scared or hurt so i interrupt and then i see how this aggravates others and i can understand and i don’t get the understanding i need so i want to say the same thing to you that i did to brother about how grateful i am for what you’re doing to create the possibility that we can really connect this way thank you yes microphone please when she was saying um i feel pain because i wanted to connect with you too that is needs that is feelings and needs and i guess my question is how important is it to try to stick straight stick with the structure of feelings and needs or does that meet the intent and the spirit of it so you don’t have to be so compulsive about the you know about the form of it you know what i mean yes a student traveled with me from country to country about seven countries and and at one point i was doing a drill with he wanted to learn how to teach this process and wanted it very badly and at one point i was drilling people pretty hard and stopping them and then he whispered up to me dictator it was a deep appreciation on his part i received it as such i knew at that moment what he was referring to i knew what his feelings were i knew what his needs were the words he couldn’t have expressed it in better way to me at that moment you see so what i’m wanting us all to do is be conscious of feelings and needs to be clear that it’s at this level we need to connect and then when we have that consciousness then whichever words or not lack of words connect us at that level see that makes sense to me because in the same way that you’re saying even if you’re not saying it the the feeling comes through oh you know the empathy comes through in other words just have stopped her to say you’re feeling sad because you need connection would have been a it would have broken the spirit yes and the reason i’m having this do and i’m glad you bring this to our attention because see i’m i’m having a say it out loud so i can be sure that your attention is on the other person’s feelings and needs and not hearing criticism not hearing thoughts about what you did wrong so i don’t know how to know that unless i get people to say it out loud but then once i’m confident that you really are at the level of feelings and needs you know how to get there then yeah we can do it without the words sometimes with some people for example if you and i are sitting in the living room watching television you start to go to the kitchen and i say i go like this what am i feeling what are my needs who am i wanting to get it it would drive you crazy if i said i’m feeling thirsty and have a need for some liquid in my system and would you get me a gallon of whiskey in the kitchen you know me well enough to know that when i go this that that’s all what i want so the comment you made about the giraffe being able to be sadistic and terrorizing so i know you were joking on some level but on another level because you said the words i’m wondering exactly what you meant because i felt frightened what i meant by that is we’re going to get to when we look later today about how to receive gratitude and why it’s so scary you see and why it’s so scary i love how they say it in the course in miracles it’s our light not our darkness that scares us the most we have been educated for so many centuries in this theology that gets across to everybody that our nature is really selfish and lazy and so forth that to really open up and see the power that we have to enrich life and to see how glorious that is it’s like going into a lighted room that we’re not used to and so many people are so frightened of that that they say things like this whenever you start to try to express the gratitude to it oh it’s nothing just the tone you can hear it’s a painful thing for them it’s interesting and the jackals must have all gone to the same school because they they do the same thing in every country a french-speaking jackal dahia my favorite are the swedes you see so i mean so just i mean yeah it’s scary for people to take it in but to say well i i didn’t want to say it to them because i see how embarrassed they get here’s a time when i’m willing to risk that i’m willing to pull this person by the ears even though it might be scary to face the light is that make it any clearer yes being afraid to being afraid to see the light would this be because of fear of trusting the light because i sabotage myself so much with my negative thoughts and judgments that i can pull myself right out of it yes we’ve been telling ourselves these jackal thoughts about ourselves our whole life because we’ve

been educated to do it and then how after a lifetime of seeing ourself in this way how do we really beyond an abstract intellectual level really face the fact that we are created out of divine energy that we have this enormous power that’s a pretty big jump it’s a pretty big jump to go from being educated to believe we’re pissed poor protoplasm poorly put together to see the truth it’s a pretty scary jump yes yes you understand that jumping it’s a very scary jump yeah let’s uh get tonight yep when i hear you mention the light the course of miracles uh and some of the other things that you say i feel curious about the spiritual groundwork from which from which your model springs and i’d like understanding and i wonder if you would be willing to share with us your perception of the spiritual groundwork or your spiritual path or journey or practice so let me sing you a song to make that part of clear i had an uncle who would come to my house each night when i was a child to help my mother take care of my grandmother who was totally paralyzed with lou gehrig’s disease runs in our family he read tuesdays with maury he had the same thing and um totally paralyzed and so this uncle of mine would come and every night i couldn’t wait to go and watch him clean my grandmother up and i never knew as a child why i did this because she smelled and it’s kind of disgusting but why i did is it was like a mystery to me because the whole time he was doing it he had the most wonderful smile on his face as though he was getting the greatest gift a man could get as a kid i couldn’t understand but it had such a power with me so many years later many years later i was reading a book by john powell secret of staying in love and there’s a part in here that touched me very much about unexpressed gratitude how horrible he was thinking it is that he didn’t get a chance to express certain gratitudes to certain people before they died for various reasons and that really woke me up i said oh my god yes who who is is alive still that i and i realized i had never told the uncle what that meant to me and i knew he was near death at the time so i got to him and i put in the words those best words could do what that smile meant to me and i asked him where did you get that where did you get whatever it took for you to get joy that way in life and he liked the question he really did he took it as a and he thought seriously about it and he said i had great teachers and i said like like whom he said well you saw me taking care of your grandmother when she was paralyzed but you you probably don’t remember when you were a little boy but what she was like before and he said for example if you and you heard what kind of woman she was has your mother told you for example about the tailor and his wife and i said oh yes you mean during the depression she saw the tailor crying on a street corner and she found out that he lost his his shop and he didn’t know where he was going to live and how he was going to tell his wife and two kids yes my mother told me that and how she invited them into the house and how they lived in the house for three years yes yes i heard that that stayed with me uncle because when we live in the house now i keep wondering where did they all sleep she had nine children she had no money uh i often wondered who we have trouble now we’re crowded where did the nine kids plus the taylor his wife and two kids where did they sleep i never could figure it out as a kid i wondered that and then he said well did your mother tell you the story about so-and-so i said yes and the story about so and so i said yes and then he said well surely she told you about jesus i said who he said didn’t she tell you about jesus no no and he said well one day a man came to the back door wild scraggly back black hair dirty smelled and around his neck he had a tree branch in the rough shape of a cross held around his neck with a rope for food that part wasn’t strange because everybody in the neighborhood knew that grandma even though she’s poor she’d feed anybody who showed up so while he’s eating at the kitchen she asked him what’s your name and he said jesus she said do you have a last name i’m jesus the lord now my grandmother’s english wasn’t good and so when an uncle came in later she introduced him as mr the lord and she said where do you live he said i don’t have a home she said where are you going to sleep tonight it’s very cold i don’t know she said would you like to stay here he stayed seven years so one other thing you need to know about the spirituality in addition to that that part will get you a peek into the spirituality i learned the other part about my grandmother that i learned from her spirituality she was rigid about one thing fanatic about one thing she used to say never walk when you can dance she used to love to dance she was a very heavy big woman but she was light on her feet she would dance for certain benefits so it was in her jewish way she taught me what jesus had to say in that precious way she taught me