Byron Katie (b.1942,) fully Byron Kathleen Mitchell, is an American spiritual teacher and self-help author. She teaches a method of self-inquiry known as “The Work of Byron Katie” or simply as “The Work.”
Born in Breckenridge, Texas, Katie was married at age 19, had three children, and started a career in real estate. Suffering from severe depression in her thirties and forties, she realized that what had been causing her depression was not the world around her. Still, the beliefs she had about the world around her.
Realizing that true happiness could be found by reexamining how people force the world to meet their expectations, Katie established “The Work,” a self-help program that guides people to a mindset for making peace with their reality.
Katie’s works include Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002, with Stephen Mitchell) and I Need Your Love: How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead (2005, with Michael Katz,) and Peace in the Present Moment (2010, with Eckhart Tolle.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Byron Katie
If I think that someone else is causing my problem, I’m insane.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Sin, Think, Problems
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.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Work, Thinking, Now, Children, Think, Better, Change, Cause, World
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
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
It’s good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you’re confused, that you’re in a lie.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Pain, Good
Everything happens for me, not to me.
—Byron Katie
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: Language, New, Discover, Thought, Thoughts, Try, Stress, Age, Mind
If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen”.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Desire, Appreciation, Prayer, Love, God
It’s important to realize that inquiry is about noticing, not about dropping the thought… Inquiry is not about getting rid of thoughts; it’s about realizing what’s true for you, through awareness and unconditional self-love. Once you see the truth, the thought lets go of you, not the other way around.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Love, Truth, Awareness, Thoughts, Thought, War
The greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. Finding this truth is better than finding a gold mine.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Truth, Gold, Better, Great
An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Suffering
One day I noticed that I wasn’t breathing—I was being breathed.
—Byron Katie
I find that so often self-realization leaves us only with laughter.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Laughter
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.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Suffering, Think, Cause
I like to say that no one can hurt me—that’s my job. This is good news.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Good, New
You are the effect of your story, that’s all.
—Byron Katie
Lack of understanding is always painful.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Pain
I am entirely motivated without anger. The truth sets us free, and freedom acts.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Truth, Freedom, Act, Anger
That’s where the fear comes from—from your uninvestigated thoughts.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Thought, Fear, Thoughts
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: Happy, Right, People, Now, Friend, Become, Fear, Gratitude, Appreciation, Happiness, Act, Live
No one has ever been angry at another human being – we’re only angry at our story of them.
—Byron Katie
My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with right now.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Right, Teach, Experience, People, Now
The pain shows you what’s left to investigate.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Pain
When we try to be safe, we live our lives being very, very careful; and we wind up having no lives.
—Byron Katie
I came to see that the world is always as it should be, whether I opposed it or not. And I came to embrace reality with all my heart. I love the world, without any conditions.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Heart, World, Love
The Work is: Judge your neighbor, write it down, ask four questions, turn it around. That’s it. Simple stuff.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Questions, Work
When you run in fear, it’s square into the wall.
—Byron Katie
Topics: Fear
When I am perfectly clear, what is, is what I want.
—Byron Katie
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: Live, Think, Good, Thinking
I realized that it’s insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It’s blowing!
—Byron Katie
Topics: Time, Now, Win, Reality
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