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Loving What Is, Revised Edition: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life; The Revolutionary Process Called "The Work" Paperback – December 7, 2021

by Byron Katie (Author), Stephen Mitchell (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 734 ratings
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Discover the truth hiding behind troubling thoughts with Byron Katie’s self-help classic.

In 2003, Byron Katie first introduced the world to The Work with the publication of Loving What Is. Nearly twenty years later, Loving What Is continues to inspire people all over the world to do The Work; to listen to the answers they find inside themselves;and to open their minds to profound, spacious, and life-transforming insights. 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.

Loving What Is shows you step by step, through clear and vivid examples, exactly how to use this revolutionary process for yourself. In this revised edition, readers will enjoy seven new dialogues, or real examples of Katie doing The Work with people to discover the root cause of their suffering. You will observe people work their way through a broad range of human problems, learning freedom through the very thoughts that had caused their suffering—thoughts such as “my husband betrayed me” or “my mother doesn’t love me enough.”

If you continue to do The Work, you may discover that the questioning flows into every aspect of your life, effortlessly undoing the stressful thoughts that keep you from experiencing peace. Loving What Is offers everything you need to learn and live this remarkable process, and to find happiness as what Katie calls “a lover of reality.”
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  1. Print length
    400 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harmony
  4. Publication date
    December 7, 2021
  5. Dimensions
    5.18 x 1.05 x 7.98 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0593234510
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0593234518
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From the Publisher

The revolutionary process that inspired people across the globe for twenty years… now revised.

ffers a simple way to embrace your life with joy and achieve serenity, says Erica Jong

Enables you to know for yourself the timeless essence of your being says Eckhart Tolle

Filled with the essence of wisdom. A practice for spiritual growth says Lama Surya Das

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Byron Katie experienced what she calls "waking up to reality" in 1986, and since then she has introduced The Work to hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world. In addition to her public events, she has introduced The Work into business settings, universities, schools, churches, prisons, and hospitals.

Stephen Mitchell's many books include the best-selling Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, The Gospel According to Jesus, Meetings with the Archangel, and The Frog Prince.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

A Few Basic Principles

What I love about The Work is that it enables you to go inside and find your own happiness, to experience what already exists within you, unchanging, immovable, ever-­present, ever-­waiting. No teacher is necessary. You are the teacher you’ve been waiting for. You are the one who can end your own suffering.

I often say, “Don’t believe anything I say.” I want you to discover what’s true for you, not for me. Still, many people have found the following principles to be helpful for getting started in The Work.

Noticing When Your Thoughts Argue with Reality

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, “Meow.” Wanting reality to be different than it is, right now, is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.

Yet if you pay attention, you’ll notice that you believe thoughts like this dozens of times a day: “People should be kinder,” “Children should be well behaved,” “My neighbors should take better care of their lawn,” “The line at the grocery store should move faster,” “My husband (or wife) should agree with me,” “I should be thinner (or prettier or more successful).” These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is, right now. If you think this sounds depressing, you’re right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.

After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hates it; people even move away from there because they can’t stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind—­with reality—­is that I discovered that I didn’t have a choice. I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—­but only 100 percent of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!

People new to The Work often say to me, “But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.” I answer them with a question: “Can you really know that that’s true?” Which is more empowering, “I wish I hadn’t lost my job” or “I lost my job; what intelligent solutions can I find right now?”

The Work reveals that what you think shouldn’t have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did happen, and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn’t mean that you condone it or approve of it. It just means that you can see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick, no one wants to be in a car accident; but when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that, yet we do it because we don’t know how to stop.

I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

Staying in Your Own Business

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. (Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and everyone else’s control, I call God’s business.)

Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, “You need to get a job,” “I want you to be happy,” “You should be on time,” “You need to take better care of yourself,” I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation. I noticed this early in 1986. When I mentally went into my mother’s business, for example, with a thought like “My mother should understand me,” I immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness. And I realized that every time in my life I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else’s business.

If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.

To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you.

If you understand the three kinds of business enough to stay in your own business, it can free your life in a way you can’t even imagine. The next time you’re feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you’re in mentally, and you may burst out laughing! That question can bring you back to yourself. And you may come to see that you’ve never really been present, that you’ve been mentally living in other people’s business all your life. Just to notice that you’re in someone else’s business can bring you back to your own wonderful self.

And if you practice it for a while, you may come to see that you don’t have any business, either, and that your life runs perfectly well on its own.

Meeting Your Thoughts with Understanding

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It is not our thoughts but the attachment to our thoughts that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

Most people think they are what their thoughts tell them they are. One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—­I was being breathed. Then I also noticed, to my amazement, that I wasn’t thinking—­that I was actually being thought and that thinking isn’t personal. Do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I think I won’t think today”? It’s too late: you’re already thinking! Thoughts just appear. They come out of nothing and go back to nothing, like clouds moving across the empty sky. They come to pass, not to stay. There is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true.

