At the desk, 7:58 a.m.
Yesterday, Michele Woodward reminded me of Byron Katie and "The Work". (Here's a link to get the introductory eBook for free.)
The work is based around Cognitive Behavior Therapy as created by Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck. Honestly, I don't know which came first. I assume Ellis and Beck because I learned Ellis and Beck first. And hell, there is always Gurdjieff and his Work, but please, please, please, let's not go there.
Moving on, the key to Byron Katie's The Work are these four questions:
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?
Having grown up around delusional people, you can imagine why the Work is so appealing to me. When I hear something that distresses me or have a difficult interaction with someone, I can go through these question.
I usually find that what I'm so distressed about is my judgment of what's going on with another person. And thus, what I'm distressed about is actually a fantasy, a projection, a story that I made up to fill in the blanks based around my perception of someone else's behavior.
Phew. I neither have to figure them out nor waste any of my limited energy on my distress over what I thought they might be thinking. Let's be frank here, I have a lot of other characters to think about and create scenarios around. I don't have time to waste on this crap.
What Michele reminded me of was Byron Katie's belief that there are three types of business:
1. My business
2. Your or their business
3. God's business
My business? Writing stories.Taking care of my family. Lifting the covers for the dog to go under.
Their business? Whatever is on their list, their plate, their mind at any given time.
God's business? The weather, death and life and death and life, almost everything.
After our conversation about projection yesterday, I thought I would throw this into the mix. We don't have to live with our projections. Freedom is only four questions away.
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