The One You Feed - Oren Jay Sofer on Mindful Communication

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

Oren Jay Sofer leads retreats and workshops on mindful communication and meditation at retreat centers and educational facilities around the United States.  He is the founder of Next Step Dharma and Mindful Healthcare and he holds a degree in Comparative Religion from Columbia University. In this episode, he and Eric discuss his new book, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication. In it, you’ll learn an updated model on how to skillfully communicate – especially in difficult situations. Practical strategies and helpful perspectives are what you’ll get in this episode. Need help with completing your goals in 2019? The One You Feed Transformation Program can help you accomplish your goals this year.In This Interview, Oren Jay Sofer and I Discuss…His book, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent CommunicationThat we’re not stuck, our minds can learn and it depends on the choices we make moment to momentThe three steps to create effective conversationLead with PresenceCome from Curiosity and CareFocus on What MattersHow most people live with fragmented attention and it takes training to be fully present with another personThat you can feel whether a person is fully present with you or notBringing awareness and attention to the body to come into the present moment (the body is always in the present moment)Bodily sensations happen in the present momentThe power of pausingHow our rate of speech is connected to our nervous systemThat when we are present, we have a lot more choicesThat our intention shapes our verbal and non-verbal communicationsThe intention to understandThe intention of kindness and careHow you can practice kindness to someone you don’t likeKindness can be about protecting your own heartThe phrase “Let me see if I’ve got it…”Listening for what matters to the other person – what do they need?The difference between needs and strategiesThe Nonviolent Communication ModelObservations, Feelings, Needs, RequestsCommunicating in the workplaceOren Jay Sofer LinksOrenJaySofer.comFacebookTwitterInstagramSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A lot of our struggles interpersonally and suffering relationally in life is due to reacting to things that aren't actually there. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor,

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Our guest on this episode is Oren J. Sofer, who leads retreats and workshops on mindful communication and meditation at retreat centers and educational settings around the United States. Oren holds a degree in comparative religion from Columbia University and is the founder of Next Step Dharma and Mindful Healthcare. Today, Eric and Oren discuss his book, Say What You Mean, A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication. Hi, Oren. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Eric. I'm happy to have you back on. You and I first talked in a joint interview

we did with you and Dan Harris. It's been quite some time ago. So we've got you back to discuss your new book, which is called Say What You Mean, A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication. And I'm looking forward to getting into that. I know lots of listeners, well, I guess really everybody needs help in communicating better, but I know this is an area of interest for our listeners. So we'll head there in a second, but let's start like we always do with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter, and he says, In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, love. And there's a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandmother stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandfather. She says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, thanks so much, Eric. It's actually, it's an old Cherokee legend that I really love. We were talking earlier, I'm teaching a meditation retreat right now, and I'm giving a talk tomorrow. And that very parable is going to be one of the organizing

themes for the talk. So it's very near and dear to my heart. You know, there are a couple of things that it means to me and how it applies in my life. It's really good news because it means that we're not stuck. Our minds can learn and it depends on the choices that we make from moment to moment. And, you know, modern neuroscience has borne this out that the property of neuroplasticity means that the function and the shape of our brains can actually change through repeated experience. So the more you do something, the better you get at it. And that's the feeding the wolf. So I think it's really good news for us. The, the other thing about it for me, it's like, if I fall short of my expectations in some way, you know, I was sitting in a meeting the other

day and I had a lot on my plate that day. So I was wanting the meeting to go as quickly as possible. And so I was a little bit more tense than I, than I usually am or like to be. And at the end of the meeting, I kind of regretted, you know, that I was not more relaxed and patient in the flow of the meeting. And instead of beating myself up, like instead of getting down on myself or judging myself, this perspective of the two wolves helps me to recognize, oh, okay, well, for the last hour or two, I was feeding the wolf that is not helpful in my life. So now I see that and I can do it differently. So it takes it out of the personal. It's not like something about me personally. It's just a matter of the choices that I make. And that, that gives me a lot of hope for not only

myself, but for us as a species and being able to do things differently. Yeah. I really like that thinking of it as good news. And the other piece that I really like about the parable that I reflect on is kind of what you said that it sort of insinuates that we all have this battle. And like you said, that makes it a little bit less personal to me that it's like, you know, regardless of who we are and, and where we are in life, that, that we have our moments where things are more challenging than others. And that's just the way life is. Yeah.

