Put on your giraffe ears

"When all else fails, remember to just put on your Giraffe Ears!"

NVC (Non-violent Communication aka Compassionate Communication aka Collaborative Communication) changed my life by giving me tools to better understand myself and others, increasing my resilience, and making me much easier to live with. This includes taming my inner self-talk and my relationships with others.

Whenever I can, I share tools, games, pieces of NVC or at least the spirit of NVC in what time I have available. My goal is to pass on something that has been extremely life changing for myself. Once I heard the paradigm of Giraffe/Jackal, or Giraffe ears, the analogy really stuck with me. Sometimes, most of the time, no matter what, no matter how pissed off, I mean irritated, I start to get, I can usually remember to put on my "Giraffe Ears".

For more information about NVC, please look here. They have lots of great content and can also put you in contact with a certified trainer in your area that may be currently holding classes. They have posted the first Chapter of the NVC book here. I have attended multiple NVC workshops, helped teach multiple NVC workshops with my mentors as an assistant and have taught multiple group NVC introductory sessions locally here in Seattle. I am also host NVC Practice groups in north Seattle.

Learning NVC was quite a challenge for me as I am wired to be very black and white in my thinking, and that there is ONE RIGHT WAY to do something, and emotions are something to put up with and try to shut down and not enjoy. Beginning with the first workshop, which I took about 8 years ago, and the subsequent classes, what I have learned has been greatly beneficial for me and my internal mental state as well as my relationship with those around me. It has greatly improved the relationship I have with myself! It gave me basic tools I could use to understand my values, needs and feelings better, and as I become more aware of things, my tool kit gets better.