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abhishekjain's review against another edition
5.0
Definitely a good read. Be patient while reading. Try not to get annoyed.
This book has been a real great source of inspiration on how we can transform our way of dealing with people. Communication is paramount for living in harmony in our human society and under the different strata and silos of this society be it your family, college, work, club etc.
NVC is definitely a great read and provides ample tools and examples to practice and internalize what it is trying to say.
However, I should warn you that there is an inherent problem with this book in how it communicates and the examples it gives. I believe it is because how Mr. Rosenberg practices communication and to me it seems a bit less personal and more interrogative. He has rightly pointed out that many of his friends/acquaintances think that he is trying psychotherapy when he speaks to them. I tend to agree with them Mr. Rosenberg.
But this is not a fatal flaw of this book and can easily be circumvented by just extracting the essence of the communication and the intention. A crude example would be:
Instead of saying: "Hello! How are your day-to-day activities going?" we normally say "Sup! What's cooking? What's going on?" etc. The practice of NVC will definitely need a bit of translation into your own way of communication so that you can preserve the naturalness of your being and still apply the NVC.
Despite all this, NVC is hard. Very very hard. I tried using it while I was reading it in the past few weeks, I was terribly failing. Still, I do not feel that it doesn't work. I see this book providing me with a kind of knowledge that goes will with what I read in "The Courage to be disliked" using Adlerian psychology. If "All problems are interpersonal relationship problems" then Non-Violent Communication is answer or for sure the best tool to solve the problems we have in our lives. If we were to live alone, most of our problems will definitely go away, and with it the need of NVC or even any communication at all but it horrifies me to even think about how boring our lives would be. Living with people is hard and it is mostly because we think communication has happened when it in essence has not. NVC is not all about resolving conflicts it's about practicing communication that serves the main purpose of communication - letting others know what our needs our and how we have understood the needs of others.
If you read the book on face value, Mr. Rosenberg says we need to develop vocabulary to express our needs and thoughts very well. I think (and this is my personal opinion), this is an argument of a perfectionist. Honestly speaking, most of us are not doing even 5% of NVC so I do not even aim for the 100%. It is discouraging to think that I need to learn vocabulary to start practicing NVC. No. I do not recommend this barrier. I think we have enough vocabulary in our hands to start practicing it. If you we start using words that our circle doesn't understand - it will fail the purpose, right? A self-contradicting prophesy of sorts. So, forget about vocab lessons, practice the essence.
A profound concept in this book had been about three stages of our relation to others: Emotional Slavery --> Being Obnoxious --> Emotional Liberation. I think in Indian context we all live in Emotional Slavery in relationship to our parents. And it is destroying families like a termite.
Some favourites:
"Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence."
"If we don't value our needs, others may not either."
"Intellectual understanding blocks empathy." [One of my sins.]
"There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you."
This book has been a real great source of inspiration on how we can transform our way of dealing with people. Communication is paramount for living in harmony in our human society and under the different strata and silos of this society be it your family, college, work, club etc.
NVC is definitely a great read and provides ample tools and examples to practice and internalize what it is trying to say.
However, I should warn you that there is an inherent problem with this book in how it communicates and the examples it gives. I believe it is because how Mr. Rosenberg practices communication and to me it seems a bit less personal and more interrogative. He has rightly pointed out that many of his friends/acquaintances think that he is trying psychotherapy when he speaks to them. I tend to agree with them Mr. Rosenberg.
But this is not a fatal flaw of this book and can easily be circumvented by just extracting the essence of the communication and the intention. A crude example would be:
Instead of saying: "Hello! How are your day-to-day activities going?" we normally say "Sup! What's cooking? What's going on?" etc. The practice of NVC will definitely need a bit of translation into your own way of communication so that you can preserve the naturalness of your being and still apply the NVC.
Despite all this, NVC is hard. Very very hard. I tried using it while I was reading it in the past few weeks, I was terribly failing. Still, I do not feel that it doesn't work. I see this book providing me with a kind of knowledge that goes will with what I read in "The Courage to be disliked" using Adlerian psychology. If "All problems are interpersonal relationship problems" then Non-Violent Communication is answer or for sure the best tool to solve the problems we have in our lives. If we were to live alone, most of our problems will definitely go away, and with it the need of NVC or even any communication at all but it horrifies me to even think about how boring our lives would be. Living with people is hard and it is mostly because we think communication has happened when it in essence has not. NVC is not all about resolving conflicts it's about practicing communication that serves the main purpose of communication - letting others know what our needs our and how we have understood the needs of others.
If you read the book on face value, Mr. Rosenberg says we need to develop vocabulary to express our needs and thoughts very well. I think (and this is my personal opinion), this is an argument of a perfectionist. Honestly speaking, most of us are not doing even 5% of NVC so I do not even aim for the 100%. It is discouraging to think that I need to learn vocabulary to start practicing NVC. No. I do not recommend this barrier. I think we have enough vocabulary in our hands to start practicing it. If you we start using words that our circle doesn't understand - it will fail the purpose, right? A self-contradicting prophesy of sorts. So, forget about vocab lessons, practice the essence.
A profound concept in this book had been about three stages of our relation to others: Emotional Slavery --> Being Obnoxious --> Emotional Liberation. I think in Indian context we all live in Emotional Slavery in relationship to our parents. And it is destroying families like a termite.
Some favourites:
"Observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence."
"If we don't value our needs, others may not either."
"Intellectual understanding blocks empathy." [One of my sins.]
"There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure about you."
shermreads's review against another edition
5.0
for all of it's quirks and rather awkward proposed responses, I really really appreciated this book. as someone who grew up valorizing martyrdom and has finally hit a wall at my Big Age, it helped me realise that there are ways to give, to ask without feeling burnt out? and I can't overstate how much I needed to realise that. That being said, I resonate with a lot of the concerns of the real-world applicability of this framework voiced by other readers – I too, can't imagine Putin try to NVC his way through explaining nuclear weapons testing.
anyway, now that I'm trying to put it all into practice, it's led to the hilarious and increasingly frequent situation in my relationship where my partner catches me staring at him, asks what's up and all I can say is: "I can't figure out how to say this in a non-violent way."
anyway, now that I'm trying to put it all into practice, it's led to the hilarious and increasingly frequent situation in my relationship where my partner catches me staring at him, asks what's up and all I can say is: "I can't figure out how to say this in a non-violent way."
shopping12's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
ina_bo's review
5.0
Perhaps one of the best books on intrapersonal communication. Marshall offers a 4-step guide to express one's feelings and thoughts in a harmless way. I wish we studied books like this at school.
jenniferkay's review against another edition
I had too much homework reading to keep up with this book as well, but I do plan to finish it at some point. It came highly recommended to me.
cristinahawke's review against another edition
5.0
As a bonus--if you like this book, look up the Nonviolent Communication Podcast. The audio quality is awful at times, but it's very worth listening to. It gives more context than the book and I found it really helped flesh out the concepts for me.
benyoda95's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
I listen to this once a year. It is a great reminder about communicating clearly and kindly.