BYRON KATIE

Byron Kathleen Mitchell (1942) is an American author and lecturer who has created an innovative method of personal empowerment, The Work. This self-help method aims to identify the sources of suffering and manage it, regardless of age or social or educational status of the person.

The Work focuses on four questions and an “investment”, which can be done with another person or be carried out by oneself. This method is the result of a personal process out of a depression, experienced by the author in her 30s through her 40s, in which she even thought about commiting suicide.

Katie discovered that idealistic thoughts and expectations to live a different reality were what made her suffer, that her depression did not relate to her reality, but how she thought it should be. By questioning these limiting thoughts, Katie was released, and so states in her method.

She explains her transformation in books like ‘Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life,’ ‘A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with Things as They Are.’ Or ‘Question Your Thinking, Change the World.’
Some ideas of those writings are:

When we believe in our thoughts when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. When there is no story, there is no suffering.

 

One morning in February 1986, out of nowhere, I experienced an enlightment. In an instant, I discovered that when I believed my stressful thoughts, I suffered, but when questioned them, I did not suffer.

 

It’s not your job to like me –it’s mine.

 

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.

 

As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there” —as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering— the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.

 

All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment.

 

Don’t believe every thing you think.

 

Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.

 

When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

I wish you a happy week,

Álex Rovira