The Basics of Non Violent Communication DVD 2 Part 2

Workshop by Marshall Rosenberg

Part 4:
Questions & Expressing
and Receiving Gratitude

This morning you made
a reference to giraffe mourning,

and that there's a different way of
saying you're sorry to someone,

and I wanted to
hear what that was.

- Ok. Let's real quick look at what
I mean by "giraffe mourning".

Think of something you did

that you wished you hadn't done.

[Laughter]

And identify...recall as best as
you can how you talked to yourself,

when you said it or did it,
whatever you did.

So, what did you do that you wished
you hadn't done after you'd done it?

And give me a sample of what you
said to yourself when you did it.

You have one in mind?

- Ok.

That I was feeling defensive,
and I criticized someone.

- So, what you did is

you said some things to another person
that you wished you hadn't done.

- Right. - Ok. And what did you say to
yourself when you did that?

- Usually, in the moment
I feel defensive with myself.

- No, I want to concretely know...
for this exercise I need to know concretely

what you say to yourself when you
behave in a way you don't like.

This is very important to answer
your question about giraffe mourning,

very important to identify what
your inner educator is saying to you.

See this?
All of us have an inner educator,

whose function is to educate us
when we are less than perfect.

Now, most of us made the mistake
of sending our inner educator off

to a brutal jackal academy
for inner educators.

And so, it's important to be conscious

of how our inner educator talks to us.
So that's what I'm asking you.

When you said what you did to your husband,
what did your inner educator...

how did your inner educator
try to educate you?

What did it say to you
about what you had done?

- In the moment or later? - Either one.

- Well, the point when I've start
to feel regret or sorry is later.

- At any point, what did you say to
yourself about what you had done?

- Ok. I said I'm a bad person...

- Now, that's enough.

Your inner educator tries to
educate you through penitence.

Through making you hate yourself
for what you've done.

It uses language that implies there's
such a thing as a bad person.

All right. Now, if you apologize
out of that energy, that's jackal.

Any apology that comes out of thinking
you did something wrong

is not going to be good for you
or the other person.

You with me so far?

- I know it feels bad. - Yeah. It feels bad.

And I really want you to
feel bad in this situation,

but I want you to feel sweet bad.

A sweet bad that will help you learn
from this without hating yourself.

When you have a thought in your head that
you're a bad person, that's ugly bad.

That's a punitive bad.

That will first
make it hard to learn.

And even if you do learn,
it's out of self-hatred,

so whatever changes you make
are at great cost.

So, that's your inner educator.

That was your inner
educator speaking to you

when it said you're a bad person.

Now, we've been learning today

that all judgements are
expressions of needs, right?

So, your inner educator means well.

It really means well.
It wants you to learn from this

in a way that will serve life.

It means well,
it's just its language that sucks. Ok?

So we don't want to hear what the
inner educator thinks about us.

We want to hear the need
that isn't getting met,

that it's trying to call
to our attention.

So, what need is your inner educator
trying to bring to your attention

that you didn't meet
by how you behaved?

- Aaah... a need to...

...be in a relationship
with the other person?

- A need...in what kind of relationship?

- A mutual understanding, respectful?
- Right.

So it didn't meet your need for respecting
and understanding the other person.

- Yeah. - And how do you feel
when that need isn't met?

- Guilty. - Then you still got the bad person
image in mind. See?

You still think you're a bad...
if there's anything still going on,

that guilt comes from the judgement.

- Well, I feel separate and isolated.

But how do you feel?
What emotion do you feel about

not meeting your own needs

for understanding and respecting?

See, the guilt comes from that
image of a bad person.

What feeling comes from
not meeting your need

to respond toward this person with
respect and understanding?

- Sad.

- That's a sweet pain.

That's giraffe mourning.

So, if you say to the person

"The way I talk
to you, I feel really sad.

It doesn't meet my need for respecting
you and understanding you".

You see? There's no image in
there that I'm a bad person.

I'm sad.

I didn't meet my own need for respecting
and understanding you.

Check with the other person
what they'd rather hear.

Whether they'd rather hear
the giraffe mourning,

or the apology that you're
a bad person.

Yes.