No one has ever been able to control his or her thinking, although people may tell the story of how they have. I don’t let go of my thoughts; I meet them with understanding. Then they let go of me.

Thoughts are like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. They appear like that, and through inquiry we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops aren’t personal, and neither are thoughts. Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears, you may find it interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The time after that, you may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harmony; Revised edition (December 7, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593234510
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593234518
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.18 x 1.05 x 7.98 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 734 ratings

About the author

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Byron Katie

Byron Katie

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Byron Katie (she was born Byron Kathleen Reid; everyone calls her Katie) has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering. When Katie appears, lives change. As she guides people through her simple yet powerful process of inquiry, called The Work, they find that their stressful beliefs—about life, other people, or themselves—radically shift. Through this process, Katie gives people the tool to set themselves free.

In 1986, at the bottom of a ten-year fall into depression, rage, and self-loathing, Byron Katie woke up one morning to a state of constant joy that has never left her. She realized that when she believed her thoughts she suffered, but when she questioned them, she didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being.

Since then, she has worked with millions of people at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, V. A. treatment centers, corporations, universities, and schools. Participants at her weekend workshops, the nine-day School for The Work, and the twenty-eight-day residential Turnaround House report profound experiences and lasting transformations. “Katie’s events are riveting to watch,” the Times of London reported. Eckhart Tolle calls The Work “a great blessing for our planet.” And Time magazine named Katie a “spiritual innovator for the new millennium.”

Byron Katie has written three bestselling books: Loving What Is, I Need Your Love—Is That True?, and A Thousand Names for Joy. Her other books are Question Your Thinking, Change The World; Who Would You Be Without Your Story?; and, for children, Tiger-Tiger, Is It True? Her latest book is A Mind at Home with Itself. She is married to the writer, scholar, and translator Stephen Mitchell.

On her website, www.thework.com, you will find basic information about Katie and The Work, Katie’s blog, free materials to download, audio and video clips, a schedule of events, and a free helpline with a network of facilitators.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
734 global ratings
amazing book that transformed my life
5 Stars
amazing book that transformed my life
Every passage is beyond words. If someone is looking for a way out, this book shows how to find it and where and whom to go; the very wisdom within us. So happy to see this book reaching out to people with the revised version.
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Top reviews from the United States

Bradley Miles
5.0 out of 5 stars The greatest book I have ever read
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2024
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Why introducing this book they mentioned a priest that said he recommended this more than the Bible. I found that hard to believe when starting the book but after finishing it I see that to be true as well.

This is by far the most helpful book I've ever read and I'm going to recommend it to anyone I know that is suffering and even those that aren't suffering.

From what I could understand Byron Katie's path is using the foundation of Eastern philosophy (you are not your thoughts), and rational mental models (inversion) that lead people to insights and actions that end their personal suffering.

In Byron Katie's world there's three types of business: my business, your business, and God's business. If you're not focusing on your business and no one else's. If you're focusing on God's business it's already taken care of, and if you focusing on someone else's business you neglecting your own business.

The foresight process here is a revelation and I think great insights even trying it throughout a reading of the book and I will hopefully continue to use it for the rest of my life. This book is a true gift and I'll try to read it every year to better understand and implement the work in my life and hopefully give it to others as well.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Game changing book
Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2024
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I read it. I applied it. This book is not a spectator sport.
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GFA
5.0 out of 5 stars This is a Game Changer folks!
Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2022
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Are you tired of all of the stories and expectations circulating around in your head, your friends/families stories they tell you, tv and social media? Do you want to be free of all of the chatter? Then, boy is this the book for you.

This book has changed my life. I have been working on myself for years (therapy, countless classes, books, meditation, opened my own reiki studio to share all of my knowledge with others) and have made amazing changes in being a kinder, more loving human.

I have been reading this book at the end of every year for 3 years, hoping that everything would click and change my thought process. At first, there were small changes when I wasn’t living a mindful life. Little changes here and there.

I am happy to report that the complete change happened this year. I find when a negative thought pops in, I immediately put the thought right back on myself, giggle at my audacity and then release my self-defeating thought and allow joy in. It is so incredibly freeing and the only way to truly live an amazing life.

The trick is to quiet the ego and fear and choose to be free. It takes time, just as she said. She went into the desert and questioned all of her thoughts. It does require doing the work.

I give this book to each of my clients and we do the work in my studio. For the ones truly seeking change, we are finally starting to see real changes in all areas of their lives when they question the stories that have been ruling their lives.

I wish I could give everyone on earth this book. It was be amazing to see how the would could change if we were each open to living the way this book teaches you to live.

