By David Steele, The Rocky Mountain Compassionate Communication Network
"I need you to pick up your room."
We often conflate needs and requests (at least in North American White Culture). Before studying NVC the above sentence seemed perfectly reasonable to me. I now see it as containing two components: 1) a need for order or cleanliness, and 2) a request to pick up the room.
We speak of needs as universal, as a yearning or value that can manifest through a variety of actions or situations. A need is general and flexible, while a request is time-bound, specific, and doable.
Needs exist as a potential that can express in innumerable ways. Requests reflect an intention to bring that potential into actuality - a specific, time-bound manifestation. To paraphrase Marshall Rosenberg, when we attach satisfying a need to a specific action, the request is likely to become a demand, and we take an abundant universe and make it very scarce very quickly.
I sometimes think of needs as a life force in the same way that gravity is a physical force. When an apple hangs from a tree the effects of gravity are not so visible. At a specific moment of time, the apple falls and the impact of gravity becomes very visible. Recognizing gravity and its impact made Issac Newton a household name and was critical to the development of technological civilization.
Similarly, I believe that recognizing needs and their impact on human behavior is as liberating to the human spirit as understanding gravity was to liberating human physical comfort by advancing technology.
We do not doubt gravity, wondering if sometimes it will be there and sometimes it will not. Needs are as ever-present and consistent as gravity. When we learn to trust the deep yearnings they hold and be open to them, rather than attached to outcome, we find the courage to make requests and trust in the abundance offered by the world of natural giving that Marshall described: the world waiting for us when we practice the consciousness of NVC.
The Rocky Mountain Compassionate Communication Network
Founded in 2009, RMCCN promotes and supports the awareness, education and practice of Compassionate Communication, a powerful and easy-to-understand way of listening to and communicating with ourselves and others. Based in Colorado, but serving the whole Rocky Mountain region, RMCCN maintains a community calendar, offers trainings, supports practice groups, provides mediation and consulting services, and sponsors an online community to connect and support people interested in NVC.