Choosing Peace: New Ways to Communicate to Reduce Stress, Create Connection, and Resolve Conflict

“It’s like magic—so clear and simple and transformative.” Mary Mackenzie, author, Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living with Love, Healing and Compassion; Co-founder, NVC Academy; Executive Director, Peace Workshop, International; Certified NVC Trainer; Mediator “Choosing Peace has great potential to transform your life." –Valerie Rose Belanger, Managing Director, Yale World Fellows, Yale University “I hope the whole world reads it.” Larry Rosen, attorney-mediator and founder of Through Understanding What if you could feel calm and in control in the face of conflict? In Choosing Peace, you will learn a new approach to communication and conflict that creates peace, internally and externally. The concrete tools and skills in this book allow you to be clear in your communication and help others do the same. Through practicing what is in this compelling guidebook, you can build more satisfying and engaging relationships and create more compassion and peace in your life. Read Choosing Peace to be able to: • Understand how conflict can be a vehicle to connection • Escape from endless replaying of stressful conversations • Be kinder to yourself • Gain acceptance for others • Stop behaving in ways that do not get you what you want • Learn a new set of skills to navigate sticky conflict situations • Get a new perspective on recurring conflicts—and how to resolve them • Recognize and shift out of fight-flight-freeze stress patterns • Listen skillfully and non-judgmentally • Deepen the quality of interaction with others Written by authors with nearly 40 years combined experience in a Nonviolent Communication approach to mediation and conflict resolution, who have trained thousands of people worldwide to choose peace. About Mediate Your Life John Kinyon and Ike Lasater have been refining their distinct Mediate Your Life approach since 2003. Building on their decades of work with Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, Mediate Your Life provides telecourses and workshops in countries around the world, helping people approach conflict as an opportunity and gain the skills and capacity to create true dialogue and new possibilities for connection. Together and individually they have mediated conflicts with couples, families, businesses, institutions, and legal contexts. Ike Lasater is a former trial attorney who co-founded a thriving San Francisco law firm. John Kinyon has a background in psychology and is a certified trainer with the international Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC).

John Kinyon has mediated conflicts in a variety of contexts, including couples, family, community, business, legal, and institutional. Co-founder of Mediate Your Life, John trains people in communication and conflict resolution skills and has taught thousands of people in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Australia. John has studied and worked closely with NVC founder Marshall Rosenberg since 1998, has been a trainer of the Center for Nonviolent Communication since 2000 and is a co-founder of Bay NVC. John's professional background is in academic psychology and psychotherapy, with a graduate degree in clinical psychology from Penn State University.

Ike Lasater is the co-founder of Mediate Your Life, a training company that helps people build better lives by changing how they respond to conflict. With extensive training in Nonviolent Communication, Ike teaches and coaches individuals and organizations in communication and conflict resolution skills and has trained thousands of people in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. He has served on the board of directors for the Center for Nonviolent Communication and the Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern California. Ike is a former trial attorney for 20 years who co-founded a thriving San Francisco law firm.