we can do this by making the quality of personal connection and compassion the priority of our relating. What we can do is actually reframe how we express ourselves and how we hear others. We can create an environment that focuses on being heard and understood at the actual level of our “needs awareness”. Examples in daily life are countless. For instance, when someone comments about you spending more time with your friends than them, they may be simply yearning to be nurtured, cared for and loved. How one perceives what is going on makes all the difference in the world about how the actual underlying need will be satisfied. Learning how to differentiate between our needs and the strategies we create to meet them then allows skillful strategies to emerge that are in service to our universally shared life energies. As Rosenberg would frame it-- if we are allowing our words to become conscious responses based on awareness and honest expression of what we are perceiving, feeling, and needing, we are simultaneously giving others empathic attention to what they are feeling and needing as well. As we hone our interpersonal skills to focus our attention on understanding and meeting actual needs, we then begin to connect in a realm where all persons are the same. And, as the life force within us, expressed as needs, begins to be heard, honored and uplifted, our natural compassion flows outward and the return of this energy to us in “like kind” is truly inevitable. This is an essential and profound contribution that Compassionate Communication can make to the emerging Interspiritual Age.
Elizabeth Banner (www.compassioncoach.net), M.ED., M.P.A. believes that compassion is not only our nature but a conscious choice and has dedicated her life to spiritual transformation. She is an Interfaith Minister (One Spirit Interfaith Seminary), presenter, workshop facilitator, teacher and trainer. Elizabeth enjoys teaching others how to communicate from the place of compassion in ways that are in concert with their values and serves their needs. She was formerly Director of Outreach for the New York Council of Nonviolent Communication and Co-Director of the Peer Leadership Program for the New York Center for Nonviolent Communication (www.nycnvc.org). Currently she conducts practice groups, facilitates workshops/trainings, and is a presenter in the field of compassionate communication in the New York City area. She has a private coaching and mentoring practice and continues to work in diverse environments at the highest levels of spiritual, social, corporate and political leadership. Additional link: The Center for Nonviolent Communication (www.cnvc.org).