And it's one of the gifts and the beauties of not only contemplative practice, but all of the wonderful things that we are learning today, like positive psychology and growth mindset, which is that we have these potentials, right? We have the potential to cause harm and be petty and small and jealous and self-centered in life. And we have the potential to learn and grow and to actually aspire to something really beautiful and realize our potential as human beings, which is so vast. And so this parable kind of points us in that direction. Indeed it does. So let's move into your book, which as I mentioned earlier,

is called say what you mean, a mindful approach to nonviolent communication. And I wanted to start by having you lay out the three steps to create effective conversation. to create effective conversation? Yeah, sure. So maybe let me just frame it first, which is that we all have experiences in life where we have conversations that go awry, where it goes south and we end up making a big mess that hopefully we can clean up later and sometimes we can't. And then we have these other experiences in life where there's some conflict or difference or disagreement or issue that we're working with, whether it's in our family or at work. And for whatever reason, we're able to actually see it through. Right. We work together. We listen to each other. We get past any disagreements or tensions and we come out the other other side often stronger in the relationship. Not only that, we often, we learn about each other. And when we can work things out, the results are often better

than had we just been working on our own. So the question is, what makes the difference, right? Like, why is it in some conversations it goes one way and in other conversations it goes another? So what a lot of my work is about is helping people to understand the conditions that create those conversations that are more meaningful and effective so that we can start to, just to go back to the parable again, we can start to feed that wolf so we can start to reinforce those conditions in ourself so that we're more likely to have the kinds of conversations and relationships that we want in ourself so that we're more likely to have the kinds of conversations and relationships that we want in our life. So what are the three steps? So I summarize the whole

process of training around this in three core steps. The first is to lead with presence. The second is to come from curiosity and care. That's about our intention. And then the third is to focus on what matters, which is about what we're paying attention to, how we're actually navigating the conversation in terms of what we say and how we listen. And each of these is its own kind of deep training. So maybe we can get into that a little bit and explore them. Yeah. Why don't we just start with lead with presence? Maybe lead us into some of what is in that training. This is one of those blazing insights to the obvious that as a colleague of mine says, that we need to be here before we can actually have a meaningful conversation. So communication is about understanding one another, whether we're trying to build a bridge or, you know, wanting to get closer in

some way as friends or, or family members, the currency of communication is meaning is understanding. And if you want to understand something, you need to actually be present. So leading with presence means that before anything else, before what we say, our agenda, how we're feeling, what we want from the other person, before any of that, we just show up. Can we actually just be present with one another? That's the foundation. If we can't do that, then we're on automatic. We're just running on habit and chances are those habits aren't going to be serving us as well as if we were really present and had access to our wisdom, the skills that we've learned, and our best intentions. So the challenge here is that,

you know, we live in a society that's incredibly fast-paced, that's disembodied, where, you know, so much of our time is focused on screens, the intellect, the future. And because of the pace of our lives and the presence of technology, most people are living with a kind of fragmented attention where it's very difficult to focus and settle the mind on any one thing. So leading with presence actually takes training to be able to learn how to stay really grounded and clear and embodied with another human being in a conversation. And so an obvious training for being more presence would be mindfulness. What other types of trainings or what other types of tools help us to be more present? You've got principles that you scatter throughout the book. And one of them is that presence lays the ground for connection. So what are some tools for us to stay more present?