what jesus had to say one day a man named jesus came around to grandma’s door he asked for a little food she gave him more he said he was jesus the lord she didn’t check him out with rome he stayed for several years as many did without a home it was in a jewish way she taught me what jesus had to say in that precious way she taught me what jesus had to say and that’s feed the hungry heal the sick and take a rest never walk when you can dance make your home a coziness [Music] yes feed the hungry heal the sick then take a rest never walk when you can dance make your home a cozy it was [Music] in a jewish way she taught me what jesus had to say in her precious way she taught me what jesus had to say does that give you a peek of what spirituality i’ve learned and you know i’ve done that song all over the world now and one of the things i love doing it is there’s somebody like that in everybody’s family and i hear about it so i know they’re all over and that’s the energy that’s going to create the world yes um i’ve heard just some amazing dialogue about conflict resolution uh i’m still a bit confused being that i’m a manager of a large company and also want to raise a family how to bring this consciousness into not using rewards or punishment in my dealings with people in in my future family so give me some situations both at work and or the family where it would seem difficult to look at options other than punishment or reward what kind of situations seem impossible to deal with without those two an employee that continues to show up late for work and uh is not doing the job that they’re paid to do come on up here and uh we’ll we’ll see how to deal with this rascal so you’ve asked me to come in and i have been late for work regularly and certain jobs i have not done to your satisfaction if i wanted this person to produce more to meet my needs protecting the organization the most powerful way i could begin would be to show that i’m interested in the needs that keep him from doing what i would like so whatever it is the more in fact the more threatening the other person’s behavior as i mentioned yesterday the more important it is to be able to begin the dialogue with empathizing with the needs that keep the person from behaving as we would like so as i told you yesterday as i’m working in prisons if i’m working with somebody who is molesting children i want to begin the dialogue by empathizing with the needs that lead this person to do this if i’m working in countries where people are killing others it’s not the way i’d like to resolve the conflicts there i begin by empathizing with their reasons for meeting their needs that way because i want to be sure that it’s never my objective to change the other person whether it’s a child that’s doing something that i think is not in harmony with their needs or my needs an employee or in these more dramatic cases i want to be sure that it’s not my objective to get them to do what i want now that’s pretty hard in a managerial situation since that’s almost the stereotype of the good manager is able to get results you see so non-violent communication that’s not our objective to get results i was hired by connecticut general life insurance one time i was shocked when the man heard me at his church wanted me to work with his salespeople i said that’s not the purpose of this process he said i know but i think if you show our sales people this i think it’s what we want in our in our organization so he said we have a sales program that’s working very well it’s greatly increased first-time sales we call our program sweat questions they’re questions designed to make people feel guilty if they don’t buy the insurance it’s working very well except we’re losing our best sales people and we can’t get a sales person in the door for second time sales that’s very good at first time sales you see so the first thing i made clear to the sales people is that this process non-violent communication is not designed to get results what is it designed for to create a quality of connection with other people in which everybody’s needs get met and they get met through natural giving not through any guilt questions or shame questions or fear see so in other words i don’t approach this employee with the objective of getting him to work on time or to produce more i approach this employee with the objective of creating a quality of connection with them that will end with both of our needs getting met it’s a radical paradigm shift now the irony of it is sales went up 50 percent in each district where but that wasn’t the objective that’s not how i measured the success nor the company incidentally what they were most happy with they didn’t lose their best sales people see but i wasn’t trying to get them to sell more life insurance i said

this process cannot sell a product that doesn’t serve life because if it doesn’t serve the other person’s needs you don’t want them to buy it your objective needs to be to get everybody’s needs met okay so with that theory in mind let’s put that into practice so let’s begin with empathy through empathy show that you see that he’s not coming to work and his producing near zero is the most wonderful thing in the world he could be doing so i’m myself you’re yourself you’re yourself with giraffe ears yes and so you want to empathize with what’s keeping this person from coming on time not for not for the purposes of getting in there on time but for connecting so that you can form a connection so that everybody’s needs can get me i just better want to understand what the need is for you to arrive 20 minutes late for work every day okay that’s pretty close but you began with a request never make a request especially when you’re in a position of authority without nakedly revealing what’s in your heart at this moment first never ask a question or make a request when you’re in a position of authority without revealing your heart first so how are you feeling right now and what are your needs behind that question i’m a little frustrated because my need for the group to work together on a agreed upon time and i’m wanting to know what your need is for showing up 20 minutes late for work yeah you know uh there’s really uh i could give you an excuse i could tell you uh you know that there’s other things but but the fact is you know i just i just have a bad habit i’m just terrible about time and i’ve always been this way and i know i shouldn’t and uh and i tell myself i should be on time and i do everything i can to get through and the next thing i know i’m late and it happens all the time and so it sounds to me like your need is you’re afraid to be have to be somewhere at a at a particular time it’s you know yeah it’s kind of free because i know that i should be there on time and i and i do i i’ll set the clock early i’ll uh i’ll remind myself and i know i should be on time and then you know i don’t know what happens you know but just i guess i just have a bad habit i just bad about time so it sounds like you really want to be there on time yes i see that you know we want to have a team that’s ready for work i can see that it aggravates everybody when you know there’s telephone calls waiting for me that i didn’t get to that i told people i’d be there i see and i tell myself this the whole morning i’ll be sure you know you have to get there on time today so it feels like you’re frustrated because you’re not being able to arrive on time exactly and this is a long standing thing i mean this goes back to the time in school i had the same problem i mean you know my father uh mother it’s not their fault because they were people very prompt you know always prompt and they told me that if i’m to be you know a success in life i have to be prompt and i agree with them i can see that you know you don’t get respect if you’re not prompt i know i should be on time so you’re frustrated by the fact that you’re not able to be there on time yes yes very frustrating it’s aggravating to me it’s a terrible habit not to be undone it violates other people it’s not respectful to others it’s a terrible habit so you’re frustrated the the fact that not only do you feel you’re not on time for yourself but also for other people exactly yes yes so obviously this must be a pretty strong need that this person is meeting if it’s not meeting other needs of theirs the need that it’s meeting must be very strong because people never do anything that isn’t in the service of a need so obviously even though this person has the same needs that you do for productivity respect for other people’s time there’s an even stronger need that’s keeping this person from doing it so that’s empathy for that need is what you need to have the need that is keeping this person from being on time this person would be on time if they weren’t meeting another need not to be on that now notice this person does isn’t in touch with their need they have a self-diagnosis that i just have a bad habit it’s like when people i’m working with who drink more than their liver would like i see could you help me understand uh you tell me you want to live longer and you know the doctors said about your liver and yet you’re wolfing down that stuff uh can you help me understand well i’m an alcoholic the doctor said you know yeah nobody’s ever drunk because they’re an alcoholic jackal well what am i drinking doctors say i know you’ve been told that i know that’s not why i think you drink well why am i drinking because it’s meeting your needs you wouldn’t be drinking if it wasn’t meeting you what needs it’s killing me i look at the doc the doctor showed