The Four Basic Steps of the Language of Peace. . .
And a brief example of their use

Practice the Language of Peace until you can apply these skills with mastery. As you learn it, apply it more and more in your every day life and watch as it creates magic in your relationships.

The four steps of The Language of Peace are:

1. State whatever event happened in the form of an OBSERVATION
2. followed by how you are FEELING
3. next your NEEDS which were either met or not met by the event
4. and lastly end on a REQUEST

Step one is to clearly state the observation...

State what happened that stimulated the upset without any evaluation (our judgments about what happened). Our example begins with an excited husband who came home early on his anniversary to cook a special surprise meal for his wife. With the food prepared, candles lit, table set, wine poured… he waits and waits and waits. His wife arrives home two hours later than normal. By this time the food is cold, the candles have burnt out, and most of the wine is gone. The once happy husband is now rather disappointed, hurt and upset.

He meets her arrival like this: “I can't believe you are late on our anniversary! Why didn't you call? All you care about is work. You don't care about our relationship any more…” This is an evaluation (case building) not an observation and most likely will be heard as an attack, requiring either defensiveness or a counter attack. An observation may have sounded like this: “When I came home early and prepared a romantic dinner for us and you didn't get home until two hours after I was expecting you, I felt….”

Notice there is no judgment of her behavior here (and yes, this does take practice).


On step two, state how you are feeling about what happened...

...rather than saying what you are thinking about what they did. If you say what you're thinking, instead of feeling, you'll only bring up defensiveness and create arguments. From the way the husband communicated to his wife you can guess what his choice was: building a case. He spent two hours gathering evidence, evaluating and judging her behavior, thinking she had betrayed him, preparing his attack…

“You are always doing stuff like this, only thinking of yourself. You are so inconsiderate!” These are thoughts and they are not improving the connection at all. Let's look at how we would've done using LOP instead. “… I felt worried for your safety and once I knew you were safe I felt hurt and disappointed because I …”

Think about these two scenarios so far. If this was happening in your home, which approach would you want your spouse to use? The first approach or the Language of Peace approach?


Step number three, connecting your feelings to your needs...

This is an important step where we let someone know what needs of ours we're trying to meet and how that would make us feel. This ties into one of the basics of LOP, that what causes our feelings is not other people, but whether our needs are being met or not being met. What people normally do in this area rather than connect to their needs, is to get hung up on a specific strategy, hoping that it will meet their needs. They start using words and phrases like; you should do this, you shouldn't have done that, you must, have to, this is right thing to do and you are doing the wrong …

With a belligerent tone the husband says, “You should apologize and you should quit that stupid job of yours!!!” These statements are almost guaranteed to create resistance and resentment. Even if she did either one of them, which is doubtful, she would end up doing it with an energy they both would regret later. So let's see what happens when he uses LOP. Following up on the last statement “I felt hurt and disappointed because I needed some acknowledgement for how much I contribute to our relationship and celebration for how much we love each other. ”


Now onward to the fourth and final step of the LOP...

...making a clear, do-able request stated in the present tense. This can be the hardest step of all for some people because they are being vulnerable, asking for what they truly want and risking hearing that scary, two letter word, “NO.” So instead of risking the no, people are often tempted to make demands instead .

Angry and hurt by her lack of apologies and no admissions of wrong doing, he presses on, making a demand he knows will break her heart. “Either you quit your job or I'm filing for divorce!” At this point she is backed into one corner and he has backed himself into the other corner, guaranteeing no one is going to be a winner and someone is going to sleep on the couch tonight. How could he have approached this differently using what you're about to learn at one of our workshops? His request would be simple since he understands that “the message sent” (what he said) is rarely “the message received” (what she thinks she heard). So to try and understand what she heard he would simply ask , “Can you tell me what you heard me say?”

I have tried both ways of communicating; I also have the divorce to prove the first one doesn't work so well. I also now have the best relationship of my life. The tools are simple, and the choice is yours. Don't ask yourself which way looks easier. Ask yourself which way will create the connection, intimacy and understanding you desire.

Oh, yes--at any point in this dialogue, even if the husband chose to build a case, the wife could have used these tools to turn it round, to give him the empathy he needed.