Let me speak to that principle first, and then I'll, and then I'll offer a few really practical tips for, for bringing this into our lives. We can feel it when someone's really present or not, right? If we can be talking to someone and they can be looking us right in the eyes and we can tell if their mind is somewhere else, if they're not really listening and the reverse, if someone's really giving us their full attention, if they're actually present, it says something powerful, right? It says like, you're important to me. I'm actually willing to give you my time right now. And so that's what lays the ground for connection. It's one of the most important conditions for having an effective conversation. A few ways to do this in terms of mindfulness, we can bring some awareness, some attention into our body because the body is always

in the present moment. The mind can go into the past and the future. It can travel a thousand miles in a split second. But when you're aware of a sensation in the body for that moment, you're present because sensations don't exist in the past or the future. So one way to lead with presence is in a conversation, if you can just bring a little bit of attention into your body, you just feel the weight of your body or your hands or the contact between your bottom and the chair if you're sitting or your feet on the floor, anything like that will start to help us to be more present in a conversation. So that's one way to explore it. I was just going to ask about that because I read that in the book and I thought a little bit about it. And it occurs to me that being present to conversation is something that I wrestle with often because I am in a lot of conversations, both for interviews with coaching clients, lots of different things.

And sometimes I find if I try and notice myself being more present, I'm suddenly having trouble paying attention to what is being said to me. Yeah, it's a very common thing that happens at first. And it feels like our attention starts flipping back and forth from the other person to ourself. So there's a difference between being present and becoming self-conscious, right? Getting kind of caught up or wrapped up in our own thoughts or experience. And what we're going for here is a very natural state of awareness where we're present, but we're also oriented to our environment. So this is the kind of feeling you have when, say, you're out for a walk and maybe it's just rained and then it's cleared and the sun's come

out and it's really the air is fresh and clear. And, you know, maybe you're walking outside in a natural setting and everything feels vibrant and alive and we can feel our body and all of our senses are alert. And we're also really connected to the environment around us. We're taking everything in. being present and connected to myself rather than blocking out my surroundings actually puts me more deeply in touch with the world around me. That's the kind of presence we're going for. And as I said, it's a very natural state for human beings. Our nervous systems are designed to be balanced and oriented to our environment. But as I was saying before, the pace and structure of modern civilization takes us out of that. So we need to recover that. We need to learn how to return to it more and more. And over time, that capacity grows and becomes much more familiar to be able to kind

of rest in a state of feeling connected to yourself, but also in touch with and open to what's happening with someone else or around us. So there are two more really accessible tools that I want to offer to everyone for leading with presence. One of these is just pausing. So it doesn't need to be a long pause, just like I took there, just half a breath. And what that does is it gives us a moment to gather our attention, to let our thoughts collect, to center ourselves. So it can be very powerful to just pause for a moment. And if it's a heated conversation where you don't want to cede ground to the other person, you can insert a pause by actually saying something like, I think I need a moment to gather my thoughts, or I want to take that in for a sec, hang on, or just give me a second. I want to think about that. And it signals to the other person socially, I'm taking in what you said, and I really want to respond in a way that's going to be helpful and careful. So pausing is one. Another really powerful way to lead with presence is to begin to explore the pace of our speech. So there's so much tied up in this. I'll just touch on a few things. But number one, we speak with our breath and our breath is tied to our nervous system.

system. So any modulation in the pace of our speech automatically starts to affect our nervous system. So if we're getting caught up or over activated or losing our cool in a conversation, if we dial the pace of our speech back a little bit, that can help us to start to self-regulate so that we don't lose our cool. The other thing that does is obviously without making it over exaggerated, it has to be natural. But when we take our time with our words, it communicates a sense of weight and a certain kind of power in what we're saying that the implicit messages, I'm confident that what I have to say is worthwhile. And so I'm going to take my time and sharing it because I think it's going to be valuable or a contribution to you in some way. So playing with the pace of our speech can help us to lead with presence and settle. It can also really go a long way to inviting the listener's attention to be more focused and available for us. I think that my editor, Chris, would love to hear me take more pauses and speak more slowly

instead of stammering over sentences as I try and think of the next thing to say. But one of the things that you point out as you go through all this is you have a lot of practices in the book, and you often recommend that people take these out for a spin, either in low stakes conversations, or specifically, if they have somebody they can be working with on this to actually practice with someone who sort of knows they're practicing in a sense, instead of trying to bring these things into high stakes conversations, and bring these skills that we don't really have yet to the table. Yeah, it's a really important principle. I call it, sometimes I call it the five pound weight principle or the shallow end of the pool principle. And the idea here is, you know,