me the x-ray my liver is starting to look like a raisin yeah so you have a strong need for health yes i want to live be healthy so it must be a strong need yeah what’s a need that would be so strong that people are willing to risk their jobs respect from other people their health what’s the need autonomy yes it’s a strong need see this person’s got it this person’s got an inner jackal telling himself he should be on time inner jackals are the most vicious and authoritarian of all now if not only that inner author jackal is telling him he should be on time but his parents outside jackals you should be on time earlier now he has employers who are thinking that he are communicating he damn well better be on time it just makes his need for autonomy under even more panic attack so he’s putting in a lot of energy to protect his autonomy but not conscious of that he thinks he has a bad habit about time or a drinking problem or i’m a drug addict no we don’t do anything that isn’t meeting our needs can i ask a jackal for my for me am i able to share my needs but you have to make sure you’ve heard his name i was helping you you’re hearing his feelings wonderfully about how frustrated he is but you hadn’t yet heard the central piece that we needed to hear the need that was keeping him from meeting your need see that’s the need you need to hear so how would you put it how would i put asking the jackal for what his need is i just told you what his need is so reflect it back to him in your language you see let me help you even more i’ll get him to make it clear so jackal how do you feel when you keep telling yourself that you should be on time well i agree with it but how do you feel oh kind of i get angry you know i get angry you know thinking i have to do something yeah so uh you have a strong need to do things because you choose to do them and not when you feel you’re forced to do that well nobody’s forcing me to yeah you’re forcing yourself to do it yeah i never thought of it yeah you’re forcing yourself to do it you’re thinking you should do it well i should hold it see that’s that’s why you’re not why because you think you should you have a need you just said you hate to do things when you’re forced to do it so you choose to search yourself even in the face of your own internal messages well yeah i guess i see what you mean so put that in your reflect back to show that you understand what’s keeping this person from being on time so jack let me understand this is it it sounds to me that you’re afraid to because you’re feeling that you’re forced to have to be here on a particular time and that creates fear within you irritation irritation as soon as i hear that i have to do something then there’s a part of me that just gets stubborn damn it you know who says i have to so you’re angry by the fact that you have to do exactly and then i want uh i’m going to just show that by god i’m going to do what i want but i don’t do that very consciously until we started to talk about it now i wasn’t aware how strong this is yeah i used to hate it when my parents told me that you have to be on time you know they were so that way about everything some things you have to do and then teachers would say that you have to be on time you’re going to be successful so that makes you angry by feeling that someone’s telling you have to do something yeah yeah i want to live my life i want to be in charge of my life i don’t want to live up to other people’s rules but i know i should hold it jackal see you just internalize that what do you mean the problem now they’re not it’s not the other people now the big problem is you’ve internalized it you’re your own dictator yeah yeah it’s that inner message that gets me most angry at all yeah but the need is you want to choose to do things not out of an energy of obligation duty you’re going to be punished if you don’t you want to live your life choosing to do it out of some other energy that’s right i hate rules that are set up that way okay now now tell the jackal how you feel now that you’ve heard what’s going on for the jackal well jacqueline my need is to know that when we decide on a time that we agree upon that that time will be met that agreement so jackal i would suggest you ask the jackal to tell you back what he heard jackal what did you just hear me say i agree with you i agree with you i mean it’s a bad habit i should be on time so see uh we’re just going to repeat the the parental situation the teacher situation even though you came from the heart he’s had many years of hearing that you should be on time so let’s ask it’s a radical paradigm shift now to get this jackal to do things on the basis of the joy of meeting human needs rather than the fear of not living up to other people’s standards that’s a major shift so i’m glad i asked you to ask this jackal so jack did you hear his needs yeah he has a need for me to be on time no no what are his what needs of his would be met well he thinks that a person should what are his needs what will

help him break through this hard to break through habit is the need you see the need is where the power is because when our consciousness is need centered it naturally is enjoyable to give but he hasn’t heard your need yet and you haven’t said it you haven’t really made clear what the need is of yours that would be met if he were on time see that’s that’s where we are deficient in our education in a need literacy the part that has the power to break out of the old games of bondage is the need that then gives us another possibility to do things on the basis of enriching life but we don’t have the literacy that has the power to do that so what need of yours is met by this person being on time for example i don’t know if any of these are close to your needs but mine might be i need to be able to trust that the people that i’m working with i have access to them at a certain time that i know so i have that’s part of my need and i also have a need for predictability to to really know where people are and who’s around and so could you tell me back what you hear that need being jet well you need to trust that the people you’re working with and depending on that they’re going to be at a place where you can use their services thank you for hearing that jack see we’ve got to get their attention to the heart so what are his needs jack let’s say it again is that your need though i don’t know that that’s your need that your need could be different oh so say it jacqueline well you know we got a lot of work to do around the place and it helps to know that your teammates are going to be there and you can trust that they’re going to be there you have a need for predictability yeah and i would guess there’s also a need in there for productivity to have the organization function well for everybody’s benefits so that everybody’s material needs are met and so forth yeah i can see that yes people are working to and productivity’s not gonna go up okay so but now he’s a giraffe boss i can see that in his eyes jackal and uh here’s gonna be the dilemma he will he only wants you to be on time if you can do so with the joy of a little child feeding a hungry duck he doesn’t want you to be on time out of an image of your parents being angry at you if you’re not your teacher’s being angry at you if you’re not you’re telling yourself that you should to be a decent person it’s not what he wants he’ll pay for it if you in fact if you come on time out of that energy he’ll pay for it you know that yeah i’ll make him pay for it the way i made my parents pay for it when i did what they told me i had to do yeah so how can you do it with the joy of a little child feeding a hungry duck well that’s going to be the hard part i could probably force myself to be on time but yeah so how do you keep in your consciousness that you’re choosing to do it to meet your own need for being contributing to the his well-being as a person he wants to trust that he can have the people he’s working with at a certain place on time there’s a need for certain predictability and productivity yeah how can you do it out of that joy of meeting his need and not have that other stuff get in there but that’s going to be hard marshall that’s going to be hard i’ve been listening to these inner and outer jackals for 35 years now it’s just not easy to shift that so you may need to have periodic conversations with him to check up on how you’re doing with that yeah yeah so how does this sound i’ll give it a try yeah now the other part now that’s getting uh now i got him there on time for you now with the good energy now what about the productivity what what’s let’s learn how to give a performance evaluation in giraffe you see so we don’t want to use we don’t want to use any performance evaluation like you’re doing a sub-par job you have poor relations with clients no no criticism observation so what’s the observation about his performance that you want to talk about in a positive way no no well it is positive if it’s a clear observation he can learn from that see i was working with some manage actually school administrators over in san jose and started a three-day workshop with they wanted to know how to evaluate teacher performance you see because they were having lots of problems the teachers were getting angry at the performance evaluations the union get brought in to argue with the evaluation so they wanted me to show them how to make nonviolent communication evaluations and we started off the first day with how to make clear observations you see and after i showed them the danger of mixing in vague language