Welcome friends!
Below are the notes I used for this class.
Also below is the link I mentioned in the intro. With this link, you can try the paid version of this newsletter for one month for free, no strings attached, and access the complete masterclass.
What is The Work, and why should I care?
If you want to:
permanently let go of your limiting beliefs, including your deepest fears
step into your integrity, letting go of limiting programming
build and live a life you create from that integrity (vs being a victim)
The Work is an elegant and powerful self-inquiry framework developed by Byron Katie. It uses inquiry to examine beliefs until a shift in perspective happens, which lessen the intensity of the belief, and in the best case scenario, shifts the person’s perspective forever on the belief (seeing what can’t be unseen).
The process:
4 questions
Turnarounds
Aha-moment
The focus today: fears.
We’re going to use The Work to melt your deepest fears in minutes.
The kind of fears I talk about:
Mind-made fears, your existential fears. Not phobias, not fear of roller coasters, but rather worst-case scenarios that you, somehow, firmly believe in. These are deep fears that have probably influenced life decisions e.g. where you live, how you behave with others, the kinda career you have, the way you spend/save money.
Examples of deep fears:
I’m not good with money, I’m sure I’m going to lose it all at some point
My mother doesn’t love me
I’m not (insert adjective) enough
If I do/don’t do X, I will get Y
I won’t say more in the intro, let’s jump right into the exercise, and then debrief.
The practice:
1. Pick a deep, mind-made fear, and write it down.
My fear is… Issa’s fear: I’m afraid of staying in my home country.
2. The Why-Shovel:
Now, I’m going to dig a little into this fear in order to get a belief out of it. I do this by using a technique called “the wh shovel,” where we ask ourselves “why” until we land on a thought that feels more core.
Write your fear:
Dig by asking “Why”
Issa’s fear: I’m afraid of staying in my home country.
Why?
Because I can’t live the life I want here.
Why?
Because people will tell me what to do and not to do.
Why?
Because this place takes your freedom away if you stay long term.
The belief: If I stay in my home country long term, I will lose my freedom.
3. Inquiry:
Is this true?
Are you absolutely sure this is true?
Who am I when I believe this thought? Scared, disempowered, disconnected to my origins, live in fear, running away.
Who/What would I be without this thought? Free.
4. Turnarounds
Play with the belief and turn it into different opposites. Try different combinations and observe how you feel.
If I don’t stay in my home country long term, I will lose my freedom.
If I don’t stay in my home country long term, I will not lose my freedom.
If I stay in my home country long term, I will not lose my freedom.
If my home country stays in me long term, I will not lose my freedom.
If my home country stays in me long term, I will gain my freedom.
5. Aha-moment
If one of your turnarounds moves something in you, create an aha-moment, take time to reflect on this. This is the magic happening.
After I rewrote the last turnaround, it hit me: it’s not about my home country itself, not anymore. It’s about my experience of my home country, from childhood, that I’ve been trailing with me in adulthood. It’s about the story I built in my mind about how my home country strips me of my freedom because this is how I experienced it when I was younger and didn’t have any other options. The belief has been carried over through my life by this teen version of me, but she didn’t realize that the reality of my life has tremendously changed: I am free, inside and out.
So, it’s not about my home country being good or bad, it’s about making peace with my home country, allowing it to “stay in me long term”, for ever. Reintegrating that dropped part of me. From there, with “y home country in me long term”, I can stand in this big, wide world rooted somewhere and free. Rooted, and free.
My home country is my roots, and this tree can be free only when it’s rooted.
Journaling is a powerful way to process an aha-moment, a shift in perspective. I know people who process by going on a walk, or texting a feiedn with their revelation. Whatever works, as long as you give space for the revelation to unfold.
Seeing something you can’t unsee.
This is the result of this work. It’ll leave you with something you can’t unsee. It’s like peeking behind the curtains of a puppet show — you see another reality that you can’t unsee. You’ll always know there’s something else behind the puppet show.
Same with your belief. You change your perspective on it, and therefore, you identify less with it, and perhaps, even, stop believing it all together.
Here’s the next step: Keep these notes with you, and revisit them. Reread your aha-moment. Remind yourself of what’s behind the curtains. The more you do, the more you’ll believe this new reality, one with a different belief.
From here on, you’re free — to be yourself, to live your life, to give a big middle finger to the programming and beliefs that kept you down. The world is yours.
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