like if you're training, you don't start with a hundred pound weight. If you're learning to swim, you don't, you don't jump in the ocean. You start in the shallow end of the pool, you build capacity where it's easy. And so the hard part is that we're all communicating all the time and we need these skills like yesterday. It's like difficult conversations don't schedule themselves. Like I think I'll wait till Friday to have, you know, to show up in your face that there's this big blowout at work. It's like, oh my God, here I am. I'm stuck. I'm going to use whatever I can. So we do the best we can. And at the same time, our communication patterns are learned early in life. So they get set and they get set in our

mind and they get set in our nervous system. So what that means is it's kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's going to take time to shift them because we're each carrying you know at least a few decades couple few decades of conditioning in our communication and yet precisely because they are formed shaped and learned if we're diligent and we actually give ourselves a chance and take the time, we can relearn, reshape them. So the best way to do that is by having very concerted periods of practice, actually training ourself to listen and speak and be present in different ways. And so the easiest way to do that is where you're not under a lot of pressure, where you can actually make mistakes and learn from them,

whether it's with a good friend or just kind of doing it on the sly when you're just hanging out with people and it doesn't matter as much. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal?

The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too?

Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You've got another principle in this section of the book that I think is really useful for what we're talking about and speaks to a broader idea, which is the more aware we are, the more choice we have.

In terms of leading with presence, right, we're talking about like, well, why should I do that? And we've hit on a few of these points. So like, well, you've got to be here first if you want to understand something. It sends a message to the other person that you actually are interested enough to listen to them, which is really important for a conversation. you mentioned is kind of the crux, which is that when we are present, we have a lot more choice. And that means we have access to our power. If we are not present, like our friend Dan Harris says, you know, we're getting yanked around by our thoughts and our impulses and our habits. So the more aware we are, if we can actually bring this quality of presence into our conversations and relationships. We can steer, we can navigate, we can make choices moment to moment about how do I want to respond? You know, just think about how much grief we could have each saved ourselves had we been able to pause and hold our tongue for just two or three seconds, or had we been able to wait instead of hitting send on that email?

Right? So that's the choice factor is huge in terms of the quality of our relationships and the effectiveness we have in our lives. Exactly. So let's move into the second step, which is to come from curiosity and care. This is huge. This is where we really start to get into some of the mystery of communication because it is really mysterious, this capacity that we have as human beings to send and receive messages and basically share our internal worlds with one another. So, so much of communication is actually not in the words that we say. And there have been a number of different studies done by linguists and psychologists. And depending on the context, the percentages vary, but a huge amount of the

message that we send and receive in communication is nonverbal. It's not the words, it's the tone of voice, the body language, the facial expressions. So what this means is that you can be using the most kind of clear and precise, we could even say like skillful or correct communication phrases and sentences. But if you're coming from the wrong place inside, like if you're really just trying to pull one on, pull one over on this person or manipulate the situation or blame someone and you polish it all up with nice words, they're still going to feel that, you know, this, it's still going to come across. they're still going to feel that, you know, this, it's still going to come across.

So the thing that's shaping our nonverbal communication primarily is our intention, where we're coming from inside. So this is, this is the key to skillful communication or one of the main keys, which is that it's not about what we say, it's about where we're coming from. And then the quality of understanding that we're able to create. So two of the most powerful intentions that we can have in a conversation are number one, the intention to understand just the very simple, basic willingness to have an open mind and listen in the similar way to being present, that transforms the whole atmosphere of a conversation. The second quality is this quality of care or kindness. You know, when things are tense, when we're at each other's throats or we've hurt one another in some way or we're frustrated or irritated, you know, just a few words of kindness or just a gesture of warmth can go such a long way

to shifting the whole tone of a conversation and inviting someone back in. I keep coming back to the wolf analogy, like inviting someone back in to that good wolf, to that sense of like, hey, you know, like we don't have to do it this way. We have a potential as human beings to relate in a different way. That piece right there about bringing back some element of care, it makes me think of a phrase from another communication book that I love. It's called Crucial Conversations. But it talks about the idea that without a sense of safety, no real useful conversation can occur. And sometimes all that's needed for safety is just a reminder like, I care.

