Owning Our Choices

Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of the Center Nonviolent Communication, has been an important teacher in my life. I have never met him, but many years ago I listened to a set of his CD’s that changed my view of the world. It is such a blessing when the words we hear or read find their way into our hearts. In these moments, we step into new possibilities for ourselves and for the world in which we live. Sometimes we don’t even know it until years later when a teacher’s words or the tone of their voice appear as guides in moments of need.

I’ll never forget hearing Rosenberg’s reassuring voice saying that he reached a turning point in his life when he decided not to do anything he didn’t want to do. This is a rather shocking and seemingly narcissistic thing to say and really caught my attention.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is based on the assumption that all human beings have needs, that we are hard-wired to respond to each other’s needs and that our main problem is that we don’t listen deeply enough to ourselves and to each other to clarify these needs. Rosenberg is also great believer in the freedom of human beings—that we are, at each moment, choosing what we do and what we don’t do.

In yesterday’s reflection I touched on the impact when we use the internal language of coercion—‘I have to do this.’—to describe our actions. We so easily give away our power and live in a world of imagined helplessness. Now there are certainly many things we are powerless over, but at the core of human experience, there is this choosing, even in the most constrained and limited circumstances.

Rosenberg’s instruction to not do what you don’t want to do goes like this: Look at all the activities that you do in your life. (Perhaps quite limited for many of us right now.) Sort them into a list of things you want to do and things you don’t want to do. Next: look at the list of things you don’t want to do, and either find a reason you want to do them, or stop doing them.

He used the example of driving his children to school every day. Rosenberg noticed that he approached this task with little enthusiasm and often found himself grumbling about all the time it took away from his work. When he thought about it, he realized that he really cared about the school his children went to and that his daily driving was part of what made it possible for his children to get the kind of education he wanted for them. Therefore, he realized that he wanted to drive them to school every day. This shift in perspective changed his language and changed his experience of this activity.

Rosenberg did go on to say that he couldn’t find a good reason to do some things on the ‘Don’t Want To Do’ list. He found other people to do some of these items and some simply did not get done.

Examining our deeper wants and needs is another way to work with the sense of resistance and pressure many of us feel when we look at our calendars for the day ahead. Whenever you hear yourself say ‘I don’t want to do this’, stop for a moment and ask yourself if that is really true. When you look deeper, can you find reasons why you are actually choosing to do this?

It’s not that everything is easy and comfortable. Some things we choose to do because of practical necessity—we might choose to go to work we don’t like because we want the money that allows us to pay our rent. Or we choose difficult actions because of who we want to be in the world or because we choose to live out values that are important to us.

This practice of not pretending we are helpless can be surprisingly powerful. You might want to try it today. Notice the next time you feel less than happy in what you are doing or what you are about to do. Then stop and ask yourself what is underneath this; what deeper value or intention does this action serve? Now make your choice.