Can These Four Questions Change Your Life?

I’m not one to usually visit the Oprah website, but I came across the following article that I thought some of you might be interested in.

Can These Four Questions Change Your Life?

Here are some highlights:

The last thing a cancer patient with tumors in her liver wants to hear is that her suffering exists only in her mind. But Katie had something else to offer, too, or so she said: a simple, completely replicable system for getting rid of the thoughts that make us suffer.

I got pretty far that first day or two, asking the questions, following them up with a turnaround, and feeling better each time I did, but I had a hunch that I was going to get only so far on my own. There was something eating away at me that I couldn’t even identify, let alone question. And this is when things got a little bit crazy, because after seeing how much I’d changed my mood by simply writing some questions and answers, it seemed that the next thing to do—the only thing to do—was sit down with Byron Katie and talk to her in person.

I just sat there and sat there and sat there—and then kaboom in my mind like you cannot believe: I realized that Katie had nailed it.

She had found the thought I hadn’t had the nerve to look at on my own—the thought that was so huge and scary, I couldn’t even see it. She’d found it not because she knew me better than I knew myself, but because she sat with me and listened. She was present. She was in the moment—which is exactly where The Work has enabled me to stay (enjoying my life, my husband, my boys, instead of drifting in a sea of existential dread). And if you had been sitting in the garden outside Byron Katie’s open window that summer day, overhearing first my fear and then my shock and then my confusion and then my anger, you would also, finally, have heard my laughter.

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