Loving what is
Out of nowhere, like a fresh breeze in a marketplace crowded with advice on what to believe, comes Byron Katie and what she calls "The Work." In the midst of a normal life, Katie became increasingly depressed, and over a ten-year period sank further into rage, despair, and thoughts of suicide. Then one morning, she woke up in a state of absolute joy, filled with the realization of how her own suffering had ended. The freedom of that realization has never left her, and now in Loving What Is you can discover the same freedom through The Work.The Work is simply four questions that, when applied to a specific problem, enable you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. As Katie says, "It's not the problem that causes our suffering; it's our thinking about the problem." Contrary to popular belief, trying to let go of a painful thought never works; instead, once we have done The Work, the thought lets go of us. At that point, we can truly love what is, just as it is.Loving What Is will show you step-by-step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. You'll see people do The Work with Katie on a broad range of human problems, from a wife ready to leave her husband because he wants more sex, to a Manhattan worker paralyzed by fear of terrorism, to a woman suffering over a death in her family.
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- Short version: Last year, The Work as taught in Loving What Is by Byron Katie gave me perspective and tools that enabled me to function professionally and personally through/despite deep emotional pain/fear/grief--and be open and generous with the person close to me whose life choices were generating the pain while standing firm in my own choices. (Katie would say, I had thoughts about this person's life choices that generated the pain.)
I had already and pretty recently attended almost a full course of CBT skills classes (accompanying a person for whom they were prescribed), which I had found mostly to include codified, acronym-ized versions of techniques I had already been taught growing up or had independently discovered.
I thought the CBT stuff was pretty good, and it was helpful for the person I was accompanying, but it wasn't enough for me to deal with the pain last year.
Katie teaches that you don't have to convince yourself that your original belief was wrong. Often you do find that it's wrong, but often you just find that you're not sure. Once you've achieved some epistemic humility (I might not really know this), the third and fourth questions give you a different perspective, looking at the consequences of holding on to this belief (which I just realized I'm not so sure about) and letting you imagine a world where you weren't being hurt by the belief. You don't try to convince yourself not to hold the belief: you just do The Work and let your mind do its thing.
She includes lots of example dialogs where she plows straight in to hard cases, too. It's worth a read, especially if there's anything you're having a hard time coping with.
- How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne
The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) by David Emerald
Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life by Byron Katie
Get Out of Your Own Way: Overcoming Self-Defeating Behavior by Mark Goulston and Philip Goldberg
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns
Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if you Lose It by Marshall Goldsmith
The New Manual 2.0 by Tripp Lanier thenewmanual.com
