💞
Self-care for tormented people
  • Acknowledgements
  • Goals
  • The player and the avatar
  • Change your: change your mind
    • How to use this toolkit
    • Understanding the terms
    • Practice
  • Principles
    • ⚒️Clear is kind, unclear is unkind
    • ⚒️Strong enough to be gentle
    • ⚒️Only do things with the joy of a young child feeding a hungry duck
  • Mindsets
    • Term: "Mindset statements"
    • ⚒️Some Useful Mindset Statements
  • Thinking
    • Monkey, lizard, human brain
    • Term: "Thinking space"
    • Monkey scripts
    • Lizard
    • "Being aware" means to understand our momentous internal state
    • Term: "Trigger" or "Stimulus"
  • Paradigm Shift
    • ⚒️Sender and receiver
    • Term: "Feelings" are what's alive inside us
    • Term: "Needs" are our deepest motivations behind anything we think, say, or do
    • ⚒️Feelings and Needs
    • ⚒️Request and demand
    • Term: "Observation" is something I can record on camera or microphone, or notice in myself
    • Terms: Interpretation, Evaluation, Judgement, Assessment, Diagnosis
    • ⚒️Deconstructing
    • Judge who?
  • Learn a new language
    • ⚒️"I heard" rather than "you said"
    • Gasligthing
    • ⚒️"How" and "what" no "why"
    • ⚒️Check and Choice
    • ⚒️Keep your but behind
    • ⚒️Don't should on people
    • ⚒️"Thank you"
    • ⚒️"Bullshit"
    • Slippery slope of praise
    • ⚒️"I love you"
    • ⚒️How does X look like?
  • Habits
    • Replace rather than remove
    • Start small
    • Environment
    • Chaining
    • Patterns
    • Scripts
  • Connection and communication
    • Boundaries
    • Interests and Positions
    • Speak Tentatively
    • Defensiveness
    • Find common interests
    • Generate Options
  • Active listening
    • Mirroring
    • Accusation audit
    • How and what questions
    • Why nots
    • Pauses
    • Synthesizing
    • Note taking
    • "I heard"
    • "It seems like"
    • Preparation
  • Self-acceptance
    • Origins of self-acceptance
    • Turn people and yourself into a tree
    • Feelings are like waves disappearing into the deep far ocean
    • The one person you need to marry
    • I am here for myself
  • Self-awareness
    • Upset trigger - first look for how to help myself
    • "I need empathy" trigger
    • "This is me being X"
    • Boxed breathing
    • You're the only one that knows yourself best (no-one else knows about a feeling)
    • People only say "please" and "thank you"
  • Realtime Tools
    • "Bring it on" cloud
    • Calming Down
    • Instant de-stress
    • Exercise
    • Get present
    • Need trigger
    • Boundary trigger
    • Anxiety reduction strategies
  • Compound Feelings
    • Hate
    • Defensiveness
  • Success and resilience
    • Self-efficacy
    • What you heard is the only thing you can hear (vs what they said)
    • Imagine positive outcomes (in addition to negative)
    • Mostly think and speak about what you want (rather than or in addition to what you don't want)
  • Emotional Abuse
    • Request
    • what works
    • "Is this Abuse?"
    • Why do I want to go back? Why did I stay?
    • Should I go give them a chance?
    • The Abusive Mindsets
    • Improving wellbeing from abuse
    • Gaslighting
    • Finding yourself
    • Emotional Flashbacks / Feeling Memory
    • How to be resilient to emotional abuse?
  • Communicating with our subconscious
    • "Parts" and Internal Family Systems
    • "The Work" by Byron Katie
    • Turnaround
    • Images
    • Spirituality
    • Learning subconsciously
    • ⚒️"I'm scarier than my demons"
  • Common unclear words
    • ⚒️Only agree on meaning of words
    • "Defensiveness": a compound word indicating multiple feelings and needs
    • "Judgement": usually covering up needs
    • "Love": a word with at least three definitions
    • "Respect": subjective and highly contextual, thousands of definitions
    • Other words
  • Doing Things Better
    • "How can I be curious?"
    • Small consistent changes
    • Delay improvement
    • Do then find passion
    • Others' successes
    • Playground
  • References
    • Brené Brown
    • Mutual Learning Model
    • The Work
    • Ram Dass
    • Conflict Communication
    • Lundy Bancroft
    • Internal Family Systems
    • Nonviolent communication
    • Peter Deunov
    • Missing things
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  1. Principles

Only do things with the joy of a young child feeding a hungry duck

PreviousStrong enough to be gentleNextMindsets

Last updated 1 year ago

This principle is coming directly from the mouth of the late Marshall Rosenberg, author of nonviolent communication.

How do we apply it?

Is that even possible?

Marshall goes on to clarify:

Please do as I requested, only if you can do so with the joy of a little child feeding a hungry duck.

Please do not do as I request if there is any taint of fear of punishment if you don't.

Please do not do as I request to buy my love, that, is hoping that I will love you more if you do.

Please do not do as I request if you will feel guilty if you don't.

Please do not do as I request if you will feel shameful.

And certainly, do not do as I request out of any sense of duty or obligation.

I think it's possible. Think about it consistently over large periods of time and see what, if anything, changes in your life.

🔧 Tool: Only do things with the joy of a young child feeding a hungry duck.

How would that work? As with the previous principles there are the two aspects of Self and Others:

  1. Self: Think about whether what you're doing in every moment fits the "with the joy of a young child feeding a hungry duck". Use it to check, as often as possible. Thinking specifically about how a situation reflects on you will help improve your wellbeing. Treat it as an aspirational goal. Think: What would make the current situation "with the joy of a young child feeding a hungry duck?"

  2. Others: Tell others to only do stuff if they enjoy rather than feel obligated. Don't just take "yes" for an answer. Tell people it's OK not to do what you ask. If they do it out of obligation, it's likely due to lack of clarify of message. See Clear is kind, unclear is unkind and clarify.

Don't worry if you find it hard. It is hard. Everything easy was hard once. Read more from this toolkit and try to understand your inner needs and feelings (see the chapters on self-awareness, self-acceptance, and active listening.)

Try to get as much as possible towards the ideal above. Aim for 3-5% of the time at first.

Marshall Rosenberg Nonviolent communication

⚒️
🦝
📘