- I'm having a little problem
trying to find the teeth

in this model somehow.

It seems like everything is... even though
we're talking as on a feeling level,

everything seems...
i'm interpreting, anyway...

is sort of on a mental level
as opposed to an emotional level,

and I guess I operate a lot
from my gut,

and I'm trying to get down
to that somehow.

So I need some help with it.

Basically, tell me how

I would be able to use this
technique in my daily life.

to make it not... well,
so that it's natural, you know?

It's not natural for me
to operate this way.

- The first thing I would recommend to you

is change the word
"natural" to "habitual".

- Do what?
- Change the word "natural" to "habitual".

I think this process is natural,

more natural than the way
you were trained to think.

So, Gandhi says "It's very dangerous
to mix up the words

'natural' and 'habitual'".

He says "We have been trained to be
quite habitual at communicating

in ways that are quite unnatural".

So, I can't think of a more natural
way to communicate

than to talk about
what's alive in us.

Just what we're
feeling and needing.

- When you feel like saying...if I feel like saying "no",

saying "no" seems ok to me,
but what you were saying before is that...

- What do you mean by "ok" in
"It's ok to say 'no'"?

- What do you mean by what do I mean?
We could go back and forth.

- Pardon? - We can go back and forth by
asking each other...

- Yes, so let me be more specific.

When you say "no",

I predict that by saying "no",

more often than you would like
the other person is going to react to you

in a way that isn't in your best interest.

But if you say the need behind the "no",
that's less likely to happen.

- So, then, if I understand
what you're saying,

you're trying to...the idea is to
communicate in a way that

the other person would
communicate back to you,

so that it's in my best interest?

- I'm saying the purpose of this process is
to get everybody's needs met,

and that the needs are met
by people giving willingly,

not out of any coercive motivation.

And I'm saying that when you say "no",
it gets in the way of

the likelihood that everybody's needs
are going to end up getting met.

If you say the need that keeps
you from saying "yes",

I predict there's more likelihood that
everybody's needs will end up getting met.

- If I understand
what you're saying,

you're saying: "Just express your
needs without saying the 'no'."

- I'm saying the need is a clearer expression
of what you're trying to say than "no".

You get clearer and more
connected to life

when you say the need that
keeps you from saying "yes"

than just saying "no".

And it's less likely to be
interpreted as a rejection,

as you being defensive...

To just say the "no"
by itself, I predict

is more likely to get you interpretations
that aren't in your best interest.

- Sometimes when I don't hear a "no"

I look at it as being sort of a
passive aggressive response

to something that I might want.

Someone... for example if I make an appointment
with somebody

and instead of them saying "no",
they just don't show up.

And then they give me a reason
why they don't show up.

- Yes. I'm not suggesting that.
I'm not suggesting that response.

I'm suggesting that I would have
liked that person

to have told you honestly at the time
what their need was.

I think if they had done that you wouldn't
have gotten into that situation.

They said a "yes" that wasn't so.

- Some people won't say "I'm afraid".
- Pardon me?

- Let's say if the reason is
that they are afraid to.

- That would depend a lot on what
has happened in the past to them

when they have said "no"
in whatever way they did it.

If they have not enjoyed very
empathic responses to it in the past,

then they're probably afraid to
be honest about it now.

- I see the value in all this.
I really do.

I guess it's the idea that it's
a touchy-feely type of thing

that I'm not used to working around.

- What you're trying to figure out,
if I'm understanding,

is how to really put this into a

idiom that you can use daily and
feels comfortable to you.

- That's one way of putting it.

- And so, in our training,

we first show people how
to develop the literacy

and then how to put it into their
regular language.

I had a student traveling with me,

and he wanted to give me gratitude. Ok?

He liked something I did.
I was really working the group hard.

And during the break, he said "dictator".

That was giraffe,

because he knew that I knew
what he was reacting to.

He knew i wouldn't hear a judgement.

He knew that I would guess in there
what he was feeling and needing.

So he could say that to me: "Dictator!"

So, after we really know how to
clearly identify

our feelings, needs, requests,

then we can start to put it into a language

that can connect us with people
we're speaking with.

