Much earlier this year, I noticed on Goodreads that I was 60 books away from having read 1000 books over my lifetime. That’s something! I thought. So I made myself a Reading Challenge (something you can do on the Goodreads app) to read the 60 books. This morning, I finished my one thousandth book, Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D.
I’m pretty proud of this accomplishment. Other stuff I’ve read this year, a mix of fiction, nonfiction, textbooks, how-to books, memoir, audiobooks, poetry… pretty much the gamut:
American Dervish; Beautiful Jim Key; I Am Spock; Wherever You Go, There You Are; Fools and Mortals; Lock In; Rules of the Road; The Fortune Teller; Daughters of the Night Sky; Beyond Belief; Uncommon Type; Find More Time; NPCs; Split the Party; The Watchmaker of Filigree Street; A Wrinkle in Time; The Book of the Unnamed Midwife; The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck; Genghis: Birth of an Empire; Tell Me How It Ends; The Power; 365 Tao; Hysterectomy: Exploring Your Options; Sociology: A Brief Introduction; Genghis: Lords of the Bow; And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer; Children of Blood and Bone; Felicity; God is Dead; Turn Your Passion Into Profits; West Wind; Small Great Things; Circe; Head On; The Ocean at the End of the Lane; Hoard of the Dragon Queen; The Kite Runner; The Lioness of Morocco; Braving the Wilderness; Earth Poems; The Third Reconstruction; The Companions; The Graveyard Book; The Night Circus; Jumping at Shadows; Dragon Keeper; iPad for Artists; Dragon Haven; Coraline; Gardner’s Art Through the Ages; We are Legion — We are Bob; City of Dragons; Social Psychology and Human Nature; Turtles All the Way Down; Blood of Dragons; Nonviolent Communication.
Best Fiction I Read This Year: The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Best Nonfiction I Read This Year: Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown
Worst Book I Read This Year: God is Dead by Ron Currie Jr.
I want to start reviewing books here, because reading is (obviously) so much a part of who I am. I thought it was appropriate that Nonviolent Communication be the final book in my first thousand, because it is so much a part of the person I want to be.
I started this book as part of a discussion group at church, called Compassionate Communication. The group is on its third tour of the book, and they have discovered that living it is harder than it seems.
Basically, there are four parts to Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication:
1. Make an observation that is not a judgment, something that has provoked your need to communicate in the first place. If, for example, you want to have an honest conversation about the dishes in the sink, you might say, “I noticed that there are a lot of dishes in the sink.” The key here is to avoid the judgment, something like “You always leave your dishes in the sink.” (The ‘always’ is probably not accurate, anyway).
2. Make a statement about how we feel in relation to what we have observed. “When I go to make dinner and there are dishes in the sink, I feel frustrated.” We often make “I feel” statements that are actually thoughts. “I feel like you’re neglecting me.” If your feel is followed by like, that’s a good clue that it’s not actually a feeling.
3. State the needs, values and desires that create our feelings. “…. I feel frustrated because I have a need for order so that I can get dinner made efficiently.” It can be challenging to be aware of our own feelings, much less the needs that are behind them. Our society trains us not to speak of our needs because it seems like we’re being selfish, but in reality if you make these things clear, and ask for clarification of the other person’s needs and feelings, quite often a solution becomes apparent without an argument.
4. Make a request for concrete actions that will enrich our lives. The important thing here is that it is a request, rather than a demand. The other person has the option to say no. Making demands is not conducive to good communication or good feelings on the part of both people.
There’s so much more to say about this book. As my friend Susan in my church group said, when she read it she thought, “This could change the world.” And so it could, if more people knew about it. So I highly recommend that you give it a read. You can also visit Dr. Rosenberg’s site, The Center for Nonviolent Communication.
If you want to keep up with what I’m reading, you can find me on Goodreads.
What’s on your To Read list for 2019?
Loving the Questions 