Right. Or I'm listening. Either of those, right? Like I want to understand where you're coming from. And, you know, these two first principles, these two first steps of lead with presence and come from curiosity and care very much are about creating those conditions of safety. We're present, we're here with one another, we're actually willing to listen. And this quality of care, I want to be really clear about it because it's easy to listen to that and go like, well, what if I don't care about this person? You know, like I don't, I don't particularly like everyone in my life. I have my preferences, you know, that's okay. It doesn't mean we have to like everyone. What it means is that, um, we are connected to the quality of basic human warmth in our own heart. I don't have to

like someone to treat them with kindness. It's actually about taking care of my own heart and mind and not letting my consciousness move into hatred and jealousy or resentment because first and foremost that's going to mess up my own mind and my own day so if i can stay connected to what i care about my own values of kindness and respect and collaboration and then that's going to inform how I show up in the conversation. And this is really powerful. And one of the stories that I tell in the book is, I'll just summarize it briefly here so we can get into some of the other tools, but this amazing story of an African-American musician named Daryl Davis, who through the power of his genuine intention to understand and show kindness and respect in conversations with members of the KKK

from Southern Maryland, you know, 40 or 50 members of the organization left based on their relationships with him through the power of conversation. And the main tool that he was using was his, his intention, his willingness to treat them with kindness and respect and be genuinely curious. And through the force of that, through the force of who he was and how he related, they started to actually respect him and recognize this person, you know, is actually showing up in a, in a powerful way. Some of my ideas might not be the, what I thought they were. So what are some tools or practices for coming from curiosity and care? Yeah. So, um, one of the most accessible that, that I like to share with people is, uh, is

actually a short phrase that both reminds us because some of this, a lot of this is about just remembering, right? It's about just remembering like, Oh, like, let me actually listen to this person. You know, like, let me see, let me try to actually understand where they're coming from. Like once we remember that idea, we can get curious, we can start to actually connect. So one of the ways of doing that is by using a short phrase like, let me see if I'm following you, or I want to make sure I'm still with you, or let me see if I've got it, or I'd really like to understand where you're coming from. So saying something like that reminds us of our intention and it also signals to the other person that we're

trying to understand. So that's one very accessible way because we don't need a whole lot of tools. We all know how to get curious. It's innate, the desire to learn as human beings. We just have to remember it in a conversation. So that's one way of doing it. Let me share one other really important one, which is kind of at the heart of this work. One of the core premises and perspectives of nonviolent communication, which is the communication technique that's at the core of some of what I teach, comes out of humanistic psychology, out of the work of Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, which is this idea that part of what makes us human is that we share certain universal fundamental needs and that all of our behavior, all of our words, our actions can be understood

as an attempt to meet a need, some basic need. So one way to get curious is to listen in this particular way, is to try to listen for what matters to this person. What do they actually need? What's important to this person? And this really allows us to start to connect, particularly when we disagree, because we can get down to a deeper level where we actually start to see what we have in common, which is our shared human needs. Right. And I think, you know, this idea of coming from curiosity is so important because very often, particularly in relationships with people we know well, we sort of think we know exactly why somebody is saying something, right? We sort of, we're reading motivation into everything that is being said. But if we can

become a little bit more curious and open that back up instead of assuming I know why they're doing this, but to your point, to be curious about what they're saying and why, and what is it that they need underneath that? I think that if we can suspend that judgment a little bit and look at the question anew, it can be really helpful. You're pointing to something really, really key here, Eric, I think, which is that a lot of our conflicts, a lot of our struggles interpersonally and suffering relationally in life is due to reacting to things that aren't actually there. Where we're making interpretations, jumping to conclusions, as you said, reading motivations into someone else without actually checking it out. And so there's a certain quality of humility that's required here to, uh, to recognize maybe I don't know, you know, and the, the, the key here is, okay,

so then you've got an idea like, okay, this person's just trying to get their way. Okay. Let me have an open mind. Let me see. And you ask into it and it's like, oh, they are just trying to get their way. So then it's about this deeper kind of listening to really be curious to see, well, can I, can I relate to that? Have I ever tried to just get my way in life? Well, yeah, I do that sometimes, you know, oh, I can relate to that. Like there, they must be really concerned about something. They must care really deeply about this. This must be really important to them where we're trying to put ourselves in the other person's shoes and see things from their perspective. And that doesn't mean that we agree with them or their choices. It just means that we see their humanity. Right. I think this might be a good time for us to talk a little bit about