But in this stage of the day,
after one day,

I'm still working with you on
making sure you understand

what a feeling and a need is, because
if you don't really understand that,

it's going to be hard to know how
to then put it into your idiom.

- I guess I'm a recovering
New York jackal.

[Laughter]

I'm getting the impression that

apology isn't really

the best service of being a giraffe.

I'd like to know if
you could model...

I'd like to see you model for me

an acknowledgement of
missing the mark,

sinning courageously...

- If you recall earlier,

I showed an example of that where
I showed the person saying

"I feel sad.
I would've liked

to have responded with more
understanding than I did".

- So you're not using the words "I'm sorry".
You're saying "I'm sad".

It's not so much the words
"I'm sorry".

What we shifted from
was thinking that I did something wrong

that it was bad.
It's that thinking that is the problem,

and the "I'm sorry" follows
from that thinking.

So it's not just that I don't say "I'm sorry",
I say "I'm sad", if I'm sad.

The words "I'm sorry"
mean almost nothing.

People can say that and
not feel anything.

You say that to buy forgiveness.

So, if I'm feeling sad, I say that.
"I'm feeling sad. I would have liked to

have been more aware of your
needs" for example

where I didn't take the person's
needs into consideration.

But I don't say
"I'm sorry, that was inconsiderate of me".

There's no self-blame.
I didn't do anything wrong.

There is no such thing as
doing anything wrong.

What I did was not in harmony
with my needs. I want to mourn that.

"I'm sad. I would've liked to have
been more aware of your needs".

- Something like that. Does that give you the example?
- Very much so. Thank you.

- I have a question.
Over here. To your left.

I have a situation with my
intimate partner

that many times we get together
and we argue a lot,

and I have this need

that you were saying earlier
is inappropriate:

I want her to be happy.

- I didn't say it's inappropriate.
I said it was undoable.

- OK. Right.
That's what she keeps telling me.

- If you're going to tell me to be happy,
tell me the action to get there.

That I can do.
If you tell me an action

which you predict that if I do that,
I'll be happy at the end,

that would be helpful. Tell me the action.
Don't just tell me to be happy.

Don't tell me to have
confidence in myself.

Tell me what you would like me
to do to feel that confidence.

The action will get me there,
but just telling me what to feel

puts me into a paradoxical bind.

- Ok.

One of the other things would be that

when we get together,
I don't necessarily want to be

going somewhere with her, if
she's not in a good mood at that time

or if there's some kind of tenseness...

- Then empathize with why I'm not in a
good mood and I'll be in one.

But telling me that I got
to be in a better mood

for you to want to go with me
gets me in a worse mood.

- Ok.

- I'm wondering if there are
some times when...

Over here.

I'm feeling some anxiety about a trip
I'm planning to visit my mother soon

and we have a dynamic where she
really wants to help me

figure out every detail of
what I'm doing during my stay,

and I'd like to be left alone.
- So, let me show you how to do it.

- And I'm afraid that if I
talk to her like this,

it's going to make matters much worse.
- Ok. Then we'll teach you how...

If it does, we'll show you how to
enjoy it when it gets worse.

But first, let me show you the
first thing to do

if we want a person to consider another
behaviour than the one they're doing,

start the communication
by showing them that

what they're doing is the most precious
thing they could be doing.

This way: empathy.

Start by empathizing with mother's
intent in behaving as she does.

"Mother, I'm guessing that when
you jump in and want to

show me all the things
that could be done,

you really care a lot about my
enjoying myself on this trip

and want to be sure you support that.

- Oh, yes, yes, blá, blá...

- Yeah, so,
it's really very important to you that

I have a good time and you want
to contribute to it.

- Yeah."

That's step one.
See what I mean?

That's what I mean by starting by
showing you understand.

Now, the more we're concerned
about that behaviour,

the more important it is to
start with this.

See? That's why
when I work in prisons,

and this person has been sexualy
molesting people, or raping people,

if I would like this person to find
another way of behaving,

the first thing I got to do is make sure they
don't hate themselves for what they're doing.

The more they hate themselves for what they're
doing, the more they'll continue doing it.

So I start by empathizing
with what their needs are, in doing it.

Ok. So, you got that step.
The next step...

