Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living with Love, Healing, and Compassion

***** This book is a daily meditation book, laid out with one short essay or meditation for each day of the year. The meditation starts with a quotation about the day's topic. Next comes an essay which ranges from less than one up to two pages for the day's lesson. At the end of the essay is a sentence about how to apply that lesson for the day. For example, tomorrow, August 19th, has as a quote: "Keep your eye on the sunshine and you will not see the shadows.---Helen Keller", followed by an essay on "Observing without Judgment", and ending with the sentence "Today stick to the facts and don't make up stories about why people behave in certain ways." There is also a list of NVC feelings and needs in the front and an index. This is the type of book that people familiar or unfamiliar with NonViolent Communication will enjoy. In fact, it's a great way to learn about NonViolent communication in bite-size pieces, so that it is less overwhelming (especially for people who hate to study or take classes). My husband and I read a little bit each morning and discuss it, finding the focus very useful in starting out our day. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wishes to improve their communication skills. *****

Daily delicious nuggets to savor, learn from and enjoy throughout each day for the entire year. What a gift!

I really enjoy reading the daily meditations in Peaceful Living at the beginning or end of my day. As a busy health care professional, communication is critical to the success of my encounters with patients. Peaceful Living has provided me with helpful insights that have enabled me to be more effective and compassionate in my work. Dee Kaserer, Family Nurse Practitioner

While this is a daily meditation book, it is so much more. I'm reading it cover to cover and nearly finished. It has given me clear communication tools to finish up with leaving a former employer so that both of us happy about the outcome, developing a strong understanding with a new long-term client that will serve us both well, and keeping peace in our home while my husband and I prepare to move to another state. My husband and I are reading the daily readings together and then discussing how we can apply the information to that day, or to our lives. The clarity of Mary's writing in Peaceful Living is so refreshing. I've studied and practiced Nonviolent Communication for a number of years and have found it enormously useful - however, sometimes it felt difficult to wrap myself around the principles while actually in a difficult communication situation. Mary's layperson's language and specific examples are giving me a whole new set of skills to use. Of strong value to me, Mary gives numerous examples of self-empathy, compassion and self care, in addition to excellent interpersonal examples. I've often been 'other oriented,' sometimes to the detriment of my own health and often less than fully compassionate about my own needs. The author's point that it's difficult to truly be of service to others if we are not taking care of ourselves is finally reaching me in a way I can embrace - in fact, I feel myself easing up on the 'jackal' or critical internal chatter that so often gets in the way of my feeling true happiness, joy and delight!

This book of daily meditations goes beyond other books in this genre by giving short, easy to grasp ways to increase our chances for happiness and peace day by day. Mary Mackenzie teaches us the process of compassionate communication without our even knowing it. This process makes it more likely that our own needs will be met, as well as the needs of others. She shows us how to connect with ourselves and with others, but does not leave us there - once we have connected we make requests, based on the valuing of our own and others' needs. Best of all it does not require the people around you to *change*! Based on Marshall Rosenberg's time-tested Non Violent Communication, Peaceful Living is a great boost for people who would like to make their world a more peaceful and happier place.