like you know poor performance with employee with uh clients or people or parents or there was these vague moralistic judgments i showed them how to make clear observations and one man after about an hour into the workshop he jumps up and runs out of the thing really just literally runs and everybody kind of looked for a minute what’s in him you know the next morning he comes in before the rest of the group and apologized to me for his abrupt departure but he said and marshall the first hour when you talked about how important to make clear observations in the evaluations without bringing in any criticism i realize why i dread making these evaluations because when i make these statements that confuse observation and evaluation the teachers get defensive and i know it’s going to be this way i have trouble sleeping before these eva the teacher evaluations so yesterday on the way to your workshop i had handed in to my secretary my teacher evaluations to be typed and you showed me in that first hour why what i was doing that was creating the problem so i ran back to the school to save my secretary having to type these things up and i spent until two in the morning last night trying to think of concretely what the employee had done that i was talking about a month later when i went back to san jose for follow-up this man was so thrilled not only did the teachers not get defensive they were hungry for these evaluations we can learn when somebody can concretely show us something that is not in harmony with needs of the organization without criticizing you without having to get this learning through images that make us feel bad about ourselves so let’s start with that let’s start by what is this person doing that’s not in harmony with your values it’s not to be positive it’s to be clear you don’t have to like it but you need to be able to spell it out without mixing it in to a lot of gobbledygook so what is this person doing that’s not up to park person’s been late but we dealt with the late issue okay a person’s person’s uh fighting with other employees hold it what do you mean fighting with other employees see i just start to express myself you can’t express yourself around this damn place without somebody judging you is fighting what do you want me to do to be a wimp so let’s get rid of fighting what does a person do he’s beaten up six people in four days is that it no oh it hasn’t beaten anybody up oh well continues to talk bad about people oh wait a minute talk bad about people what i said about that was mild so you want me to wimp out and say i love everybody around here even when they’re a bunch of no talk’s bad is a diagnosis see we want to start with a clear observation see so let’s let’s start again what does this person do communicates they hear a diagnosis coming on you’re going to say in a way that or it’s going to be a diagnosis direct quotes we can give direct quotes when you said john was an well he is okay but when you said that okay so we’re on good grounds okay and when employees tell me that routinely in meetings you use language that him says things like that like the other day jack said you thought you said in the meeting that he was the most incompetent person you’d ever met well he is i just want you to know when you say these things okay now we got his attention you’ve got you can’t argue with the fact he said those things oh sometimes you can’t he can’t remember but anyway we’re on pretty sound grounds it started with clear observation so when you say the things that you’ve been saying and i’ve given you several examples now how do you feel about his these reports that he’s doing that i feel angry and disappointed yes and what need of yours isn’t met by this person’s behavior my need for harmony and now what would you like from him in relationship to that would like to find a way in which we as a group can work better together so we need to be a little bit more specific i’d like you to tell me if you’d be willing to search with me for a way in which you can be honest with people without doing it in a way that destroys morale and harmony on the staff would you be willing to explore that with me how you could express yourselves you’re much more specific so yeah that’s how you might express yourself but i wouldn’t recommend starting with that i would recommend starting by empathizing with what needs of his are being met by doing what he’s doing see once again the quickest way i know to get people to be open to a new possibility is to show respect for the life in them that led to the old possibility so that they know we can hear that without moralistically judging it or thinking there’s anything wrong with them as a human being when a person can trust that it would be a lot easier for him to hear the thing we just worked on but if he still feels any trace that he’s not understood or valued for what he did it’s going to be hard for him to learn so he’s been calling these people names let’s start by empathizing with what’s going on in him when he does that so you’ve just gotten the report that he’s called his boss an in a meeting and when you called john an were you feeling angry by the way he was treated because your need wasn’t being messy not because he was treated

are you angry because your need for what was being met your need for being heard wasn’t being met heard and respected you know he doesn’t respect me you know the only people he respects are those that kiss his ass and you know and when i try to show him you know that his managerial style sucks you know then i i get no respect so you’re feeling unheard and unrespected well those are not really feelings those are diagnoses we don’t want to reinforce diagnoses like unheard and so you’re frustrated because your need for respect and understanding doesn’t get met when you express yourself to the boss yes yes other employees say the same damn thing nothing happens but he’s had it in for me all along so your need for feeling feeling heard and acknowledged for fairness i mean why the hell do other people do the same thing i do and you know you know you never hear a damn thing about it but by god as soon as i say something like that then he’s all over my case then i get sent into you and i got this damn thing to deal with hell is other employees in that department do the same thing but because i won’t kiss ass i’m the one that always gets gets everything i’m sure none of you would ever have an employee like this but just in case you should ever be plagued then be prepared for it oh excuse me you are the employee i’m sorry i should i should have realized i saw a little bit of understanding and some eyes here so then your need for being treated with respect isn’t being met fairness fairness and respect both i mean why the hell am i always the one that gets the bad end of things other employees do the same damn thing nothing’s ever done i do so you’re angry and frustrated by the fact that you’re not your needs are not being met my need you know for uh fairness you know other same thing happens to other people you’re going to get keep getting it until we hear it that’s what’s nice we don’t have to be perfect or fast jackals are very tolerant with slow learners they’ll keep they’ll keep repeating themselves forever and until until you hear the need that they need you to hear it’s okay so what’s the need that this jackal is trying to get you to get across to you to be treated like your need for being treated fairly yes yes i have a need for fairness justice yes [Music] feeling heard and acknowledged for fairness i mean why the hell do other people do the same thing i do and you know you know you never hear a damn thing about it but by god as soon as i say something like that then he’s all over my case then i get sent into you and i got this damn thing to deal with hell is other employees in that department do the same thing but because i won’t kiss ass i’m the one that always gets gets everything i’m sure none of you would ever have an employee like this but just in case you should ever be plagued then be prepared for it oh excuse me you are the employee i’m sorry i should i should have realized i saw a little bit of understanding and some eyes here so then your need for being treated with respect isn’t being met fairness fairness and respect both i mean why the hell am i always the one that gets the bad end of things other employees do the same damn thing nothing’s ever done i do so you’re angry and frustrated by the fact that you’re not your needs are not being met my need you know for uh fairness you know other same thing happens to other people you’re gonna get keep getting it until we hear it but that’s what’s nice we don’t have to be perfect or fast jackals are very tolerant with slow learners they’ll keep they’ll keep repeating themselves forever and until until you hear the need that they need you to hear it’s okay so what’s the need that this jackal is trying to get you to get across to you to be treated like your need for being treated fairly yes yes i have a need for fairness justice yes [Music] how do we get children to stop lying and i have an easy answer but the parents never like it i say stop blaming and punishing you have no lying there you only need but lying is adaptive in a punitive structure you’re a fool to tell the truth in a punitive structure [Music] i also think it would help us if we want to communicate in a giraffe way with children to get rid of the concept of children you know there were no children on the planet until 300 years ago did you know that i’m serious there were no children we didn’t have the