Byron katie quotes

It's not what happens in life that bothers us. It's what we're believing about it that bothers us.

Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.

Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear.

In the fall, you don't grieve because the leaves are falling and dying. You say, "Isn't it beautiful!" Well, we're the same way. There are seasons. We all fall sooner or later. It's all so beautiful. And our concepts, without investigation, keep us from knowing this. It's beautiful to be a leaf, to be born, to fall, to give way to the next, to become food for the roots. It's life, always changing its form and always giving itself completely. We all do our part. No mistake.

Everything that happens is God's will. When you realize that, you're home free.

We never make a decision. When the time is right, the decision makes itself.

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.

My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we're living with right now.

Life is the constant opportunity to wake up.

Life just happens. It’s what you’re believing about life that makes you suffer.

The only thing you fear is the unreality that you yourself have invented.

The miracle of love comes to you in the presence of the uninterpreted moment. If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life.

Your suffering is never caused by the person you're blaming.

When you become a lover of what is, the war is over.

Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you're attached to something not true for you.

When you think that someone or something other than yourself needs to change, you're mentally out of your business.

The ego is terrified of the truth. And the truth is that the ego doesn't exist.

When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.

The world is nothing but my perception of it. I see only through myself. I hear only through the filter of my story.

If you don't like your world, question your thoughts about it.

When you're comfortable and secure, it's not enough. The mind doesn't stop there because it has to continue to focus itself as this body, so it moves to pleasure. And pleasure really is a non-existent thing. When we're experiencing pleasure, we're trying to hold onto it as it leaves, so it really isn't pleasure. Pleasure is pain because we're grasping.

The way to truly help someone is for me to not get immersed in their suffering.

I can find only three kinds of business in the Universe: mine, yours, and God's.

What is perfect health? The unraveling of all imagined states of mind

Your most intimate relationship is the one you have with your thoughts.

Nothing belongs to me. Everything comes and goes. Serenity is an open door.

People who believe their unquestioned thoughts cannot see what is obvious and directly in front of their faces at all times, because they are invested in what they believe to be true. As long as they live out of an unquestioned mind, they must continue to argue with what they believe is happening rather than the reality of what is really happening.

Our job is unconditional love. The job of everyone else in our life is to push our buttons.

I didn't fight or shame my thoughts, I questioned them, and they stopped shaming me.

When you believe that your problem is caused by someone or something else, you become your own victim.

When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.

What would it be like to let go of wanting things to be other than they are?

Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there's nothing to know.

No-one can disappoint you, only your thoughts about them can

An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It's a gift that says, "Get honest; inquire." We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that's as it should be, because in our innocence we haven't known how. So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write thought down, and investigate.

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.

Just keep coming home to yourself, you are the one who you've been waiting for.

People try so hard to let go of their negative behaviors and thoughts, and it doesn't work, or it works only for a short time. I didn't let go of my negative thoughts; I questioned them, and then they let go of me, and so did my addictions and depression.

A lover of what is looks forward to everything: life, death, disease, loss, earthquakes, bombs, anything the mind might be tempted to call 'bad.' Life will bring us everything we need, to show us what we haven't undone yet. Nothing outside ourselves can make us suffer. Except for our unquestioned thoughts, every place is paradise.

That's what every uncomfortable feeling is for-that's what pain is for, what money is for, what everything in the world is for: your self-realization.

To understand our own thinking is to understand all thinking.

Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.

The only difference between heaven and hell is believing a thought.

Bottom line is, if someone says something about me and it upsets me, it's true.

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 problems for you.

If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.

To argue with reality is to argue with God

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. “If I feel peaceful,” they say, “why would I bother taking action at all?” My answer is “Because that's what love does.” To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what's right is insane. As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become. As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day with drool running down her chin. My experience is the opposite. Love is action.

Fear has only two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself-your own thinking coming back to you.

You can only see what you believe—nothing else is possible.

Everyone in your life is a figment of your imagination--ev en you.

In my experience, we don't make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn't personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.

I love what I think, and I'm never tempted to believe it. Thoughts are like the wind or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. They're not personal, they don't belong to us, they just come and go. When they're met with understanding, they're friends.

Any thought of discomfort or stress is an alarm that lets you know you're believing an untrue thought

Who would you be without the thought that happiness depends on someone else?

The Work reveals that what you think shouldn't have happened should have happened. It should happened because it did, 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.

If your beliefs are stressful and you question them, you come to see that they aren't true - whereas prior to questioning, you absolutely believe them. How can you live in joy when you're believing thoughts that bring on sadness, frustration, anger, alienation, and loneliness?