What we started off the day with...
I'd tell honestly how I feel.

"Mom, I feel torn right now because
I'm grateful for your intent.

But... I really have a need to kind of make
my own choices here,

because I think it would be very hard
for anybody else to really know what I need

and I need this space
to figure it out for myself.

So, would you tell me what you
heard me say, mother,

so I can see if I'm making
myself clear?"

[Laughter]

So now I know mother
didn't hear me.

Now I know mother
didn't hear my needs.

She probably heard a rejection.

She probably heard that
she's not valued.

But it's important that I not think that her
reaction is because of what I said.

If I express my feelings and needs,

it would be impossible for a person to
react this way, if they heard it.

They would've gotten a gift.

They would have the eyes of a little child
getting a gift from Santa Claus.

That doesn't look like what mother's
looking like right now.

"So, mom, could you tell me what
you just heard me say?

- You don't want me.

- So, you heard it as a kind
of a rejection, mother?

- Of course. How else could
I have heard it?

- Well, thank you for telling me you
heard it as a rejection, mother."

Notice I didn't say
"that isn't what I said".

See?

If you want to have people
understand you differently,

never tell them
"you're misunderstanding me".

Never say
"That isn't what I said".

Say "Thank you for telling me
that's what you heard.

I can see I didn't make myself clear.
I'd like to try again, mother,

because I do value very much,
your offering to help,

but I have a need to kind of get my own
needs clear and structure my own time.

Can you tell me what you heard me say?

- So you think I don't have any
intelligence about helping you.

- Thank you for telling me that's what
you're hearing, mother.

I'd like for you to hear
it differently.

I'd like you just to hear my needs.

That I have a real need to kind of sort things
out for myself, and structure my own time.

Could you tell me what you heard?

- You have a need to kind of get clear for yourself
what you want and to figure things out.

- Thank you mother."

See how easy it is to get empathy
from a jackal? Just about

3 ear pulls, and I got it.
Right?

Now, there are some 8-pull
jackals, too, I know that.

But I can tell from how sweet you are
your mother is a 3-pull jackal.

- Thank you.

[Laughter]

- Yes...

- You mentioned earlier this morning
about enjoying suffering.

Could you elaborate on that?

- Oh yes. That's very important.
Thank you for getting back to me about it.

Ok. A friend of yours says this to you:

"I'm a nothing.

I'll never amount to anything.
Look, I'm an assistant clerk at age 45.

My brother's the head of his company,

my sister's a top attorney,

and I'm nothing."

Ok?

Now, to enjoy this person's suffering,

we have to release ourselves
from 2 kinds of responsibility.

First, that we didn't cause the pain.

And we want to release ourselves from that,

especially when the other person's trying
to make us believe we did cause the pain.

So if this person had started "and you're
at fault for all of this why I'm a nothing."

Especially when a person says that,

we do not want to in any way think
that we caused this person's pain,

because you can't cause another person's
psychological pain.

Well, in this case, the person wasn't
saying that so that's pretty easy to

liberate ourself from
feeling responsible,

but the second one is the hard one.

To think we have to fix it.

To make the person feel better.

The more we think it's our job
to make a person feel better,

the more we're going
to make it worse.

Because you can't fix people.

The good news is you don't have to.

There is a very powerful healing
energy always available

if we don't block it.
And how do we block that energy?

By trying to fix things ourselves.

So, how do we help that
energy to do the job?

By empathy.

Empathy requires presence,
just to be present.

When we are just present, when we are
remembering the Buddha's advice

"don't do something. Stand there."

When we do that, and that
energy works through us,

there is a precious connection
between that person and us.

And that precious connection is what
i mean by enjoying the pain,

to enjoy that precious connection.

And whether this person's
feeling joy or pain,

if we are present there with them,

that's what I mean.

But we block that beautiful energy whenever
we step in and think we have to fix things.

So, if we say "there, there, there. You'll feel
better. You'll get over it" we make it worse.

When we start to give advice,
we make it worse.

So, what does that look like?

"So, you're feeling really discouraged
and really would like

to have achieved more in your life
at this moment than you've done.

- Yes, yes, I've had every opportunity,
and look at me.

