When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Act, Sin, Become, Action, Kind, Fear
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.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Good, Live, Thinking, Think
It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it’s helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, “You’re caught in the dream”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Compassion, Stress, Passion, Feel, Dream
The Work is merely four questions; it’s not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It’s nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you’ve got ad enhance it. Any religion you have—they’ll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they’ll burn up anything that isn’t true for you. They’ll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Questions, Religion, Will, Joy, Work
After you’ve been doing inquiry for a while, if you have the thought “She doesn’t love me,” you just get the immediate turnaround with a smile: “Oh, I’m not loving myself in this moment”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Smile, Thought, Love, Doing
God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God’s intention: It’s exactly what is in every moment.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Act, Now, God
I love not rushing the process. Mind doesn’t shift until it does, and when it does shift, it’s right on time, not one second too late or too soon. People are like seeds waiting to sprout. We can’t be pushed ahead of our own understanding.
—Byron Katie
Topics: People, Time, Mind, Love, Right
Without our stories, we are not only able to act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend, a listener. We are people living happy lives. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath itself. Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there’s nothing to know and that we already have everything we need, right here now.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Live, People, Happy, Right, Fear, Happiness, Gratitude, Appreciation, Become, Now, Friend, Act
Would you rather be right or free?
—Byron Katie
Topics: Right
I’m a lover of reality, not because I’m a spiritual woman, but because it hurts when I argue with what is. And I notice that I lose, 100 percent of the time.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Spirit, Cause, Love, Time, Spiritual
That’s what I love about integrity. Each time we go inside, that’s where it is.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Time, Love, Integrity
It makes sense that no one else can cause you pain. That’s your job.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Wisdom, Pain, Cause, Rich
Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Stress
That’s the purpose of stress. It’s a friend. It’s an alarm clock, built in to let you know that it’s time to do The Work.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Now, Friend, Work, Stress, Time, Purpose
The world is as you perceive it to be. For me, clarity is a word for beauty. It’s what I am. And when I’m clear, I see only beauty. Nothing else is possible.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Beauty, World
If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Prayer, God, Love, Appreciation, Desire
I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They’re all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Thought, Age, Try, Thoughts, Discover, Stress, Language, New, Mind
When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Gift, Kind, Life, Freedom, Become, Stress, Experience
Stories are the untested, uninvestigated theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don’t even realize that they’re just theories.
—Byron Katie
Rather than understand the original cause—a thought—we try to change the stressful feelings by looking outside ourselves.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Try, Change, Feelings, Stress, Feel, Thought, Cause
You’re never given more pain than you can handle. You never, ever get more than you can take.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Give, Pain
The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Perception, World
Some of us are returning to sanity, because we’re tired of the pain. We’re in a hurry. No time to mess around.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Time, Cause, Pain
All suffering originates from the mind, not the world.
—Byron Katie
When a thought appears such as “Do the dishes” and you don’t do them, notice how an internal war breaks out… The stress and weariness you feel are really mental combat fatigue.
—Byron Katie
Topics: War, Stress, Feel, Thought
I saw that we’re all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Responsibility, Humility, Doing, Best, Time, Life
When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories, and the world is the projected image of your thoughts.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Age, Thoughts, Reflection, People, Thought, Think, World, Work, Thinking
Reality doesn’t wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Doing, Heart, Opinion
We’ve been looking outside us for our own peace. We’ve been looking in the wrong direction.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Peace
When you’re operating on uninvestigated theories of what’s going on and you aren’t even aware of it, you’re in what I call “the dream”. Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You’ll never know until you inquire.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Doing, Truth, World, War, Now, Work, Dream, Time, Become
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Ken Keyes Jr. American Self-Help Author
- Denis Waitley American Motivational Speaker
- John C. Maxwell American Christian Professional Speaker
- Mark Victor Hansen American Public Speaker
- T. Harv Eker American Motivational Speaker
- Earl Nightingale American Motivational Speaker
- Wayne Dyer American Self-help Author
- Marie Chapian American Christian Writer
- Marianne Williamson American Activist
- Shakti Gawain American Author
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