needs and strategies, because I think that this is a place that we often get confused both in what we're doing but also with what someone else is doing can you share with me the difference or share with us the difference between needs and strategies yeah yeah it's it's it's a it's a key concept that that's necessary to really be able to use these tools. So the idea here is that as human beings, everything that we do, our choices, our behaviors, you and I talking today on this podcast, everyone who's listening right now, these are strategies. These are about what we want. They're ideas. our strategies. These are about what we want. They're ideas. They're our best guess at what might work for us to get something that's more important, right? So our strategies are what we

want. Our needs are why we want it at the deeper level, what we think it's going to give us, what actually matters to us that we're trying to fulfill on some deeper level in life. So whether it's, well, I'm going to the gym because I want to feel good. I want to be healthy. The gym is the strategy. The health and the well-being is the need. The implications of this are actually quite profound in our lives. So in terms of our own choices and behavior, when we are not aware of the distinction between our strategies and our needs, we're bound to continue repeating the same behavior without knowing why. was driving home and reached for a cigarette and stopped and said, okay, let's see if this stuff is actually true. Then my wanting to light up a cigarette and have a smoke is a strategy to meet some needs. All right, well, what needs do I have? And they thought about it and realized I want to

relax. You know, I want to take a break, take my mind off things. And in that moment they saw totally clearly I've got way better ways to relax and take my mind off things than destroying my health by smoking. And they stopped smoking. Right. Yeah. My girlfriend gives an example of this about, you know, where she used to eat emotionally and she, she thought, you know, that what she wanted was a cupcake. She's like, I want a cupcake. I want a cupcake. But when she realized that what was happening was deeper than that, that it was a need for emotional soothing, she suddenly went, oh, there's lots of ways to meet this need. When I think it's the cupcake, the only thing that will suffice is the cupcake.

But when I realized what it is at a deeper level, there's lots of ways, there's lots of strategies to use our terminology here. There's lots of strategies I can use to meet that need. Exactly. And so that in our own life, that gives us a lot more choice. And then relationally, in terms of our conflicts, the understanding here is that our conflicts tend to happen at the level of our strategies. I want this and you want that. And then if we only stay at that level We don't get anywhere. We just keep butting heads because my strategy and your strategy don't match But if we can if we can shift down a level below those positions to the deeper Concerns objectives or needs or values like what's this about for you? Why do you want this thing?

So important so so badly then we can start to actually not only understand each other, but it opens up that whole playing field to see, well, maybe there are other strategies that we can find that might work for both of us. Exactly. So this is, yeah, so this is, this is where the whole field of collaboration and mediation and the possibility of a win-win comes in. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend

wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no really yeah no really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's head to step three, which is to focus on what matters. So we get sidetracked in conversations all the time by getting caught up in the petty stuff, arguing about things that don't really matter, focusing on our judgments of one another, our beliefs, our interpretations. we want to learn to train our attention to be able to parse out in any, not only in a situation, but moment to moment in a conversation, like what's needed right now. And so this is the,

this is the whole training of the kind of flow and the dance of communication at the core. It means this, this key element we've been talking about, which is what are the basic needs? What's the objective here? What matters? That's the most important aspect of focusing on what matters is identifying that for oneself and for someone else. But then there's a whole host of other things that matter in a conversation. Like sometimes someone's got a lot of emotions and they really want to be heard. You know, most of the time when we speak, it's because we want to be listened to.

We want to be heard and understood. So in a conversation, you know, if you and I are trying to deal with something and you're telling me like, Oren, you know, when this happened, this was really upsetting for me and I can't believe you did that. And, you know, like, you know, WTF. man, I can't believe you did that. And you know, like, you know, WTF. And I respond by giving you my whole story about what was going on and why, instead of actually just hearing you and being like, Oh my God, Eric, it sounds like that totally didn't work for you. It really messed up your whole flow. Yeah, I get that. Like in that moment, what's most important is not my story. It's actually giving you the experience of feeling heard. So that's just one example of focusing on what matters is it's learning to attune in a conversation to just what's needed in each moment.