I've just never made
use of anything.

- Yeah, so you're really discouraged
and frustrated, and

would really liked to have made different
use of some things than you have.

- Yeah."

See, I'm just present.

I'm not trying to fix it.

And when that happens, there's
a very precious connection.

That's what I mean by enjoyment.

And that precious connection
does the healing.

Not your advice,
not your whatever.

Yes...

- Can you clarify the distinction
between empathizing,

and sort of encouraging and supporting
the soap opera of,

you know, somebody who is...

somebody who's suffering,
and sometimes by being there,

it's sort of a subtle encouragement,
as opposed to...

- The subtle encouragement that
I think you're talking about

comes about when this person is talking
about what happened to them,

for the 50th time you've
heard the story.

So, if I'm really listening to them,

I don't hear what they talk
about the past,

because I know that the more
they talk about the past,

the less healing will take place.

So I interrupt.

But I interrupt to bring the
conversation to life.

They're talking about the past,
and I interrupt and I say

"excuse me, but it sounds like right
now you're still feeling hurt,

because your need for respect
wasn't met in that".

See? Because just letting them
talk about the past

and asking them questions about
what happened about the past

is to just keep the soap
opera going.

So I interrupt when they talk
about the past

because we don't heal by
talking about the past.

we heal by talking about what's
alive in us right now,

stimulated by the past,
but it's what is here now

and when I connect at that level
they won't keep talking about it.

They'll heal.

Last question and then
I'm going to get into

the subject that I'd like to cover
before the end. Yes?

- You talk about having... let's see...

if someone else cannot cause
our emotional pain...

- That's right.
- ...and I think about

the abuse that I grew up with and
that I see in a lot of families

and the suffering that I've experienced
throughout my life,

through my recovery and all that,...

- And other people were a stimulus
for your suffering

and you were a participant
by how you dealt with it.

For example, if you follow me in my work
you would see this very clearly.

In places like Rwanda, Burundi,
Sierra Leone,

I'm working with people that
had their families killed.

Some of those people have such rage

that all they live for, moment by moment
is the possibility of vengeance.

Others have no anger,
have never had anger.

Same exact stimulus.

They have deep feelings,
but not rage.

So it is not the stimulus that determines
how our emocional reaction is.

That part is up to us.

I work with some women,
unfortunately a lot, who have been raped.

And some of them feel shame,
deep shame,

some feel rage,
some feel other things.

So the same stimulus

depends how people take it whether they
feel shame, rage or other things.

I'm working with a women from
Rwanda who had...

she heard her three children being
killed because she got

to underneath the sink, hid underneath
the sink in time,

the children didn't make it to the hiding place
in time, they got killed, she heard them,

she heard her husband being killed
and her brother.

She had to stay underneath there
11 days to save her own life

because they stayed in the house
after they killed the family.

This woman has deep feelings,

but never once she had the kind of anger
that makes her want to get vengeance.

She has put all of her feelings and
lots of them into protecting...

preventing this happening
to anybody else. You see?

So the way she looked at it
leads her to want to

prevent this happening to anybody else.
She came to my workshop

because she wanted to know how
to deal with the rage towards her

from other people in her tribe
who are furious with her

that she won't join their efforts
to kill the other people.

Same stimulus,
quite different reactions.

- Ok, so I had this stimulus

and somewhere I learned
how to deal with it

in the way that I had dealt with it
and I'm learning to change that now.

- Yes. The worst thing of course would be no
matter how you did choose to deal with it

is to think that there is something wrong
with how you chose to deal with it.

I'm not wanting us to get into one way
is right or wrong, I'm just saying that

no matter what happens to us,

the other person is responsible
for what they did,

I'm not saying that the other person
doesn't have responsability.

- That's my question about
accountability.

- That person is responsible for what
they did and why they did it.

We are responsible for how
we deal with that.

OK?

I'm just wondering how a child becomes
responsible... I mean still...

The first thing I do is, I wouldn't want to teach
the child the lesson I just tought you

until I had given that child
all the empathy that child needed

and I would guess it would be a lot.

So I can see myself dealing
with a long time

of hearing this childs enormous
pain as a result of this.

