The Work

For the past few entries I've mentioned about turning around your thoughts to focus on the positive. Turning your thoughts around is something I believe can change everyone's perception positively to cultivate a better environment for the world and I would like to thank Katie Byron for coming up with this method which is also known as The Work.

More about The Work...
So what is it? How can turning my thoughts around help me and is it that simple?

According to it's official website:

The Work is a simple yet powerful process of inquiry that teaches you to identify and question thoughts that cause all the suffering in the world. It's a way to understand what's hurting you, and to address your problems with clarity.

People who do The Work as an ongoing practice report life-changing results.

Alleviation of depression:
Find resolution, and even happiness, in situations that were once debilitating.

Decreased stress:
Learn how to live with less anxiety or fear.

Improved relationships:
Experience deeper connection and intimacy with your partner, your parents, your children, your friends, and yourself.

Reduced anger:
Understand what makes you angry and resentful, and become less reactive, less often, with less intensity.

Increased mental clarity:
Live and work more intelligently and effectively, with integrity.

More energy:
Experience a new sense of ongoing vigor and well-being.

More peace:
Discover how to become "a lover of what is."





Who's the face behind The Work?

BYRON KATIE: became severely depressed in her early thirties. For almost a decade she spiraled down into depression, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom.

Then one morning in February 1986, she experienced a life-changing realization. There are various names for an experience like this. Katie calls it "waking up to reality."
In that instant of no-time, she says,

I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.

She realized that what had been causing her depression was not the world around her, but the beliefs she'd had about the world. Instead of hopelessly trying to change the world to match her thoughts about how it should be, she could question these thoughts and, by meeting reality as it is, experience unimaginable freedom and joy. As a result, a bedridden, suicidal woman was instantly filled with love for everything life brings.

Katie's process of self-inquiry, called The Work, didn't develop from this experience; she says that it woke up with her, as her, that February morning in 1986. The first people who did The Work reported that it had transformed their lives, and she soon began receiving invitations to teach the process publicly.

Since 1986, she has brought The Work to hundreds of thousands of people across the world, at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, universities, schools, at weekend workshops, and at her amazing nine-day School for The Work.

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I recommend The Work to those who seeks for peace and optimism in their lives. It is a method that I'm implementing in my live and I hope that you can benefit from this too.

What do you think about The Work? Do share your thoughts and even your queries. :)

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