And so what are some other examples of that? Other examples are sometimes what's mattered is showing up and listening, giving the other person the relief of feeling heard. Sometimes what's most important is speaking up for ourselves and for our own integrity or in order for us to be heard. Sometimes what's important is clarifying what actually happened, right? Being able to make a clear observation. So this is one of the four components of the nonviolent communication model, which maybe we can go through a little bit, which is this method of training our attention to focus on areas of our relationships and conversations that make it easier to understand one another and actually work together. So instead of our interpretations and judgments about what happened, just getting clear about the specific data that we are responding to in our environment, being able to make a clear observation. And sometimes in a conflict, we have different data that we're responding to,

and what's important is actually clarifying, I thought this was supposed to happen. No, I understood it was going to be this way. And the whole thing is just a misunderstanding about the data. So clarifying the observations, what actually happened can be what's most important in a given moment. I already touched on the second element of our emotions, our feelings. So something happened, that's an observation. How do I feel about it? Really being able to make space for our experience as a human being for the emotions and honoring that that's just part of how

we're built. It's not a problem. It doesn't mean anything about us or the other person. It's just this way our body and mind sends us information and signals about our environment. And then most importantly, connecting those feelings to why, what matters, what are the needs. And this is a key difference between this particular model and a lot of other models is that our emotions aren't about what other people do or say. That's a very disempowered position to say, like, I feel upset because you did this. You've got all the power if you can make me feel something. Instead, the understanding is that our emotions are actually about our own needs, what matters to us. And if, if, you know, if we just step back and

consider it, it actually makes a lot of sense. It's like, if we didn't care about something, we wouldn't be feeling any emotions about it. We only feel emotions about things that matter to us. So our emotions are a reflection of our deeper needs. So what's actually important. And then the last component is about making a request, which is where do we go from here? Like what's going to be useful right now in this moment to move the conversation forward? of the nonviolent communication model. So observations, feelings, needs, and requests. And so observations are actually what we see happen. It's what we're responding to in our environments, you know, what we see or hear around us. And it's easier said than done.

You know, a lot of times we think in terms of judgments, like that was the best movie ever or stop being so rude. You're being disrespectful. Those are the kinds of perceptions that we tend to live in in our own mind and how we tend to speak to one another. And if we start to examine it, we see, okay, well, what's actually, what's, what's more true? Is it more true to say you're being rude or to say that you spoke to me in a way that I didn't enjoy, that didn't meet my need for respect? You know, so clearly owning, owning the experience and relating it to my own values and standards is actually more authentic and more true. And the value of this is that there's nothing to argue with. If I come to you and I say like, you know, what you did the other day was so rude and disrespectful. We're already in an argument. You're on the defensive. I'm judging

you. You've got to stand up for yourself. Whereas if I come to you and I say to someone, I say, you know, the way that went down the other day really didn't work for me. I felt I felt confused. I felt shocked and to be honest, a little bit upset because it didn't meet my needs for respect and just how I liked how I like to live my life in terms of knowing we're on the same page. There's nothing to argue with there in terms of I'm expressing my experience to you. And then I might follow that up with at the end, very important. I want to make a request. I want to let the other person know, why am I saying this to you? What do I want from you right now? And so that request might be like, you know, could you tell me what was going on for you when that happened? I really would like to understand more. Or if I'm wanting to be understood, I might

ask for the other person to just listen and try to offer some understanding. You know, could you understand why I might react that way, where I'm coming from here? So in what you're describing, I'm stating sort of what I felt, kind of what my need was and what my request was. kind of what my need was and what my request was. Yeah. And the thing that's tricky about this is that, and this is one of the most common pitfalls of nonviolent communication is that it's both a strength and a weakness. So the strength is that we've got this really clear, simple form, a structure. It's like, okay, observation, feeling, need, request. What happened? How do I feel about it? Why? What would I like to have happen next? That's like super helpful to be able to break things down. Now, the danger there is that we start to speak in ways that are formulaic