But then in the course of this
I would be seeing this child

having some pain created by
how they looked at it.

So I would see that they're creating
pain on top of pain,

by how they looked at it

so, after the child had all the empathy
he or she needed

then I would do what I could
to get them to see it

in a way that wouldn't create
unnecessary pain for themselves.

This is a baby jackal yes.

OK, now what I would like to do
in the precious time that we have left

is to deal with a very important part of
giraffe, because I wouldn't want you to

get the idea that
Non Violent Communication

is solely interested in
conflict resolution,

because it's equally
interested in celebration.

How could we celebrate life

in fact, the part that I have left for
ten minutes before the end

is in some respects the most important part
because it's where we get the fuel

to stay giraffe

in a what's often a
very jackalish world.

So it's going to be pretty hard to
make this radical transformation into

back to our nature

in many situations unless we
are getting plenty of fuel.

Now where does the fuel come from?

The fuel comes from celebration.

And what kind of celebration?

It comes from saying
thank you in giraffe.

So let's see now, in the last minutes,
how we celebrate

by saying thank you in giraffe.

Expressing gratitude in giraffe.

And first I would like to remind you
of how jackals say thank you.

"You did a good job on that paper."

"You are a very kind person."

"You are a good dancer."

Can you see why that's jackal?

Moralistic judgements.

Positive moralistic judgements
are equally

as violent in my estimations
as negative ones.

Namely they reinforce the idea that the
negative exist. If I say you're a kind person,

I'm implying there's such a thing
as an unkind person.

I'm also implying that I'm the judge
that knows the difference.

So no more praise or compliments, OK?
No more praise or compliments.

Especially when you intend
them as a reward.

That's the ultimate dehumanization,
to use thank you as a reward.

To say it for the purpose of trying
to reinforce someting,

To get the person to continue doing it.

It's like sending a... what goes on at
a dog obedience school?

Punishment and rewards.

Giving a compliment or praise for
the purpose of reinforcement

is giving the dog a... something to
eat to reinforce it for something.

People are not for that treatment.

And it destroys the beauty
of thank you,

when people have to wonder:

"Is this being said out of that energy?"

"- But it works!

- What does, jackal?

- Studies in management indicate
that if managers

praise and compliment employees
daily, product goes up.

Studies in school show
that if teachers

praise and compliment students
daily they work harder.

- Jackal take another look
at the research.

I think you'll see that that only
works for a very short time,

until people see the manipulation.

And then it no longer works.

And it destroys the beauty
of thank you

because now
you can not even trust gratitude

without wondering whether it's being
used as reinforcement, as a reward.

- Well what if I want to build up the other
person's self-esteem, what's wrong with that?

- So you... jackal you don't see
the irony of that?

- What?

- If the other person can only like themself when
you compliment them, they have no self-esteem.

You've just addicted them
to your rewards.

That they only feel good when you say something
about them. They have no self-esteem."

OK.

How does a giraffe say
"thank you"? Or gratitude?

First, there are three things that are
involved in a giraffe expression of

gratitude that give us energy to
keep being a giraffe.

The first thing in a giraffe expression
of gratitude

is we bring to this other person's
attention concretely

what they have done that has made
life more wonderful for us.

See, that's what we need to do, daily.

We need to bring our consciousness
and attention

to the power that each one of us has

to make life more wonderful.

Each of us is a powerhouse.

We have words

that have the power to contribute to making
people's lives more wonderful.

We have touch, we can touch
people in ways

that can make life more wonderful.

We can provide services for people.

We are powerhouses.

The more we remember this,

we'll not get caught up in any
violent games.

Why would we use our energy

any way other than to make life wonderful
when we remember that we have this power?

So that's one thing we've got to make
clear in our expression of gratitude

specifically what the person did,

not some vague generality.

For example a woman in Geneva Switzerland
came by up to me at the end of a workshop.

Here's what she said to me:
"You're brilliant."

I said:
"Doesn't help."

She said:
"What do you mean?"

I said: "You know mam, I've been called a
lot of names in my life, really I have.

Some positive and some
far less than positive.

And I can never recall learning anything valuable
by somebody telling me what I am.

