By Byron Katie
This is an interesting book. I read it very quickly, and found it surprisingly powerful. I didn’t much care for her take on physical pain, which she seems to be that it will be perfectly bearable if we think of it as the physical memory of injury. I have a condition which makes me essentially in pain all the time, and often in entirely more pain than any circumstances warrant. This pain is not the memory of an injury, it is faulty wiring in my body. Grr. Would love to meet her and ask about this.
Anyway.
The schtick in this book is to take a statement which you think to yourself about a stressful situation (for example, “John is so damn thoughtless!”) and ask yourself four questions about it:
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
- How do you react when you think that thought?
- Who would you be without that thought?
Then you turn it around – reverse it. So “John is so thoughtless!” can become “I am so thoughtless” or “John is so thoughtful” — and then you try to find ways in which these statements are as true or more true than the original one.
It’s very interesting and actually has helped me lower my stress levels around some things. I don’t think it’s a cure-all or a panacea or whatever, but it’s very very interesting.
You can learn more about it at TheWork.com.
Book 18 in 2007.