and robotic. And then other people are like, dude, will you just say what's going on for you instead of trying to be so convoluted about it? So one of the things I like to say is that nonviolent communication is a skeleton. It's a structure. It's not a script. of your experience internally so that we can shift from a certain kind of consciousness, a certain way of seeing that's habitual and conditioned where we're blaming other people when our needs aren't met. That is a counterproductive suicidal strategy. If I want somebody to do something differently, how many people respond to blame

and judgment and criticism by saying, oh, thank you for educating and enlightening me. I would be delighted to change my behavior for you. It doesn't happen that way. It's much more likely that someone's going to be responsive to us if instead of blaming them, we just say, yo, this didn't really work for me. Here's why. So that's the shift. It's very simple when I put it that way. But this pattern of blaming people when our needs aren't met, when they do something we don't like, goes very deep. So this is why we talk about nonviolent communication as an awareness practice. It's actually about shifting our consciousness, our perspective. And we use those steps, those tools to really own what's going on for us inside. So we're clear about how

we're feeling, what matters to us. And then the request, instead of being a demand, you must do this. The request is an open door. It's an invitation to explore something together and say, here's one idea. What do you think about this? With the observation piece that we were talking about, I think the understanding that I have here is to describe something that's observable, not a judgment. As clear and specific and neutral, nonjudgmental as possible it's like just the data we want to give someone a reference point basically a context for the conversation and so then here's this observation and again I'm trying to make a formula out of this but but I I'm well I'm not I'm trying to actually just do a very quick education on a more complex, but here's the observation or here's the data. And then,

and then, um, I felt this as a result of that, or to be, to be more specific, I felt this in relation, there's this observation and my need together create this feeling. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so the feeling part is interesting because it really depends on the context whether or not that's going to be useful to share. Right. Because, again, it's it's it's really important to keep in mind the culture of your workplace, feelings and emotions might not be welcome to discuss. But we can still talk about what matters. We can still talk about our objectives, our goals, how we like to work together, those sorts of things. So whether or not we include the feelings really depends on the context. The key is, look, here's what's happened. Maybe here's how I feel about it. And then here, look, here's what's happened. Maybe here's

how I feel about it. And then here's why that's the most important piece. Here's what, here's what's important to me. Here's why this worked or why this didn't work. We, we, we, we want to communicate to the other person, something that helps them to understand where we're coming from in a way that makes sense to them. That says, this is, it's not about, you know, blaming them. It's about saying, look, you know, we all, this is probably something that we all value. So if it's a workplace, it's like, you know, um, I really like to have all the information before I start a project so that I can use my time as efficiently as possible. Who's going to argue with that? Right. It's like, so, you know, when, so when you emailed me two days into the project and said, oh, by the way,

it also needs to do this, you know, that was kind of a little frustrating for me. And, and then we might come to the request and then that's about being clear. Okay. What's our goal in having this conversation? Are we trying to understand and take apart what happened? Are we trying to make an agreement for how to do it differently next time? Or are we just wanting some sense of like, you know, I just want you to understand the impact this had on me. That would be really meaningful if you could hear that. And each of those is going to be a slightly different conversation. So being clear, going into the conversation about, look, what's my ultimate aim here? What's my objective? Am I wanting to do

things differently in the future? Am I wanting understanding? Am I wanting information from them? Is it all of the above? And then if so, can I take those one step at a time? Totally makes sense. Well, we have run out of time here and you and I are going to talk a little bit more in the post-show conversation about the four habitual ways of responding to conflict. And listeners, if you're interested in that, you can get access to the post-show conversations by going to oneufeed.net slash support and becoming a member. Oren, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. The book is really good, really helpful.

And I feel like we really just scratched the surface here. So I hope listeners will investigate more. Yeah. Thanks so much, Eric. It's, it's been great to be on the show and, you know, just kind of like parting words to everyone who's listening. Um, this stuff will change your life and it doesn't take a lot, you know, one small shift in your communication patterns because we rely on it so much will have an effect in every area and every relationship on your life. So whether or not you follow up and check out the book, take one thing that you've heard on the podcast today that makes sense to you and use it, put it into practice. That is great advice. Thanks so much, Oren. My pleasure, Eric. Okay. Take care. Bye.

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