In my coaching studies, I’ve been fortunate to come across Byron Katie, a wise, kind and patient woman who’s written great books such as “Loving What Is.” Her gig is that if you argue with reality, you always lose. In short, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.
Pain itself is hard, but it’s our thoughts about it and what we make it mean that creates significants amount of suffering on top of that. What she says is that all suffering is caused by untrue thoughts, such as “Everyone is smarter than I am,” “I’m such a loser,” and “I’ll die if I fart in yoga class.” And so we live in a continuous torment of our own making.
Katie has you methodically work with each thought, writing it down and doing what’s called “The Work.” This is definitely worth doing, but it’s heady stuff, and takes a lot of introspection and, well, work. I’ve done it with a few thoughts, but tend not to sit down a lot to do it formally. Instead, I’ve come up with a quick technique keeps me “warmed up” and constantly wiggling at those false thoughts from the beginning. Why not nip things at the bud?
I call it the “Byron Katie Bitchslap.” Basically, I go about my life playing the “is it true?” game. “Someone else should unload these dishes.” Really? “I need to write this blog post right now.” Really?
Because I have kids, they are more than happy to help me with this and throw my misconceptions right down the shithole. Here’s a few examples of how it goes:
#1: I carry a basket load of clean clothes into #3’s room. He takes the entire contents in one armful and shoves it in a drawer. fI twitch and start to hyperventilate. “You can’t do that!”
Boy smiles. “Yes I can. I just did.”
BITCHSLAP.
#2: “You can’t just sit there all day playing Minecraft!”
BITCHSLAP.
Which goes to prove, there’s no greater Zen Master than a 10-year old boy.
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