concept of children until the industrial revolution and we started to have this new word for people be below a certain age see until then they were people people of a certain age they only became children after that and then to there it’s unfortunate because as soon as they became children they became treated with much less humanity now there was good reason politically to protect people of a certain age from exploitation that’s the law but when we start now to think of these people somehow different than those of us who are adults a lot of problems get created they used to take parent workshops half the parents in one room half in another and i gave them a written role play to write down how they would treat a certain situation predict the other person’s response how would you respond i gave both groups the same situation the other person borrowed something and didn’t return it when they said they would okay i told one group the other person was your child i told the other group it was a neighbor they come back into big group but i told them don’t say who who you were working on we put them up on the board the groups that were working on the one with the neighbor and the children same situation i asked the group who got the most love and respect always the same thing always not even close the neighbor was always treated with more love and respect in the jackal world we are given permission and encouraged to dehumanize people that we label as children so that’s enough theory now let’s get into oh yeah that’s the other the most important thing you see that goes with this is to get away from this idea that it’s our it’s our job to make them behave a certain way see that’s once you think that then we’re already in trouble and i’ve had a request for a song i wrote when my youngest son educated me about this my youngest son brett educated me the danger of demands in the role of a parent he helped me to see never make demands dad never make demands how did he help me see this well it was a slow message for me to get clear because i had this so deep in my mind that as the parent it was my job make the children behave and one of the things they should do is tasks like take the garbage out that’s not too much for a father to ask a son and because i had that thinking we had the giraffe excuse me we had the garbage war at the rosenberg household twice a week see the garbage was to be picked up the next morning so my rule was brett my youngest son his job was to take the garbage out the night before so thinking that way created the garbage war twice a week the garbage war would begin by my simply mentioning his name that’s his name now how does he accelerate the war he pretends like he didn’t hear me he’s in the next room right neighbor’s a mile awake in here and he’s in the next room pretending like he doesn’t hear me so i’m getting out so what do i do to make it worse i scream even louder what do you want the garbage isn’t out you’re very perceptive dad get it out i’ll do it later you said that last time and didn’t that doesn’t mean i won’t do it this time [Laughter] can you imagine putting so much energy into getting the garbage out there’s people starving to death in the world there’s the environment is being destroyed and i’m taking all of my energy as a human being to get my blasted garbage out [Music] so this was at a time when i was trying to transform myself from the parenting of the culture that i was raised in to giraffe so i was starting to learn to wear these ears so one night i sit down and i said what’s going on with the damn garbage you know this craziness because that wasn’t only the garbage it wasn’t only the garbage we also had a little thing about shoveling snow the neighbor down at the corner was a serious physical handicap she could not walk so she had a long driveway in her house and when she couldn’t get her car out she had no mobility because she couldn’t walk she depended on her car so he would go down to her house every time it snowed took him an hour an hour and a half depending on the depth of the snow to shovel her walk he never told her who did it never ask her for money he would check the weather report before going to sleep if it was any possibility of snow he’d get up early so he could go and do it before school right in our house we had a tiny little walk [Laughter] do you think i could get that walk shovel you see so it was a mystery to me why what the hell i mean it goes down the kid goes down to the corner then finally i put the giraffe ears and we had a conversation one night and he made it clear to me what was the need behind the no see so when we get into the role play with children what is the need behind the no and we’ll see that it’s very often very similar to the the late coming employee anyway here was the need behind the no in the garbage so since i borrowed some of the lines directly from our conversation i give him credit i call this song from brett sometimes i just call it the garbage song if i clearly understand you intend no demand i’ll usually respond when you call but if you come across like a high and mighty boss you’ll feel like you ran into a wall [Music] and when you remind me so piously about all of those things that you’ve done for me you better get ready here comes another belt then you can shout you can spit moan and groan and throw a fit i still won’t take the garbage out now even if you should change your style it’s going to take me a little while

before i can forgive and forget because it seemed to me that you [Music] didn’t see me as human too until all your standards were meant [Music] okay the need behind the no so who’s going to come up here and tackle this scary jackal oh all hands go up that will do maybe two of them come on up here what and what am i doing mom that you’re not crazy actually i’d like to give you the situation that i’m a school teacher you’re a school teacher so i’m an 11 year old student student yes who um you’re not doing uh what i’d like you to do in my class oh yeah what’s that teacher uh i’d like you to work on the project we have nice prepared okay so good this will give us all a chance to practice hearing the the need behind the no and how do i express my know politely i’d rather not teach you or do i print do i express it some other way by just not doing it destroying my some of the property in my classroom yes yes okay so i what what property have i destroyed my scissors my needles my pins yes okay so let’s talk i’m a handwork teacher i teach sewing yes okay so let’s talk to this student um ben that’s a very good start that is his name okay we’re getting there i’ve had this conversation a lot of times with myself ben i’ve i feel uh are you feeling frustrated by my handwork class because what needs aren’t getting it because you need to be outside with christopher christopher’s school another child his you need you’d like to be playing with christopher yeah this stuff is stupid do i hear you saying that uh handwork is is not something you feel you need to do i’m never gonna use this crap [Laughter] you feel that what i’m teaching you don’t hit what do you think feel do you feel uh learning to sew is going to be another thought here is feeling in need here’s my card do you feel reluctant to do yeah why do i do this stuff i’m never going to use it so you’re feeling are you feeling handwork is useless that’s what he thinks never reinforce what a jackal-speaking person thinks if you can’t hear it you’re feeling are you feeling frustrated that i’m asking you no that’s not that i it’s going to be hard to get that giraffe in the mouth of this baby are you feeling frustrated because your need for something useful in your life because you’re needing to uh do something else you have a need for something that you’ll use in your life to help your life make make your life more wonderful i might use language like that with an 11 year old but i would try to put it in need language i try to get away from reinforcing to think the thought that anything is useful or useless you know like anything is a waste of time see that’s there is no such thing why would i want to teach people myths some behavior meets need some doesn’t why make life more complicated than it is so you’d like something that you can use and you’re irritated to be learning something that you’re not confident is going to meet your need who’s gonna when am i ever gonna do this guy ben i i appreciate you telling me what what you’re feeling and that was important for him to hear because he thought he was going to get sent to the principal my teacher his teacher last year sent him to the principal for just that saying that it was junk so already this has been a big shift for him ben would you be willing to hear um what my needs are and my feelings yeah i feel but i wouldn’t have been if you would have started with i am now because you heard me yeah so ben i’m fear i’m feeling frustrated that um i’m frustrated and hurt that what i teach doesn’t feel of value to you what’s the need see i didn’t hear a need i know i’m getting there i haven’t worked on it yet but after the feeling okay speed of light to a need don’t go to a thought that the stuff is not a valuable right i feel frustrated and hurt because my need for what isn’t that for my my need for you to enjoy my class i have a real need to contribute to your life isn’t that the need yes that’s me you don’t want him to enjoy it if it isn’t contributing to his life i have a need to really contribute something to your life then i very much would like to reach you on a level in my class that will give you value and what i