Misery: "I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide." And then...

Too worthless to sleep in a bed: "I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed because I believed that I didn't even deserve a bed to sleep in. And then, one morning, a cockroach crawled onto my leg. I looked at it, and suddenly I awoke from a kind of hypnotic trance in which I had been all my life." Since then, at age 43, these thoughts have been spoken by Byron Katie:

Keeping to my own business: liking and loving myself: “It's not your job to like me - it's mine.”

Whose business are you in?: “I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our 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.”

Defending increases the danger: "Defense is the first act of war."

Betting on the losing horse in advance: “When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.”

Barking cats: "Arguing with reality is like trying to teach a cat to bark."

Thoughts can be mistaken: “Don't believe every thing you think.”

Being too careful is dangerous: “Don't be careful. You could hurt yourself.”

The kindness of uncovering the lies about reality: “Reality is always kinder than the stories we tell about it.”

Behold, your own beauty!: “If you realized how beautiful you are, you would fall at your own feet.”

You've found the one: “Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.” 

Knowing yourself allows you to know others: "You would be amazed at who people are once you know yourself."

Returning to our roots to discover life: “We’re all five-year-olds. We don’t know how to do this thing called life. We’re just learning how.”

Be careful what you think you know: “An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.”

You are the source: “I stopped waiting for the world to give me what I wanted; I started giving it to myself.”

Now is always okay: “Problems can exist only in a past or future.”

You can only blame if you believe what is not true: “Forgiveness is discovering that what you thought happened, didn’t—that there was never anything to forgive.”

How to believe in reality: “Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.”

To make sure you lose, argue with reality: “As long as you think that the cause of your problem is 'out there'—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.”

The map is not the territory: “A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.”

Suffering is a signal that you're doing something wrong: “I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.”

It's perfect that you have what you have: “All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment.”

Love and approval can be nice as long as you're not attached to having them: “How do you react when you think you need people's love? Do you become a slave for their approval? Do you live an inauthentic life because you can't bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like a chameleon? In fact, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren't, and then when they say "I love you," you can't believe it, because they're loving a facade. They're loving someone who doesn't even exist, the person you're pretending to be. It's difficult to seek other people's love. It's deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have.”

Formula for giving up your power: “Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them”

When you know yourself, you know that how others respond to you is not about you: “Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.”

Putting your hand in the fire causes pain, fighting with reality causes suffering: If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.”

Trying to find love already reaffirms the untruth that you have to find it: “Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it—that you are it.”

It takes two dogs to fight: “Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.”

If it's hard it means you're fighting with the way it is: “When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”

You're 100% responsible: “You are your only hope, because we're not changing until you do. Our job is to keep coming at you, as hard as we can, with everything that angers, upsets, or repulses you, until you understand. We love you that much, whether we're aware of it or not. The whole world is about you.”

The Old Ethics of Sacrifice glories suffering: “You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer."

How interested are you in proving that a belief that has you might be wrong?: “We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to be true at the moment.”

Pay attention to the red flags: “It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it’s helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, 'You’re caught in the dream.' Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, 'Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking right now. You’re living in a story that isn’t true for you.'"

You don't choose your thoughts, they choose you: “In my experience, we don't make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn't personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.”

Be a lover of happiness: “I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”

Sadness comes from fighting reality: “Sadness is always a sign that you’re believing a stressful thought that isn’t true for you. It’s a constriction, and it feels bad. Conventional wisdom says differently, but the truth is that sadness isn’t rational, it isn’t a natural response, and it can’t ever help you. It just indicates the loss of reality, the loss of the awareness of love. Sadness is the war with what is. It’s a tantrum. You can experience it only when you’re arguing with God. When the mind is clear, there isn’t any sadness. There can’t be.”

Love is accepting the way they are and accepting the way they are not: “If you think he's supposed to be different from what he is, you don't love him. In that moment you love who he's going to be when you're through manipulating him. He is a throwaway until he matches your image of him.”

If you think it's hard to stop fighting with reality, try fighting with reality: “There’s only one thing harder than accepting this, and that is not accepting it.”

People should be the way they are and the proof of that fact is that they are the way they are: “Thinking that people are supposed to do or be anything other than what they are is like saying that the tree over there should be the sky. I investigated that and found freedom.”

Suffering comes from believing what isn't true: “Because if it hurts, it's your thinking that's hurting you.”

