By Emy Louie. Edited by MM.
During the last few days, I have been doing “The Work” as prescribed by Byron Katie.
What is The Work? By doing The Work, I list anything that I have bad feelings, annoyances, or grievances about and I write down what I want done about them. I then turn the request around towards myself and I realize I am the one who causes my own suffering.
Try it yourself. You write down “I am annoyed that the driver cut me off,” or “I am upset that such and such happened.” I got my husband to go through three scenarios and he saw the value in writing down grievances.
Don’t do The Work in your mind, without writing it down though. When you write it down, you realize that the grievances you wrote down contradict reality and to contradict reality causes a lot of suffering and the whole point of The Work is to accept reality and end suffering.
The Work works for any grievance–from petty grievances to strong feelings you may feel conflicted or confused about.
Also, follow the directions very specifically. Here is the entire worksheet, should you want to do The Work: http://thework.com/downloads/worksheets/JudgeYourNeighbor_Worksheet.pdf.
Also, follow the directions very specifically. I missed some key things when I skipped over some questions.
I first heard about The Work around 2005 and I wrote down three grievances I had. Now, I would like to do The Work for every annoyance I have ever thought about in my life. So far, I came up with at least 100 feelings and I can’t wait to see how I created my own suffering. To save paper, I typed those feelings into an electronic document.
Regarding my own self-discovery on The Work, I find that some assumptions I have simply cannot be verified as being true. I really can see the choice I have before me. Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?
In some cases, I chose to let go of my high standards of quality and instead be patient and tolerant. In other cases, I chose to uphold my high standards of quality and chose to be right now in order to be happy later, as demonstrated in Kenneth Cloke’s Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution when he extols the benefit of inflaming conflict.
Likewise, the discovery of the truth about yourself becomes crystal clear by doing The Work. According the Byron Katie’s book Loving What Is, when you start doing The Work enough, living a life without suffering becomes automatic.
Mindfulness and Healthy Living 