would you know value value to your life you want me to get something useful out of your class yes but even more than that i want to be able to give you the gift of something that i feel would grow into your that you could take into your life as you grow older you want me to learn something that’ll be helpful to me in my life yes could you tell me how that feels to you don’t know would you like to explore that with me how that feels for you uh now it’s important message to hear with giraffe ears very important message what’s he feeling what’s he needing express through that message silence is a very important message to hear with giraffe ears banner are you feeling now what i this is an easy role for me to play because i played this role for real for about eight years in school and i learned how much power i had with these all i needed to do to get these people who thought they were so big about ready to crap their pants was leer how many times my parents were told he learns i would just sit there and lear and it would drive all these adults crazy they didn’t know how to deal with leering never have i had such power i was a great lira ben are you feeling uncomfortable and puzzled yeah and are you needing more compassion from me what’s that understanding are you needing you don’t care about me you just say that nobody cares about me so you’re feeling um unlikable and are needed to be understanding uncomfortable and comfortable and wanting some understanding about how hard it is for you to trust this try that you see it just hear the feeling in the need you feeling uncomfortable are you feeling uncomfortable and and needing understanding how hard it is to care for you or maybe for how hard it is to uh be with nice because i’m trying to look in the whole school what’s going on for this child how hard to be with adults it is for you so ben [Music] are you feeling um he feels that now tell telling how you feel when you hear that ben i feel right would you like to hear what i feel i’m feeling um great compassion for your your pain and would like to continue understanding you and working with you on this level make a present request now let’s press record would you be willing to continue working with me uh and talking to me about your feelings and and what’s going on for you in in class i don’t know so are you feeling that’s that’s still very uncomfortable for you and you’re not sure whether you want to talk about your feelings [Music] now come back to yours you heard him now see we have a beautiful giraffe dance school beautiful grand giraffe dance caller i’m feeling concern and have a need to [Music] talk with you to meet with you present request would you be willing to talk to me um again maybe outside of class so that we can meet on on on a caring level it’s pretty funny yeah okay would you be willing to meet with me tomorrow during during recess yeah thank you bandits [Applause] i projected it forward to this afternoon and i think it’s a bigger learning situation for her than for him uh putting him before the scissors whether the scissors get broken or not then i projected it further to a situation let’s say of safety and that’s where i run into trouble what if he threatens somebody with the scissors or something like that then it gets tough for me as the teacher i don’t know what to do there well obviously we use force if he’s about to stab somebody with the scissors we take the scissors away yeah and then is when we really need to use the process because when somebody’s beating on another child or about to hurt somebody if this is important to us that for safety reasons then we really have to empathize the most i was sitting here in the elementary school principal’s office in san francisco and the principal looks out on the playground during recess and he jumps up he’s excuse me marshall and he runs out and he grabs this older child slaps him and says i’ll teach you not to hit smaller people oh yeah now what what pain didn’t paint me about that is that this man who did that this man loves children really this guy has got a giraffe heart and he’s a good friend of mine so i could tease him a bit so when he comes back in i said i’m not confident you taught that child what you said you were going to teach him huh what do you mean i said you said you’re going to teach him not to hit smaller people yeah but you’re bigger than he is you hit him you thought you had a good right to hit him he probably thought he had a good right to hit the other person so i think all you did was reinforce what he already has been doing and he said you know thanks for pointing out i never realized that i never thought of it that way i said but jay i do think you taught him something what i think you taught him not to hit smaller people while you’re watching but i think i wouldn’t want to be that younger child on the way home from school today i see i would think my life is in danger because now i think you’ve just perpetuated violence see so it’s at this point that i would have liked him to have taken the person who was doing the hitting and started with empathy because it’s so it would be so important for me to protect the population the more important it is that i want somebody to be open to another possibility the more i want to begin with a respectful understanding of what need they’re meeting by doing that that they’re doing i just wanted to say that when i’m in her role as the teacher it’s important for me to hold in my mind that this is possibly more of a learning situation for me than it is for the kid like i’m really the student yes better hand the mic back thank you i found the ahas and maybes of the boy to be amazingly eloquent and i

was struck by how much he was able to communicate through grunts and moans essentially and you know me better than i thought i also was wondering if there was how holly could have helped him become more compassionate towards himself in those moments because i when he was grunting and when he when he was you know expressing himself through his own inner jackaling i like the way she did it that seemed to me she kept hearing his feelings and needs at that moment so the next day she’ll get more chance to do what you’re talking about she’s going to get much more of this you don’t care for me nobody cares to me so it’s hard for you to trust this you know some understanding yeah yeah because i’m a rat so you’re doing some stuff that not getting your needs met you don’t like doing everybody says you my friends say that you’re really a rat you know so you’re kind of discouraged with yourself there’s some things you’d like to be doing differently see i don’t hear the i don’t reinforce the self-judgment i hear the needs behind it yeah he’s got a lot of that to go on how can you possibly be hearing the message outside without internalizing i went through about six years that was my my language right my father one day a very kind patient man but he had about enough of it i could kick a pig in the ass and get a better answer and what did i say and then i got paid back because then my older son went through the same thing so we called him grunt now he speaks ten languages but there was a while who need the mic yes thank you very much i just had a couple concerns for the teachers that um recess might not be you know a time when he wants to get out and play with christopher so that wasn’t really dealt with i mean in terms of empathizing with his need for play he wants to see christopher and also get out at recess and also it’s fun to break scissors and things like that so his needs around what’s going on with breaking things in the room might at some point for me i had the need for those to be addressed about what the needs behind the needs behind the braking well the needs yeah behind getting up and running around and not sitting down and working on a project i mean he may or may not i thought that the dynamics was being talked about i thought that those were the feelings that were leading to it i don’t think we talked about it enough that’s why i’m glad that she set up another time and playing the role when i said yes even though it was during recess it was yes because what i was getting from her at that moment was very precious for me and that’s why it was so precious why i’m going to break her scissors this afternoon because that was scary how precious that time was for me yeah it seems to me i i may have seen something here that i want to check out with you what i’m trying to say is that i have an issue with someone that i would like to discuss with them but it’s really not about the issue and it appears to me that there’s a a great deal of this has to do with letting go of any expectation whatsoever and um that it’s really much more of a discussion or of a process of understanding each other’s needs experience no not period but part of it i would firmly agree with we’ve got to get rid of making our request into an addiction you see an expectation we’ve got to let go of the objective of getting our request fulfilled that isn’t what’s what’s important what’s important is three things that are interdependent creating a quality of connection in which we see each other’s humanness and a total lack of any enemy images another way of saying that a lack of any moralistic judgment nothing in this connection nobody sees any wrongness on the part of the other person what do we see their feelings and needs the truth see that’s one-third of our objectives you see so when i approached my son earlier about the garbage my objective was a strategy to get the garbage out see yes of course i would have said i