Whenever I tell myself anything should be different than it is or think that someone shouldn’t be the way they are. I will feel pain. Resistance equals pain and when I resist what is I hurt. So often I find my clients and sometimes myself habitually in a loop of resistance and negativity. It’s like drinking poison and waiting for the person I’m judging to get sick. It doesn’t work and the more poison I swallow or the more I resist what is the sicker I get.
So why is it that we choose such a failed strategy over and over again? I think there may be something addictive about the pain and suffering that comes from resistance.
My grandfather used to say “It’s not what happens to you in life, it’s what you do with what happens to you that counts.” My parents like to say that “the world is fundamentally neutral and that our judgements determine how we feel and perceive everything.’
The moment I say “You shouldn’t be that way!” or “This isn’t fair, this isn’t right, it should be different” I have poisoned my own sense of well being. If I’m honest with myself, I can see how I’ve stepped away from being as loving as I know I can be. I’ve stopped enjoying all the good things in the world and have become focused on something that annoys me.
So how do we break free from the toxic thoughts and get back to being happy? Author Byron Katie, “Loving What is” has a powerful tool for just that. She calls it “The Work” and I’ve been sharing it with clients for more than a decade.
She says, “Judge your neighbor. Write it down. Ask four questions and turn it around.” It sounds easy and once you do it a few times it becomes as easy as it sounds.
The first step is to get the toxic judgment out of your head and onto the paper so you can put it into words and stop the feeling from looping around in your mind. I like putting it into a simple “should” or “should not statement.” For example: “ John should be more loving to me.”
Then you ask yourself the four easy questions:
#1 “Is it true?” Is this statement really true? Should John really be more loving? The first time you do this your answer will probably be “Of course it is true! Why are we even asking?”.
#2 “Can you absolutely know that it is true?” You may find this a silly question but really think about it for a minute. Can you really know for certain that John should be more loving? The degree to which you hold onto what you wrote down is the degree to which you are attached and maybe even addicted to your toxic thoughts.
#3 “How do your react, what happens, when you believe this thought?” Be honest. When I’m thinking, “John should be more loving toward me” am I being loving toward John? Am I being loving toward myself? What sort of destructive behaviors do I allow myself when I’m upset with John?
#4 “Who would you be without this thought?” If I were not caught up in concern over how unloving I think John is being, maybe I’d have more time for my spouse, or my family. Maybe I would be a happier person. Really think about what you would be like if you were free entirely from the thought.
These four questions really help to reveal the cost of the toxic thought. Now knowing a thought is costing you your happiness may not be enough for you to let the thought go. Again, I really think we may be a bit addicted to our own pain and suffering because even when we know the cost of the negative thought we still want to hang onto in.
The next step is to turn the thought around and see if we discover something else that might be true or truer than the thought we were having.
Here are the basic turnarounds. The first is about the self to the self (when possible not all judging statements lend themselves to this). In this example the first turn around is: “ I should be more loving to myself” Is this true or truer than the original statement, “John should be more loving to me.”
The Second turn around is about the self to the other. In this example the second turn around is : “I should be more loving toward John” Is this true or truer than the original statement, “John should be more loving to me.”
These first two turn arounds will reveal the basic nature of judgements. Our judgments and opinions always say more about the one doing the judging than they do the one being judged. As Oprah says, “If you can spot it, you’ve got it.” Often we see in others what we are blind to in ourselves or some aspect of ourself where we are way out of balance.
In this case I’m probably asking John to treat me better than I treat myself. But people take their cues on how to treat us from the way we treat ourselves. If I’m not loving to myself, how can I really expect others to be loving toward me?
Now If my judgement were something like, “John shouldn’t be so full of himself” . Odds are I would likely discover in the turn arounds that perhaps I’m too empty of myself and my reaction to John’s self love is about a lack of my own. This is what I mean by revealing where we are out of balance.
The third turn around is simply the opposite: “John should not be more loving toward me.” Now given who John is and who he has been his entire life, how he was raised, his core wounds, the work he has yet to do on himself, and the circumstances of his current life, should John really be any different than he is? Should anyone or anything given all that be different than they are?
By the time you get to the last turn around hopefully you’ve begun to drop your attachment to the judgement and free yourself from your toxic thoughts.
There are times and situations where despite the toll the toxic thought will take on my well being I choose to hang onto it. I know that peace and joy will come from loving what is, but sometimes I will make a powerful choice to simply say “This is wrong and I won’t accept it.” For example if the Nazi’s are killing my friends, I can do this process and love what is. Or I can take a stand, and resist what is, and maybe even die, yet feel empowered and like I’m doing what is truly right for me.
I find this process is most effective for stopping my routine habitual resistance and judgements about what is. Not every thing I’m resisting is a moral crisis that requires me to take a stand. Most of the time, I’m just blind to my own way of being and spot it in others.
This process is also really good at revealing my values and the rules I have for myself. I often forget that the whole world doesn’t share my values or live by my rules. I have people in my life who live by the motto, “There’s no harm in asking” and they will ask for and get upgrades on hotel rooms and rental cars and I’m just mortified to be standing next to them. I grew up with a different motto, something like, “It’s rude to ask for more and you don’t want to look selfish or greedy.” Neither motto is right or wrong, better or worse. They are just different approaches to the world. The trouble comes when with our judgements we expect the rest of the world to follow the unspoken rules we have for ourselves.
I love to use the Byron Katie Work in my coaching sessions with clients when I spot patterns of toxic thinking and it’s one of those great tools that you can use on your own and actually get results. If you’re interested in learning more, visit her website, http://thework.com. She has videos, worksheets and lots of examples of this work in action. You’d be surprised at how powerful this can be.
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