Giraffe and Jackal

When I took my first intermediate series for NVC, I had enough practice with my PAUSE button, that I now had internal time to reflect on what was going on. In the next series I learned the language of Giraffe/Jackal, it helped a great deal with my interactions with others. This is the number one tool I like to use.

Giraffe is the language of Feelings and Needs, the language of Heart, the language of Requests. That we try to remember and understand during our interaction with others when we have our Giraffe Ears on, that we are all just trying to get our needs met, and fumbling best we can with what our feelings are telling us, using less-than-efficent strategies to get those needs met.

The giraffe looks through the anger and fear and irritation being sprayed at us and sees the unmet needs and has curiosity as to what’s really going on behind the event and looks for the feelings and that points to the needs.

Today my desk has a giraffe and jackal on it where I can see them often as a reminder. And, most of the time I may not practice all the typical NVC points, but I do mentally put on my giraffe ears, especially if I am going to be in an environment where I know I will get triggered, or be prone to reacting instead of responding as I would like.

Giraffe ears can be internal facing and external facing, just like that cranky jackal's ears. When I put on my giraffe ears, I set my intention on how I want to show up by thinking "what is the real long term goal here for me?" For example, a challenging person (who I want to be in communication with) is coming for a visit. Is my goal to correct this person every time they say something I don't agree with, that isn't really important to what is currently going on? With my focus being "Giraffe" I take the long, far view, and in this case, it would be to have a good time hanging out and having an emotionally successful visit for both of us . So the giraffe view helps me over-look comments about current events that really have no need for a response nor a bearing on our relationship.