Everything should be the way it is: “Everything in the world is doing its job. The ceiling sits on the walls, the walls sit on the floor, the curtains are hanging in front of the windows; they’re all doing their jobs. But when you tell yourself a story about how reality is supposed to look, you end up arguing with the ceiling or the wall, and it’s hopeless. It’s like trying to teach a cat to bark. The cat won’t ever cooperate. 'No, no,' you may tell it, 'you don’t understand. You should bark. It would be so much better for you if you barked. Besides, I really need you to bark. As a matter of fact, I’m going to devote the rest of my life to teaching you how to bark.' And many years later, after all your sacrifice and devotion, the cat looks up at you and says, 'Meow.'"

A very helpful fatebelief: “I already please everyone, and I already have everyone’s approval, though I don’t expect them to realize it yet.”

Another great fatebelief you might consider: “And have you also noticed that it’s hopeless to dictate people’s awareness or behavior? So let’s turn it around. She loves you, but she may not know it yet, and that lack of awareness is very painful. I am very clear that the whole world loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet.”

It always comes back to now: “In reality, the pain we feel about a past event is created in the present."

Staying in your own business: “If you are living your life and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We’re both over there. 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.”

You will be free: “You can argue with reality all you want, or you can stop arguing long enough to understand it and be free.”

Knowing you're always okay: “How do I know I don't need what I want? I don't have it.”

Reality should be the way it is: “When I listened within myself I saw that the world is what it is – nothing more, nothing less. Where reality is concerned, there is no 'what should be.' There is only what is, just the way it is, right now. The truth is prior to every story. And every story, prior to investigation, prevents us from seeing what’s true.” 

When you're not sleeping, then you should not be sleeping: “I’m supposed to sleep at three o’clock in the morning”—is that true? I don’t think so: I’m wide awake. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I get very excited. What could be better than sleep? Waking! I love lying in bed in the middle of the night with my eyes wide open because that’s what I’m doing. There’s no thought that I should be doing anything else. I love all my thoughts.”

Happiness is the life purpose for everyone: “Atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan—we all have one thing in common: we want happiness and peace.”

Get curious when someone criticizes you: “The most powerful spiritual practice is to hang out with the people who criticize you. You don’t even have to do that physically, since they live right here in your head.”

Key to a happy family: “When you stay out of your family’s business, they notice that you have your stuff together and that you’re happy, so they start to follow. You’ve taught them everything they know, and now they begin to learn again. And that’s what happened with my children; they just don’t see a lot of problems anymore, because, in the presence of someone who doesn’t have a problem, they can’t hold on to one.”

Authentic ignorance: “When my children ask me what they should do, I say, 'I don’t know, honey.' Or, 'Here’s what I did in a similar situation, and it worked for me. And you can always know that I’m here to listen and that I’m always going to love you, whatever decision you make. You’ll know what to do. And also, sweetheart, you can’t do it wrong. I promise you that.' I finally learned to tell my children the truth.”

Would do you anything if you were already happy?: “I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. 'If I feel peaceful,' they say, 'why would I bother taking action at all?' My answer is 'Because that's what love does.' To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what's right is insane. As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become. As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day with drool running down her chin. My experience is the opposite. Love is action.”

Saying no: “Every 'no' I say is a yes to myself. It feels right to me. People don’t have to guess what I want or don’t want, and I don’t need to pretend. When you’re honest about your yeses and noes, it’s easy to live a kind life. People come and go in my life when I tell the truth, and they would come and go if I didn’t tell the truth. I have nothing to gain one way, and everything to gain the other way. I don’t leave myself guessing or guilty.”

Suicide: “If your daughter kills herself, whose business is that? When you think you know what’s best for her, it’s not love. How can you know what’s best for her? How can you know that life would be better for her than death? You would deprive her of her whole path. Who do you think you are? There’s no respect there. If my daughter is going to take her life and I know about it, I’m going to speak to her and offer myself in whatever way she thinks would be useful. And if she has killed herself, I’m not going to think, Sweetheart, you should have stayed here for my sake. I know you were suffering abominably, but you really should have stayed here and suffered so that I wouldn’t feel terrible. Is that love? Do you really want her to live in the torture chamber of her own mind? When our suffering gets too intense, we can inquire, and if we don’t have inquiry, some of us just knock out our painful thoughts with a gun or pills or whatever it takes, but we have to shut this system down. And it’s hell to open your eyes in the morning when you have this painful thought system going.”

