www.thework.com

I was talking to someone last week about Katie Byron, an inspirational woman and it encouraged me to revisit her work as it helped me enormously in the past and still does as a quick reality check - just by asking myself "Do you know that to be truth" often makes me question my reaction or behavious

Her website www.thework.com has lots of information on it and also some worksheets to help you to question any beliefs you have. Including the Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet using the four questions and the turnarounds below. The Work is meditation. It’s about opening to your heart, not about trying to change your thoughts. Ask the questions, then go inside and wait for the deeper answers to surface. You can download the Facilitation Guide for helpful sub-questions too.

In its most basic form, The Work consists of four questions and your turnarounds. For example, your statement might be “[Name] doesn't listen to me.” Find someone in your life about whom you have had that thought, take that statement and put it up against the four questions and turnarounds of The Work.

Step 1 Is it true?

Step 2 Can you absolutely know that it's true?

Step 3 How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?

Step 4 Who would you be without the thought?

I've really found this valuable on many occassions.

There are also lots of videos on the website to watch which are excellent.

The following info I have copied from the website about Katie Byron herself because she is a real inspiration;

How The Work Began:
Byron Katie became severely depressed in her early thirties. For almost a decade she spiraled down into rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom.

Then one morning in February 1986, she experienced a life-changing realization. There are various names for an experience like this. Katie calls it “waking up to reality.”

In that instant, she says,

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. That joy is in everyone, always.

She realized that what had been causing her depression was not the world around her, but the beliefs she'd had about the world. Instead of hopelessly trying to change the world to match her thoughts about how it should be, she could question these thoughts and, by meeting reality as it is, experience unimaginable freedom and joy. As a result, a bedridden, suicidal woman was instantly filled with love for everythinglife brings.

The Work, Katie's process of self-inquiry, didn't develop from this experience; she says that it woke up with her, as her, that February morning in 1986. The first people who did The Work reported that it had transformed their lives, and she soon began receiving invitations to teach the process publicly.

Since 1986, she has brought The Work to millions of people across the world, at free public events, in prisons, hospitals, churches, corporations, universities, schools, at weekend workshops, at her amazing nine-day School for The Work, and through the Institute for The Work