Byron Katie invites us to try out self-discovery. It introduces “The Work,” a simple meditative process noticing our thoughts.

This process works by writing out our thoughts and working through the ideas we wrote down, either through more writing or with another person familiar with the process. Note that the other person is someone we consent to go through the process, trust to support us, and who we truly know we are safe with.

The book presents the idea that we can use guided questions to better understand our beliefs and initial assumptions. While we might know intellectually that beliefs, thoughts, and assumptions are different from physical reality, it can help to slow down and look at more details.

When we slow down, the book gives us ideas for what we what our ideas might mean. This can help us to notice what our thoughts miss in our experiences. When we are stressed, our thoughts overfocus on certain details and forget others.

While listening, one might have certain reservations. It’s understandable to think that questioning our thoughts could lead to blaming ourselves for our own suffering.

When we accept that we're not to blame, we can seek our own understanding and our own innocence. This helps to notice our reactions to external events and notice the thoughts we have during our pain.

The audiobook is filled with recordings of real practical examples and real-life situations, making the concepts accessible and relatable. It doesn’t promise instant solutions but offers a pathway to understanding and accepting ‘what is.’

If we’re constantly questioning our thoughts, could we end up denying our experiences? The discussion in the book isn’t encouraging us to look away from reality; instead, we slow down to note every detail of our reality. Then we can see the difference of our the thoughts and beliefs that cause suffering.

We can accept ‘what is’ real for ourselves–and not anyone else. It's also not encouraging other people to override or push us into their beliefs. We have to know what we think of ourselves.

The audiobook also includes dialogues from people who have done “The Work” with Katie at public events—people dealing with cancer diagnoses, job loss, relationship problems, and other real-world issues.

Those of us who are activists might worry that “The Work” could stifle efforts for social change. Could this discourage us from working towards societal change? By promoting self-awareness and personal growth, this can empower individuals to effect change in their lives and, by extension, in society.

We look for possibilities and options that we didn't think of. How could we do more than we're doing? When we learn how to spend less energy on the stress of our world's problems, we can make real changes.

While it’s true that “The Work” can be practiced by anyone, it’s important for individuals to approach it responsibly and consider seeking professional guidance if needed. Including other methods that might work better for your situation

“The Work” itself involves four questions and a turnaround, which is a way of experiencing the opposite of what you believe. It doesn't mean that this opposite is true, it's just looking at if part of it might be true. Our thoughts can be all or nothing, and this is a way of seeing if there's a middle ground. And it's okay if you don't find middle ground! You just are looking to see possible new perspectives and insights into our own minds.

I would recommend it to anyone seeking to understand themselves better. Only you can know “what is” for you. ( )

Simple but radical questions that now reside in my happiness tool kit. Katie's process of inquiry inspired a weekend retreat I attended last summer. Early this year a 70-year-old friend, not connected with the retreat in any way, gave me a copy of my own. What synchronicity. I celebrate freedom and value truth; inquiry directed by Katie's book gives me a reliable compass to find them when I lose my bearings in fear, doubt, frustration, anger, or worry. ( )

This is just... not great. I had pretty high expectations for this book after reading about it in a different book, but this was just not good. I almost could have forgiven the problematic self-help advice by saying "well she must not mean this for someone in blank situation," but then there was a scene that was so blatantly and unapologetically transphobic that I couldn't give the author the benefit of the doubt for anything. ( )

Maybe I’ll do a brief review, although I can’t claim to really be an expert on The Work, since I haven’t really done it formally. I mean, sometimes I’ll have judgments, and I’ll kinda think, Is that true, no; Should I turn it around, yes, and it’s very brief. I do still have some problems, mostly to do with isolation and social-sexual thoughts, (although I don’t think I’d be the most social or sexual person even if I were the perfect me), and, I don’t know, just feeling like I should Know Everything. Like, if only I could Know, like, Everything, that would be…. Good. Is it really true, no. Maybe not. Is it better the way it is, yeah, probably. Maybe considering how ill-informed/uneducated/oppressed the rest of the world is, I already know too much, or at least, more than I have any right to know. 😆