We all doing the best we can: “I wasn’t always able to live the advice that I so generously held out for others to live. When I realized this, I found myself on equal ground with the people I had judged. I saw that my philosophy wasn’t so easy for any of us to live. I saw that we’re all doing the best we can.”

The discomfort of too much comfort: “Seeking comfort, you give yourself discomfort.”

Burdening others with your expectations: “If your happiness depends on your children being happy, that makes them your hostages. So stay out of their business, stop using them for your happiness, and be your own happiness. And that way you are the teacher for your children: someone who knows how to live a happy life.”

The gift of firing someone: “It’s not up to my employees to accomplish what I want; it’s up to me. I’m the boss. And the reason that firing you is so kind is that I’ve just released you from a torture chamber and allowed you to move into a space where you are qualified. And because of my clarity and kindness, the position is open for the right person to move into it. Anything less than that is masochism: it’s unkind to you and to me.”

Are you unlovable?: “What is an example that will prove that you aren’t lovable? Rejection? If someone rejects you—and he could only do that because you don’t match his beliefs about how he wants the world to be—it has nothing to do with you. Only an inflated ego could say that it had anything to do with you.”

Does reality care what you want?: “Reality doesn’t wait for our agreement or approval. It is what it is. You can count on it."

The best teachers learn more than their students: “When you act like a teacher, it's usually because you're afraid to be the student.”

What is spiritual?: “People used to ask me if I was enlightened, and I would say, 'I don’t know anything about that. I’m just someone who knows the difference between what hurts and what doesn’t.'”

“Whose business are my children? Their business! When we’re mentally out of our children’s business, we have a shot at happiness, and so do they, because finally there’s an example in the house.”

“Gratitude is what we are without a story.”

“Reality doesn’t wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does.”

Just watch your machinery: “People try so hard to let go of their negative behaviors and thoughts, and it doesn’t work, or it works only for a short time. I didn’t let go of my negative thoughts; I questioned them, and then they let go of me, and so did my addictions and depression.”

“An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It’s a gift that says, 'Get honest; inquire.' We reach out for alcohol, or television, or credit cards, so we can focus out there and not have to look at the feeling. And that’s as it should be because in our innocence we haven’t known how. So now what we can do is reach out for a paper and a pencil, write our thoughts down and investigate.”

"The world you live in is 100 percent your own responsibility. If you don't like your world, it doesn't work to say, 'Well, it's my mother's fault. She taught me how to think.'"

"Eating, drinking, and depression disorders are really thinking disorders."

"Who would you be without the thought 'I need more money to be safe?' You might be a lot easier to be with. You might even begin to notice the laws of generosity, the laws of letting money go out fearlessly and come back fearlessly. You don't ever need more money than you have."

"Every stressful thought is a variation on a single theme: This shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be having this experience. God is unjust. Life isn't fair."

"You cannot hurt me. Only I can do that."

"To argue with reality is to argue with God."

"Every moment a gift: are you unwrapping yours now, and now, and now?"

"If you're yelling within you that they shouldn't yell at you, that is where the pain begins, not with their yelling at you."

"The way to truly help someone is for me to not get immersed in their suffering."

"The mind at war with itself does war with any other mind, and that produces war in the world - all of it."

"Would you rather be right or free?"

"I am entirely motivated without anger. The truth sets us free, and freedom acts."

"A dishonest yes is a no to yourself."

"The mind usually says, 'I know, I know, I know.' But the 'don’t-know mind' is where wisdom lives."

100% responsible: "It only takes one clear person to have a good relationship."

"Bottom line is, if someone says something about me and it upsets me, it's true."

"God, as I use the word, is another name for what is. I always know God's intention: It's exactly what is in every moment."

"It is not your business to love me. It is mine."

"Your most intimate relationship is the one you have with your thoughts."

"Who would you be without the thought that happiness depends on someone else?"

"We may appear to be mean but we're really only frightened."

"When safety is our priority, we live our lives being very, very careful, and we wind up having no lives."

"No one can disappoint you, only your thoughts about them can."

"The greatest stock market you can invest in is yourself. Finding this truth is better than finding a gold mine."

"If you don't like your world, question your thoughts about it."

"You don't get to vote on what is. Have you noticed?"

"Reality doesn't wait for your opinion, vote, or permission, sweetheart. It just keeps being what it is and doing what it does."

"Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden."