“There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.” – R. D. Laing
The appearance of the current Coronavirus, and the major disruptions that both the pandemic and the responses to …
A Hassidic story tells of a rabbi Zusha who summons his students on his deathbed and tells them that when he gets to the other side, he won’t be judged for not being a good Moses; he will only be judged for not being a good Zusha.
This story captures, …
“Life is arranged to care for all that lives through an endless interdependent flow of energy and resources.”
After years of thinking, reading, writing, talking, teaching, feeling, and communing, that simple sentence came to me in a session I was leading about money at a nine-day intensive training in Chile. …
Last Saturday, while leading the first day of the Leveraging Your Influence yearlong program, I responded unskillfully to a participant I will call James. What happened points directly to the way that the experience of privilege or lack thereof shapes our lives. How we handled it, and what I have …
One of my favorite forms of teaching is live group coaching, of the kind I’ve been doing recently through the NVC Academy, in a course called “Dialogue with Anyone about Anything”. Usually, I have only the satisfaction of seeing the in-the-moment transformation, when someone realizes they can have an entirely …
When many people first learn NVC, they become so enthusiastic about the possibilities they see unfolding, that they immediately try to put it to use everywhere. Often enough, the results can be disastrous, such that other people become deeply suspicious of NVC. Here is a sample of what people often …
Any of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while or know me otherwise have heard me talk countless times about how vitally important the path of vulnerability has been for me. I’ve been walking this path for sixteen years now, about as long as I’ve been using and …
You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything on my blog for some weeks now. This is a first since I started my blog. This is no accident, and not even entirely based on having a lot on my plate. These past weeks have been very challenging in multiple …
The Hebrew Bible tells us that “death and life come through the power of the tongue.” My father, who was a (mostly) lay linguist, raised all three of his daughters to be in awe of the power of words to create effects. It’s no wonder that I have dedicated my …
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