I did have more serious problems at one time, although Modern Eckhart and Leonard (I prefer to give people’s first names; using last names like a first name makes me feel like an academic butler, you know), helped me, along with other people, including other more ‘Christian’ and less new age type names, right. But, whatever. I read Katie (although I’ve read Gangaji too, another girl, and I’ve ordered a book by Swami Muktananda’s successor Swami Chidvilasanada or whatever, an Indian girl), more as kinda a curiosity/integrity (integrity in this case being diversity), than a straight psychology kinda thing…. Which leads me to express that in my experience the doctrinaire liberal, if you will, although they do challenge people to I guess live their values and stop lying/exploiting, and therefore although I’d never say that they’re Just Bad, or whatever, I mean, nobody’s JUST bad, but the doctrinaire liberal isn’t even as “bad” in the ordinary sense as the Eternal Frontiersman, in my experience…. But the doct-lib is I think also someone who does have a perhaps equal capacity for rejecting, judging, and labeling cultures different from their own, you know. So, there’s that.

But part of me is like that too. I may live in New Jersey, but this is kinda a Republican area of the state, and there are plenty of times I walk past someone with some number sticker like, ‘Thank God I’m Racist! You’re Not, Though, I Bet—Get On That’, and I want to have fun in my mind at this confused person’s expense…. But it doesn’t really make me feel better.

They’re a cartoon Nazi…. They should be good…. I’ve gotta get on them, if only in my mind….

Is it true, no. Should I get on myself and feel a little empowered instead, yes.

But I wouldn’t claim to have done the Work formally, you know. And I feel okay, most of the time, and nothing has to change…. And life is a process.

So, there’s that.

Contains triggers for victim-blaming, rape apologia, child sexual abuse, misogyny, gaslighting and others I'm forgetting.

This is a "spiritual" book that I'd be willing to bet was brought on by a severe mental health episode. It is absolutely disgusting. I could barely get past the introduction, when Byron Katie calls someone "sweetheart," and the full sentence is "Do you think you covered it all, sweetheart?" after a woman poured out her utter hatred of her husband for a few paragraphs of speech. But no, the book continues. Byron Katie...makes me think...why is her last name Katie? Especially if everyone calls her Katie? Why not just flip the names around and legally have it changed by a judge? This bothered me a lot more than it should.

Bryon Katie is celebrated as having launched this whole spiritual movement, and is compared often to mystics who are of different ethnicities than her, and of wildly different cultures than 2000's America as experienced by a white woman, is. These mystics came up with their worldviews and spirituality -way- before she did, and she's modifying some of their work and calling it her own. This made me uncomfortable. She's not brilliant. She clearly enjoys being in a high position of power and victim-blaming others for horrific things that happened to them. She doesn't want anyone to change, except when she's dictating it. This reminded me a -lot- of a cult I got out of a few years ago. Parts of it also reminded me of a therapy that is used on some people, "I have this thought of whatever. Is my thought true?" This practice is essentially your therapist hitting you over the head with a "live love laugh" sign. Not too far of aspects of what Byron Katie is claiming she came up with.
She doesn't help people take active steps to change their lives, like asking the woman who hated her husband so much what the marriage contained for her anymore. She doesn't ask anyone questions about their situation that could guide them to make a concrete decision. Instead, she gaslights them, blames them, and convinces them to stay in annoying, bad, or horrifying situations because she said so. It's in the title of the book.

I was convinced the first time I read this that these thoughts were brought on by a severe mental health episode. I am absolutely convinced now of it. The book's synopsis and Katie's perspective say it: that she was depressed, enraged, and not leaving her house for months. Suddenly, one day, she laughed and was filled with joy, and came up with this.
That sounds like she might be bipolar. I'm bipolar. She desperately needed a functioning medication regimen, like I have had since I was fourteen. She desperately needs therapy from someone certified, so she can try to rein in some of her wilder ideas. She needs to read the histories of saints and mystics so she can realize her ideas aren't original. She needs to listen to people who have been hurt to realize her own worldviews are absolutely horrifying. She needs to work through whatever "demons" she's clearly "overcome" to "become more spiritual" because she clearly has not. She doesn't say that last sentence in the book, but I know the type of people who do. They -do not- like being criticized. They want absolute adoration and for everything to happen immediately. And they are often in positions of power: teachers; therapists; nurses.

Katie is not a spiritual leader; she's an insanely creepy motivational speaker with serious delusions of grandeur. I hope she gets the mental health services she needs, and changes her worldviews on sexual abuse victims and everyone else she was so condescending, insulting, and syrupy to. Ugh. ( )