“I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s.
(For me, the word God means “reality.” Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and everyone else’s control—I call that God’s business.)
Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, ‘You need to get a job, I want you to be happy, you should be on time, you need to take better care of yourself,’ I am in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I am in God’s business.
If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation. I realized that every time in my life that I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else’s business. Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn’t work.
To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what’s right for myself? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you.” — Byron Katie, Loving What Is
Byron Katie is the creator of a method for spiritual transformation called The Work. For ten years, she suffered from an extremely severe depression, until one day she underwent a profoundly transformative experience that she calls an Awakening to Reality.
What I read about her life and the method she developed greatly appealed to me, because at its core it is pure cognitive psychotherapy, presented in an extraordinarily accessible and easy-to-practice way.
This method involves asking a series of questions about the issue that worries us. The purpose is to examine and reassess those thoughts and beliefs that we ordinarily do not question, but which are the actual source of: Feelings of powerlessness, Anger and low self-worth, Other negative experiences. The result of this exploration is a free mind—one that no longer argues with reality but loves it as it is.
Distinguishing clearly between these three spheres of responsibility is a direct path to establishing healthy boundaries in our lives. And when we have a real understanding of the things that are within our control, the feeling of powerlessness disappears as if by magic!
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