I think there's zero information
value being told what you are

and great danger,
you might believe it.

And it's just as dangerous to believe
that you're smart as that you're stupid.

Both of them reduce you to a thing.

We're much more than either of those.

But I can see in your eyes that you
want to express some gratitude.

- Yes!

- And I want to receive it but, doesn't
help me to be told what I am.

- What do you need to hear?

- What did I do to make life
more wonderful for you?

- Well, well, you're so intelligent.

- No, doesn't help.

- Doesn't help. What did I do?

Oh I got you, I got you."

She opens up her notebook,

she showed me two things that I had said
that she had written down.

She put a big star by them.

See? That helps me now.
Ok.

That helps to know,
that somehow,

my saying those two things
made this persons life more wonderful.

So that's the first thing we need to say

in appreciation. We need to bring to the
persons attention concretely what they did

that made life more wonderful.

Second:
at the moment we're giving the gratitude

to say how we feel at that moment
about the person having done that.

So I said to this woman:

"Could you tell me how you feel now as the
result of my having said those two things?"

She said "Hopeful and relieved."

- Oh! Hopeful and relieved!

That gives me much more than telling
me what I am, that I'm brilliant."

Just to know that somehow my
saying those two things,

now this person feels hopeful
and relieved.

Now when I hear the third thing I'll be
able to really enjoy this gratitude.

I said: "what need of yours
was fulfilled

by my saying what I did

that leaves you feeling hopeful
and relieved?"

And that's the third thing we need
to see in a giraffe gratitude.

She said,
"I have an 18 year old son.

I've never been able to
connect with him.

It's been very painful that
we never can connect,

and I have needed some direction,
to help me connect with him.

Those two things you said met my
need for some concrete direction."

So had she exressed her gratitude
in giraffe, she would have said:

"Marshall when you said these two things,"

(showed me what the two things were)

"it leaves me feeling hopeful
and relieved,

it meets a need of mine to connect
with my son in a way that I want."

OK? That's how we say gratitude in
giraffe. Those three things.

And it's also important how
we receive gratitude.

Let me show you how a jackal
receives gratitude.

"Jackal when you offered to
give me the ride

that just now to where I'm
going afterwards

I feel very grateful because

I really have a need to spend
more time with my family,

and if I took the bus I'd have
an hour less time.

- It's nothing."

"De rien."

If you want to terrorize a jackal,
express love and appreciation to him.

Really, if you really want
to scare a jackal,

I've never seen anything scare
jackal-speaking people more

than sincere gratitude or love.

"Why do you get so nervous,
jackal, when you hear it?

- Well I don't know that I deserved it."

See, jackals have this dangerous
concept in their head:

Deserve.

It's a very violent concept.

See it implies you have to
deserve appreciation.

You do deserve punishment if you behave in
a certain way. See, the concept of deserve

is a key ingredient in a
violent way of life.

If you believe in deserve you think
certain things are worth things,

and you'll set up a very destructive
economic system.

You'll set up a destructive
correctional system.

Very dangerous concept.

"Well that's not the only reason.

- Why else do you get so scared when
you hear gratitude jackal?

- What's wrong with being humble?

- So you want to...
have a need for humility?

- Yes.

- Well you know jackal there's
different kinds of humility.

I'm afraid that your kind is
a jackal humility.

I think your kind is the kind that
Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister,

was reacting to when she said to
one of her politicians:

'Don't be so humble,
you're not that great.'"

But the main reason that I
believe that gratitude

is so scary for many of us to receive

is beautifully and poetically written
in 'The Course of Miracles'

where they say "it's our light,
not our darkness,

that scares us the most."

See having been educated in this
jackal way to hate ourselves,

to think there's something
wrong with us.

It's a big jump to really
see what I was saying.

That we have an enormous power
to make life wonderful.

And there's nothing we enjoy doing
more than exercising that power.

That's pretty unfortunately a pretty big jump
for us to come to. But we can come to it.

So that's how we say gratitude:
observation, feeling and need.

Same literacy.

Make sure it's coming from
the heart to celebrate,

and never to praise,
compliment, reward.

So any last comments or questions
before our time runs out?

I'm grateful for all your time
and attention to me.