want a loving connection with my son but in this situation i was addicted to getting the garbage up that was my objective see if the manager with the employee if it’s our objective to get him there on time no it’s not now here’s why it’s hard to mention this to most of the people that i work with they then can only see the other option is permissiveness you get you become a chump that they think then you’re talking about passivity then you you’re going to be a loser i’m going to be a victim you’re saying i’m supposed to just let the kid do whatever the hell he wants i’m supposed to do all the work around the house my mother came back second day of the workshop i went home and tried it last night it didn’t work i said what did you do i made a clear observation to my oldest son i pointed out to him that he didn’t do the work he said he was going to do okay that’s clear observation and i told him i was disappointed okay i told him i had a need to trust that people will do what they say okay i asked him to please do it immediately what happened he didn’t do it what did you say i told him he couldn’t go through life being lazy and be irresponsible and i said i’m glad we have another two days because it seems like your objective is doing this you’re here to learn how to get him to do this yes then you don’t want to be here you need to be go to a dog obedience school reed skinner if your objective is to get people to do what you want systematically use punishment and reward and so forth that is not objective but see the only other option she could think of then oh so i’m just supposed to let him do whatever he wants i have to do all the work around the house myself i don’t believe in permission no i’m not talking about permissiveness such a radical paradigm shift if we’ve been educated in domination culture which requires you to obey authority so it’s very scary people think the only other option then is we’re going to have chaos anarchy okay so that’s one third of the objectives creating a quality of connection in which we see each other’s humanness there’s no enemy images no good guys bad guys nobody’s right or wrong second we value other person’s needs being met equal to our own notice there’s no giving up in here we don’t give up our needs doesn’t require that but we must value the other person’s needs equal to our own notice we’re not talking about strategies we’re not talking about whether to learn sewing or not sewing take out the garbage or not take out the garbage be on time or not on time it’s not the objective it’s not ever our objective the strategy because we might find more creative ways of getting everybody’s needs met maybe we’ll find a way of getting the garbage to disappear or something you know nobody has to take it out who knows we if we are really creative and we can we’re mainly interested in meeting needs we may find that the original request i made there’s better ways of getting everybody’s needs met or the other person may do it but that wasn’t my objective my objective was to meet everybody’s needs not to get him to take out the garbage not to get him to learn sewing not to come to work on time and the third part of the objective whatever is done is done through pure natural giving that means we’re giving with the joy that human beings feel when they see what they’re doing is enriching life meeting needs this is the only reason for doing it no fear of punishment no buying love no trying for a reward no guilt motivating so yeah it’s not the the the sowing now when when this is there if sowing is going to enrich this child’s life of course he’s going to sew and if it isn’t the teacher doesn’t want him to she said her need was to enrich his life if he can find they might find another way of doing it so if if the sewing does enrich his life it’ll take care of itself the sewing will be done the garbage was taken out by my son from there after after i got the message after he trusted that it was not my objective yes how can a student trust in the teacher’s objective that his need is important and her need is important when that student is already being compelled to be there how can i trust something beyond that initial compulsion which is you know that you are required to be in this room at this time because how do i put it to them if i use amps i become part of the system if i say you have to be here if i use that language i’m part of the system so i never say to the child you have to i never say to the child it’s the rule that’s amsbracha that’s bureaucratic language no i don’t say that i’m not part of that system i say i’d like you to be here on time i might say an observation there’s a rule in the school that says this and when you don’t do it i get very frustrated because it creates a real pain for me and i’m within a system if i don’t punish you then i get punished see i’ll be honest about my dilemma in that on the other hand if i agree with the rule then i don’t say you must do it because it’s the rule i would say what my needs are that would be met by by acting in harmony with this i’m scared about you not staying in harmony with this rule because i value whatever does this show so yeah it’s the rule but i never use amps with the person like you have to you must you can’t especially since they already know they can no matter what i say so i don’t want to lie to them say you can’t they know they can even if it’s a rule why would i lie to them why would i ever say to somebody you have to do something when i know no human being has ever done anything because they had to no human being does anything they don’t choose to do clear you seem a little not ready i guess it’s maybe that grudging grudgingness that sometimes children will yield you know all right well then i wouldn’t let them because see then they’re not doing it this way i haven’t met my needs my needs are not met when they all right my needs aren’t met then that’s

we haven’t we haven’t gotten everybody’s needs met so now i never want anybody to do anything out of all right motivation now we need to still negotiate we need to keep the giraffe dance going because when people act out of this energy it’s not all right yes so i tried this with my ex-husband a couple of months ago now this is unrealistic because husbands are never jackals ex-husbands are oh okay i’ll take your word for it but this is the first man i’ve ever heard to be a jackal and um we had a nice conversation and the conversation more or less ended after a couple of hours with some i think clearer understanding perhaps of each other certainly i understood him a little bit better yes and he voluntarily agreed to increase the amount of child support that he sends and um and now he wants to take it back through other ways yes so i’m i’m i’m back to square one come on up here and let’s talk to this chat come on up here let’s talk to this so let’s make it easy for a while i’ll sew this giraffe ears on him for a while so do your best to speak giraffe but even if it’s not perfect you don’t have to worry that much because he’s got the ears on okay what do you want to say to him do i need to give background no you can you can say you can even quote you can make clear observation yes when you said when you said that uh now that you’re paying me more child support you won’t be paying the health insurance or the dental bills any longer i felt i feel frustrated and and angry and i need to i need i need fairness i need to have the financial burden not rest predominantly on my shoulders i need some sharing in that responsibility yeah and while i’m at it i mean while you have those giraffe ears on um i would really like it if you could come up more often so that my needs for my son to have a closer connection with you are met and so that i get um a bit of a break from being an exclusive parent and i would really like to have some acknowledgement from you about all of the different you know the tremendous effort that i put into raising our son and how um much of it i do exclusively so there’s a lot that you’re sharing with me there and i want to be sure that i’m really hearing it all first you you just like some obvious awareness that there’s expenses involved in keeping the family going with our son and you would really like to have the money that it would take to do that job well cover for living expenses health expenses that’s right and it’s very scary and hurting for you to know that i have the money to give for that but that i don’t that’s right and i’m also hearing that you’re concerned about the boy having a father who’s really showing an interest in him you want to make sure he he gets his need to feel cared for not only by you but by a father yes and you’d also like to know that he’s with somebody loving at times and give you a rest to take care of some needs of your own you got it yeah yeah yeah and i need a lot of empathy myself do you need to be understood more or would you like to hear what’s going on in me that’s keeping me from doing those things i think i need you to understand a little bit more okay i need you to understand the the the depth or the quantity of time that that i have been the sole financial supporter not the soul but almost almost exclusively bearing the financial burden and and i wish you to understand the the pain that i feel for my son when you decided not to move with us thank you for bringing this up because i realized i did miss a part of your first message which is that you’d also like some recognition and gratitude for the job you’re doing with you and under difficult conditions and in addition to that some recognition of the stress