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Trainer tip: Do you get into “right fights”? You know you’re in one when you’re arguing with somebody in order to be right or because you want to win. What needs do I hope to meet from winning or being right? Notice if you enter into a right fight today and shift your focus to your needs and connecting with the other person's needs.

Trainer Tip: Changing your thoughts can change the way people experience you. Just for today, see if you can notice when you have judgmental thoughts about yourself or other people. Then look to translate those thoughts into your feelings and needs. Read on for an example of how this works.

Whether its pandemics, climate change, damage to the environment or other massive challenges that humanity faces, what are we to do if we can't agree on even the most basic information and knowledge? From empathic understanding we can focus on shared, universal human needs (where there is no conflict or disagreement) underlying our perceptions, and feelings. Then we can see if there are ways we can agree on to meet those needs.

Here's a five-step 30 day practice to cultivate gratitude, using the practice of observations, needs, feelings, presence, vitality, awareness of contribution, sharing power and interdependence.

This exercise brings forth presence, awareness, and witnessing regarding what you observe. And also the inner form of experiencing: thinking, feeling, sensing, longing, and noticing any inner resistance. This exercise is designed to allow self-compassion to clear the inner space, and to help you feel it as a flow of energy, presence to the other, and bring in a more relaxed experience and more availability to vulnerability.

This article outlines a four-part transformation process to help us recognize what's giving rise to our suffering and resentment -- and transform it into more freedom, creativity, and choice.

Trainer tip: Why do NVC practitioners sometimes use the jackal as a metaphor in the NVC world? What can it teach us? Read on for more.

Trainer tip: The phrase “tragic expressions of unmet needs” is used to convey how often we do things that aren’t likely to meet our needs. It’s not bad, it’s tragic -- because it won’t help us meet our needs. Acknowledging this, we can then consider a different approach that's more likely to lead to satisfying results. Read on for three examples of where this may apply in your life.

Trainer tip: Read on for the three stages of emotional maturity. In the third stage, we integrate the first two stages. We come to realize that everyone is responsible for their own feelings, but we also recognize our role if we do something that stimulates pain in another person. We also start to value the needs of everyone, rather than just one party's needs over the other.