nvc

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.
—Charlotte Brontë

Stimulus or Cause

Violence is a result of thinking that others caused our pain and deserve to be punished. When living from this consciousness, we believe that our anger is justified.

Consider road rage. A driver who engages in it believes that the other person is driving badly or is trying to tick him off, so he tailgates, makes hand gestures, or worse yet, shoots at them. He often feels justified in his anger. Two weeks before, however, he may have driven down that same road in the same traffic but didn’t behave violently.

Why? Maybe because he had an easier day at work, or left work earlier and had more time to get home, or it was his anniversary and he was excited about the evening ahead. The stimulus was the same—traffic on a particular road—but his feelings were quite different depending on his needs.

The cause of our feelings is our own needs in the moment. What happens is simply the stimulus. In order to maintain serenity in our life, it is important to understand this distinction.

Once I got into the habit of this, my judgments began to subside dramatically. It became easy to love people and feel compassion for them, and I experienced a freedom I had never known before. This kind of a shift takes focus and commitment, but the rewards are many.

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Be aware today of times when you are tempted to blame other people for your feelings, and try to discover your unmet needs.