involved in being the only provider of support for him yes when i heard you say you’re doing a good job that felt nice to hear but it was just it barely scratched the surface you would really like to know if in my heart i’m seeing what you’re investing in that boy’s well-being yes it would really help to hear what’s behind that yeah and when i express what’s going on in me i think you’ll hear what’s keeping me from but even now i’d like you to know it isn’t that i don’t really feel that gratitude i need some empathy for what keeps me from both offering the gratitude and the financial support and the time to be with him i’m ready to hear you and i’m also a little frightened that um i will subjugate my needs and concerns out of uh wishing to understand you i thank you on behalf of ellen goodman for having that consciousness who’s that she writes for the boston globe oh yeah and she says women beware of guys like rosenberg teaching you how to understand and empathize better you see she doesn’t mention me by name but i had my paranoid ears on when i read this she said maybe we women have been trained so well to empathize with other people’s needs but there’s a danger that we lose connection with our own so she would be glad that you have that consciousness be careful about empathizing so well with the other person that you lose your needs in the process i’m all too familiar with that okay okay so i’m glad you have that consciousness and i thank you on behalf of ellen goodman because i’m going to try to express myself in giraffe but even if i do you’ll probably still need those ears because i’m going to be getting into some heavy stuff okay go for it it’s not it’s somewhat like what that gentleman was talking about to his employer about the demand inner demands and the pressures it’s but i think that’s mild compared to what goes on in me because it is very important to me to provide for our son and i would like to be caring and provide for you as an individual because we had lots that we gave each other for a while and that was precious for both of us for a while and out of that i would like to give to you and enjoy giving to you i would like to give to my son and enjoy giving to my son then why do you say things like you’ll excuse me if your needs aren’t important to me you’ll hear that now why i say that you’ll hear that now because they’re too important to me for the wrong reasons and so i’m rebelling against this and resisting it can you tell me back what you hear me saying so far i’m not sure i understand it but you said that those needs are too important for you so you run away from them yes too important in this respect i feel responsible for your feelings i feel responsible for my son’s happiness and that i feel such that how could any father not behave differently than i am would you say that again yes how could any father not contribute to his son’s well-being saying that you do no or that you want to i’m saying i tell myself that i feel responsible for my son and that makes an inner demand far stronger than that man’s demand that i have to be on time that makes it a powerful demand an inner should and i rebel against that and i’m also guessing that there’s resentment that i left the relationship thank you because on top of that i have a whole bunch of other feelings of hurt rage a whole bunch of feelings left over from the relationship that i haven’t had the empathy for that i will need and these two together the two together this inner demand from my jackal plus these resemble resulting still remaining feelings all of that together makes it i just don’t want to give i just and yet i hate myself for not giving i still don’t understand the part where you said it makes you not want to give i still have a lot of hurt a lot of rage plus the other plus this inner demand that i should give what’s in me what’s wrong with me and it’s my son so i’m saying all of these feelings together if even if somebody outside mentions it then they’re going to get back i don’t care i mean that’s your problem but it’s good i’ve got all this going on inside and until it’s dealt with i can’t meet my own needs the other needs that i have they’re strong to care for myself that’s a very strong knee so it must be so i’m saying that then i need you to see how strong the pain is that’s inside that i need empathy for before i can respond to my need to give to my son you’re you’re feeling pain because you need to because you need to have that connection with your son and you don’t or you feel um i need to have it with him but the demand of myself to do it feeling i should what kind of a father am i that that inner pain created by my inner jackal it’s so great that i can’t i don’t i can’t act on my need to be with myself i hear you saying that that you’re where you are working as hard as you are because you need to uh to save your money to buy land so that you can be self-sufficient and leave a legacy for your son or maybe not a legacy a something for him that’s awesome that’s also going on yes i would like to do that for many reasons that’s also going on that’s the easiest for me to talk about because i’m the clearest about that yes one way i can do it is by getting this land and making money and leaving a legacy but the other stuff about not giving for the medical expenses now not meeting with him that’s the stuff i’m talking about now what’s behind that so it it must feel and must have felt enormously painful for you to um lose the uh setting in which you had a a relationship a wife and a son extremely painful extremely painful but it was painful before that it was painful before that before we left yes it was painful because i felt you felt a pull between responsibility i felt responsible for your happiness and his and the more i felt responsible for your happiness the less i wanted to give to you the less i was giving to you emotionally the less you wanted to be in the relationship so it was very painful for me already before you left and your needs were were certainly not your needs for love and being able to call the shots or uh being free to come and go when you choose um we’re

all not being met that was another part of it but the main part of it the main part of it was that i felt responsible for your happiness and so when you would let me know that how unhappy you were with the way i was spending my time and how much time i was investing in our relationship i felt again this same dynamic oh my god i’m responsible i’m i should give more to you if i don’t you’re going to be hurt and when i have that image that i’m responsible for your happiness then i don’t want to give so you felt a tremendous burden i i made it i made it a tremendous burden because i had an illness a very serious illness called male itis you had it bad yes i had it very bad male itis that i feel responsible for the people my wife’s happiness and when she’s unhappy then i feel the demand oh now what do i have to do so when i was unhappy you felt a failure yes and i felt now i have to be home more and do more what she wants and uh that made our relationship as much fun for me as a prolonged dental appointment and then it’s not hard for me to understand then that that was very painful for you that would be easier for you to hear that i just don’t care and so then i see you getting more unhappy then i’d have even less energy for being with you and so i know i’m not surprised you chose finally to leave but then the leaving itself created real pain for me so all of this is going on in me and is still not healed and needs to be healed before i can enjoy giving the money to you and the child and to enjoy really telling you how deeply touched i am at what you are giving to him i see it and it’s i feel it so strongly but you can’t express gratitude sincerely when you’re in as much pain as i am when i put myself in your shoes i i just feel sad um and that’s precious for me the empathy you’ve given me that you feel sad but now it would also be a gift for me if you met ellen goodman’s needs and make sure you still don’t lose your needs right now so you’ve given me what i need most right now which is the empathy your honesty but don’t think that means you have to give up your needs well i also have a need to just trust in what we agree on and not feel the shaky ground of it ever changing yeah i can understand that and uh i mean it when we have this kind of connection but then the jackals can get into me and i can lose it quickly so that’s why i need to find some way of getting enough of what we just started on now this is just the surface of what i need to do to get that pain dealt with well enough and where do i find this you know i’m not willing to talk to you very much so i don’t give you the time and i’m not sure it’s fair to ask you to do it when you’re in so much pain yourself so where do i go when i talk to my friends we sit around and all complain about whose wife was the biggest and that doesn’t help so um are you willing to talk to me yes yes this way it’s a great gift to me but begin listen to ellen goodman check and make sure it’s that you’re not losing something in yourself to have to give this empathy to me make sure you get enough yourself [Laughter] are you willing to make a direct deposit i don’t want to go to court yeah i prefer not to well you know it would be really helpful maybe the solution is we can get a giraffe one of these giraffes around this area or some area to help mediate between us so we can keep this connection going but not have to put it all on you to have to always have the giraffe ears on it [Music] [Music] [Music] you