The Power of a Thank You to Dissolve Criticism

Byron Katie, the originator of The Work process which helps people to find more peace in their lives through a simple questioning method, teaches that Defense is the first act of war. When you have a person firing criticism at you, the moment you start to defend yourself, you have kicked off war between you and them. War requires that there be at least two parties opposing each other.

There is a very simple process which can disarm your critic within minutes! Before you place yourself in a situation like this again however, you may want to read a former blog I wrote - Finding Balance in Your Life. In this blog you'll learn a process of owning and being at peace with any negative trait another person could accuse you of.

With that process done, the next time you find yourself being attacked verbally by someone who is accusing you of all sorts of wrongdoings, simply say "Thank You". When you say the Thank You, contemplate inwardly that we all have, and own every human trait - negative and positive - in varying degrees. From my former blog's recommended exercise, you will realize and have found how you do actually demonstrate somewhere in your life all negative traits you could possibly bring to mind.

Empowered with this inner experience of being okay with negative traits, as your attacker hurls abusive judgments at you, your response becomes a simple "Thank You, Thank You, Thank You." The truth is that nothing can be showing up in your life that doesn't exist in your own thoughts. Quantum physics is proving this.

Physicists tell us that everything we could possibly imagine exists in what some refer to as The Field - the quantum field of all possibilities. They tell us that everything exists as a wave - spread out over space and time - a probability amplitude. This means everything exists merely as a possibility UNTIL we put our attention on The Field. Then the wave becomes a particle (takes on a form). It is the quality of our attention that is bringing a certain probability in the field of all possibilities into material existence.

The implications for us in this knowledge is that whatever is materializing in 'our world' is simply showing us the quality of our own thoughts or inner attention. Somewhere within us, we are holding our attention on that particular state which is manifesting before our eyes. By thanking our aggressor, we are thanking him/her for showing us what thoughts are still active within us. Since we have already made peace with this aspect of ourselves, there is no 'fight' to be had. We can totally agree with the person and thank them for showing us what we still hold within ourselves.

An interesting dynamic happens within the aggressor when you practice saying Thank You to him/her for enlightening you to your inner thoughts. Within minutes, as their onslaught receives none of the expected response from you, they are left with their own anguish, hatred, lack of peace. There is nothing for them to do but BE with themselves. You are not feeding their need to share/spread the burden of their unhappiness with you. They must experience it fully themselves.

I have seen this dynamic work amazingly well time and again with the end result being that the aggressor simply goes quiet as they see for the first time in their life that they are the creators of their own experience. They may resist your behavior for a little while trying desperately to make you feel as unhappy as they are. However, very quickly they will go quiet as they realize there is nowhere to go but within themselves to find resolution with this troublesome state of mind.

For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .

How Do I Find Peace?

I can't say enough about the power of doing The Work, a very simple system put together by Byron Katie when she had a revelation in consciousness one day after suffering depression for several years.

Whenever you are feeling pain, suffering, anxiety, confusion or any other stressful state in your life you will certainly find more peace from doing the process found on this page of Katie's website.

The process opens up all the hidden thoughts you've had that have been causing you pain and suffering in life. Once you realize that it's all just thought which is creating your perception of the world and its events, then you have the power to change that perception, firstly by being present with what it is you are actually thinking, then asking the 4 questions The Work poses...

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

Katie advises to start with the Judge Your Neighbor worksheets found on this page of her website. My experience of this process is it really brings out into the open all the toxic, hateful, mean thoughts you have been holding under the surface.

After doing the Judge Your Neighbor worksheet, move on to the One Belief at a Time worksheet. This process will bring you to the place where you clearly see that the judgments you've made of other people are exactly the same things you have done to others throughout your life. Once you are able to be at peace with all of the aspects of yourself - the good and  the bad - then peace enters the mind and nothing "out there" can harm you anymore. You realize that "out there" is only a reflection of your own thoughts - nothing to fight anymore.

If you've ever asked the question "How do I find peace?", then studying and practising Byron Katie's The Work will deliver valuable answers for you.

Here's a video of Byron Katie discussing The Enlightened Mind, ....



For anyone who is wanting ongoing support to change your life with personal coaching, we offer a 6 month coaching program, a 2 Day Change Your Life Program (with 1 month follow up coaching) and weekly group webinars .

A Look at The Work of Byron Katie

Byron Katie just wants you to be happy. She doesn't know you, but she believes she can help you find your happiness, and countless of her fans and followers would agree. She also thinks that helping you find happiness goes a long way in solving the myriad problems in the world. She's been on Oprah. Tony Robbins is a fan and incorporates her work into his own teachings. Her methods are remarkably simple; she only asks that you question your own thoughts and that you accept reality for what it really is. You will wonder why you never thought of it.

An unusual woman with an unusual name, Byron Katie is leading a revolution of the mind. Although she might never identify it as such, she is espousing a form of meta-cognition, a way of thinking about thinking. Are your thoughts a true reflection of the reality around you, or do they come unbidden from your unconscious? Can you trust what your own mind tells you? Byron Katie would say no. She would ask you to question each thought as it comes, to mull it over and put it to the test. And then she would ask you to take that further, to ponder the opposite of that thought, and whether that "turnaround," in fact, might be a truer version of reality. This process she calls "The Work."

The Work: I had the opportunity to see Byron Katie speak in person at the Omega Institute NYC Conference, and I have also been reading her book I Need Your Love -- Is That True?. Both were eye-opening, I might even say life-changing, experiences for me. The Work is a series of four questions that you apply to each stressful, unhappy, or counterproductive thought that comes into your mind. Take, for example, the thought "I am such a pushover," which you might have after being taken advantage of by someone you love or trust.

Is it true? This is only a simple yes or no question, either I am a pushover or I am not ­-- in objective reality without adding my own filters and biases.

Can you absolutely know that it is true? This is also a yes or no question but requires more thinking. Who is to say what constitutes being "a pushover"? Perhaps being a pushover to one person is seeking or receiving just the right amount of guidance to another. If I cannot definitively say that it is true, then the answer is no.

How do you react -- what happens -- when you believe that thought? How does this thought make me feel and behave? If I worry that I am easily manipulated, I may beat myself up in my relationships and unnecessarily put walls up. I criticize myself. And I begin to resent the other person because I can't put my guard down around them.

Who would you be without the thought? If that thought never existed, how would I feel and behave? If I never had to worry about being a pushover, I could live more freely. I wouldn't put my guard up in my relationships, and I would allow myself to be vulnerable and who I really am. I would feel better about myself.

The Turnaround: Now comes the point where Byron Katie asks you to take the opposite of your thought and mull it over. One turnaround might be: "I am not at all a pushover." Is this any truer than the original statement? Can I think of any examples in which this is true? Another turnaround might be that my spouse/partner/parent/coworker is the one who is a pushover. In this way, I could come to see that everyone can be manipulated at times, and that this is normal. I can see that I am not "such" a pushover at all, and that I am letting the fear of being controlled actually control me. I can begin to let these thoughts go and no longer criticize myself or others. And so the stress associated with the thought of being such a pushover would no longer exist.

What Bryon Katie is offering is a method of self-inquiry that allows us to free ourselves from the anger and negativity we feel when we accept our thoughts, unquestioned, as true. We cause much of our own suffering by believing what our minds tell us. If we can see that certain thoughts are the cause of our own unhappiness, we can begin to let go and be free of them. Questioning these thoughts, putting them to the test of The Work, is a form of enlightenment. If the unexamined life is not worth living, perhaps the unexamined thought is not worth thinking.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephan-spencer/happiness-tips_b_1739238.html