Don't be careful. You could hurt yourself.

Suffering over things that have happened to us is nothing more than an argument with the past.

We cannot see what we don't believe.

When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. 'My husband doesn't respect me.' 'I should be thinner.' Those are stories. When there's no story, there's no suffering.

The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.

It's good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you're confused, that you're in a lie.

You’ve never reacted to someone else. You project meaning onto nothing. And you react to the meaning you’ve projected

The greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. Finding this truth is better than finding a gold mine.

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

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.

Discomfort is the call to set yourself free.

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

So, how do you get back to heaven? To begin with, just notice the thoughts that take you away from it. You don't have to believe everything your thoughts tell you. Just become familiar with the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness. It may seem strange at first to get to know yourself in this way, but becoming familiar with your stressful thoughts will show you the way home to everything you need.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our 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.

When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.

If you think the cause of your problem is 'out there,' you'll try to solve it from the outside. Take the shortcut: solve it from within.

You either believe what you think or you question it. There’s no other choice.

When we love what is, it becomes so simple to live in the world. The world is exactly as it should be.

The most important relationship is the mind's relationship with itself. In other words, the ultimate - and, really, the only - relationship you have is the relationship with your own thoughts.

The mind's job is to validate what it thinks.

Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, "Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking in this moment. You're living in a story that isn't true for you." Living a lie is always stressful. And investigating a lie through The Work always leads you back to who you are. Who you are is not an option. You are love. It hurts to believe you're other than who you are, to live any story less than love.

I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours and God's. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our 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.

Nothing outside you can ever give you what you're looking for.

Spare yourself from seeking love, approval, or appreciation-from anyone. And watch what happens in reality, just for fun.

If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life.

No one has ever been able to control his 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.

How do I know it was meant to happen this way? Because it did.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you.

Your nature is truth, and when you oppose it, you don't feel like yourself. Stress never feels as natural as peace does.

It only takes one clear person to have a good relationship.

We are never really in control. We just think we are when things happen to be going our way.

The Work: 1. Is it true? 2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? 3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? 4. Who would you be without the thought?

If I had a prayer, it would be this: "God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen."

There's never a mistake in the universe. So if your partner is angry, good. If there are things about him that you consider flaws, good, because these flaws are your own, you're projecting them, and you can write them down, inquire, and set yourself free. People go to India to find a guru, but you don't have to: you're living with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom.

Gratitude is what we are without a story.

Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing ever happened that didn't need to happen.

When you realize that suffering and discomfort are the call to inquiry, you may actually begin to look forward to uncomfortable feelings. You may even experience them as friends coming to show you what you have not yet investigated thoroughly enough.

We do not mature through age. We mature in awareness.

I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn't caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there's a thought that isn't true for us.

Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.

You can't have an up without a down. You can't have a left without a right. This is duality. If you have a problem, you must already have the solution. The question is, do you really want the solution, or do you want to perpetuate the problem?

It's not your job to like me - it's mine

It's not the problem that causes our suffering; it's our thinking about the problem.

Every (stressful thought) is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be having this experience. God is unjust. Life isn't fair.

It's quite an amazing experience to see the same life with and without the thought. We come to see how crazy a thought can make us when we believe it.

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

When we question our thoughts, we see that the craziness was never in the world, but in us.

Until you can see everything in the world as your friend, your work is not done.

It's not the darkness that people fear; it's what they imagine into the darkness.

The world is what you believe it to be, and it changes as you change.

Reality - the way that is, exactly as it is, in every moment - is always kind. It's our story about reality that blurs our vision, obscures what's true, and leads us to believe that there is injustice in the world. I sometimes say that you move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer.

Pay close attention to the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness.

What you’re believing in the moment creates your suffering or your happiness.

Mind changes, and as a result, the world changes. A clear mind heals everything that needs to be healed.

Love is action. It's clear, it's kind, it's effortless, and it's irresistible.

Nothing terrible has ever happened except in our thinking. Reality is always good, even in situations that seem like nightmares. The story we tell is the only nightmare that we have lived.

You are the effect of your story, that's all.

Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden.

I can't love you as you have been or will be. I can only love you as you are.

Reality doesn't wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does.

I stopped waiting for the world to give me what I wanted; I started giving it to myself.

Since the past is unreal and the future is unreal, all your thoughts are about nothing.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it.

It's not easy to find your own way when you believe that you need love, approval, appreciation, or anything from your family. It's particularly hard when you want them to see things your way.

No one has ever been angry at another human being-we’re only angry at our story of them.

Until the mind is open, the heart stays closed. The open mind is the key to the open heart.

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.