Translate your opinion into an observation for more connection with others! This was one of the major eye-openers for me in the process of learning NVC – especially when I wanted to address something important with someone.
Watch the video to learn how to do this.
Give your reaction in the comment section underneath!
Hi Marianne, Thanks for some amazing videos. I’m sharing a few of them with my university students who are learning NVC. One comment I have about this video is the use of the word “opinion” as the same as “judgment”. I personally make a distinction between judgment (which can universalize someone’s evaluation), observation, and opinion. To me, an opinion is “I like…..” or “I don’t like….” So I will often tell students to turn their judgments into opinions. For example, instead of saying “Your hair looks really fantastic”, consider saying “I like the way you styled your hair today”. While many trainers use evaluations and judgments interchangeably, they also use sub-category words that represent judgments like: labels, comparisons, analysis, psychoanalysis, perceptions, and interpretations. While you could say an opinion is a judgment, the person saying it usually owns it as their opinion. I do think opinions is a category unto itself and I don’t discourage it. Just my opinion… :~)
I fully agree Christine!! And thanks for sharing my videos with your students!
Hello!
I enjoyed this video. It’s reallu hard for me sometimes to see the observable action, because the emotions that whatever action triggered in me seem to overshadow it.
How does one take a step back to see the observation when the emotions are so strong? I really liked the reminder that observable things are things that a camera could capture.
Thank you very much for this upload!
Hi Nicole, in that case I would listen to your feelings first! You could even express them, as long as they are pure feelings and not pseudofeelings. Google my video about that if you don’t know what those are. So you could say:
I feel disappointed! There is really a sadness in me..my chest hurts…And after a while go to the observation: it has something to do with what you said..maybe it was that sentence about X..
Get it?
Very, very useful video! I find often, when I’m upset with someone, I speak automatically from arrogance and righteousness with judgements. This video is an inspiringly clear wake-up out of that habit into reality: What literally happened? I intend to cultivate this in a big way this week to shift out of that destructive pattern. Thank you!
Hi Gloria, so happy to hear it was helping you. Also I LOVE how you make yourself the request of cultivating the habit this very week! I hope you can be soft with yourself if it’s not entirely changed within these 7 days, my experience is it takes a few months. And you would also want to express your need, but Ill soon have a video ready about that too 🙂
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