This revised edition adds more incredible stories and more information to help you work through how to do this for yourself. If you are new to working on yourself, you may need to contact one of her facilitators. When you start and your ego is predominate, you don’t find all if the different ways you can look at your story. Once you get it, it flows on its own. She offers online group meetings on her website
( thework.com) for a donation. I do recommend reading all of her books bc you learn how to question all thoughts ( even the hard ones like child abuse, rape, co-vid and death).

She also has free paperwork to assist you to do your own work. Not may folks offer free gifts without trying to sell you something but she does with her paperwork. I also love that she offers you a choice in how much you can donate to listen in on her live classes.

This angel is the real deal and I am forever grateful to her freeing me and opening me up to a wonderful, new way of living. I have this same dream for each if my clients and everyone on earth. Thank you Byron, thank you!!!
83 people found this helpful
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@TiTi
5.0 out of 5 stars She is a force of Good
Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2024
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Read it, practice, and try to understand her mission to eradicate suffer. Charming.
3 people found this helpful
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Tamara Donadi
4.0 out of 5 stars Good self help
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2023
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I haven’t finished the book. I am still a little confused about the process and questions and how this will work. Maybe after I am finished I will have a better understanding. Good points in the beginning anyways.
6 people found this helpful
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K. Schoeneman
5.0 out of 5 stars This book truly shows how to face and overcome the pain that keeps us stuck.
Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2023
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I LOVE this book. Hope everyone gets one. It's one thing to be at the mercy of outside influences and uncontrolable situations, it's another to have a tool to move through our own stories and correct the narrative for a happier life. Can't recommend it highly enough. Get all her books! Let's change the world when we're done with ourselves.
4 people found this helpful
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life is good
5.0 out of 5 stars I never thought i would love what is
Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2023
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Now i know it is loving myself

Thank you katie I am free
5 people found this helpful
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Jessie K
3.0 out of 5 stars An invitation to self-gaslight?
Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2023
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I agree with Byron Katie's general thesis we are makers/upholders of our own misery, but the 4 Question framework broke for me when she tried to do "the Work" with a survivor of incest in which she asked the victim to come up all the reasons why her abusive father was not a disgusting psychopath, but in fact "wonderful," the idea being (I think, the process is still a little confusing to me) that the survivor can train herself out of a victim mindset.

I'm not a mental health professional, but that approach seems like it might have the potential to re-traumatize someone already suffering from low self-worth, anxiety, depression and, yes, victimhood. It was excruciating the read the transcripts of this episode because it was clear the woman was very confused and anxious about the process. She really struggled to come up with reasons why her father was actually "wonderful." I came away feeling like Byron was inviting her to gaslight herself, to minimize the trauma she suffered by tricking herself into thinking he was actually a pretty swell guy. Like, hey, your abuse could have been a lot worse!

While I think Byron has honorable intentions, the 4 Questions framework kind of reminded me of NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere of HBO's "The Vow" whose psychological ju-jitsuing of his followers resulted in them erasing their own feelings, experiences and reality, priming them to live inside his cult.

I'm all for looking into the mirror for why someone's life might suck, but once it dips into self gaslight territory ("your incestuous father isn't actually a monster, it's just your perception of him that is monstrous"), that's a big red flag to me.

I think the 4 Question approach is best used for typical (non-traumatic) life grievances like why am I always broke, why can't I get a date, why won't my colleague stop annoying me, etc. That kind of thing.
133 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Leopoldo Velez Brun
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente contenido.
Reviewed in Mexico on March 20, 2023
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Excelente contenido!!! Fácil de leer, todos los conceptos son altamente aplicables (lo cual aprecio mucho!), la aplicación de los mismos produce excelentes resultados. Si haces el trabajo, verás los resultados, esa es mi experiencia. Muy recomendado para aquellos que ya están cansados de vivir en víctima y en conflicto con la vida. Bendiciones.
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Chris machado
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book
Reviewed in Canada on December 24, 2022
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A masterpiece whoever reads this book will become happy and know god
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FischerM
5.0 out of 5 stars Man muss Byron Katie mögen
Reviewed in Germany on December 3, 2023
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Ich bin einerseits beeindruckt von Byron Katie’s Arbeit, andererseits empfinde ich Ihren Ansatz teils recht hart. Ich kann das mit mir selbst ausmachen, frage mich aber oft, wie es wohl Start besaiteteren Menschen mit manchen ihrer Rückmeldungen geht. Der Erfolg scheint für ihr Konzept zu sprechen.
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manuela garcía sanchez
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in Spain on March 27, 2023
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Peace begins and ends with oneself. Our uninvestigated thoughts are ALL the source of our suffering. Inquire on this, and that’s all that’s ever needed.
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Claire P
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing way of questioning your thoughts
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2022
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The Work is quite revolutionary. An amazing way to question and analyse your thoughts.
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