Practice Episode: How to Manage Our Fearful Thoughts with Byron Katie

Need A Lift? with Tim Shriver

In 1986, after two marriages, three children and a successful career, Byron Katie found herself in a downward spiral. She was so depressed she could barely leave the house and her family walked on eggshells around her. After years of feeling hopeless and isolated, she enrolled in a halfway house to get some help. And one day while she was there, she had an epiphany: our thoughts are so powerful they can create a painful reality that doesn’t actually exist. This breakthrough provided the foundation for “The Work” or self-inquiry, a simple four-step technique.

Byron Katie models this practice, guiding Tim from anxious thoughts about the future into the beautiful reality of the present. “A fearful mind is a dangerous mind,” Byron Katie says, “so when I question what I was believing, then it shifts my world.” She says that practicing the work “leaves you freer to do important things in the world” by helping you live with an open mind ready to “love the world without conditions.”

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Byron Katie is a self-taught practitioner, speaker, and bestselling author of “Loving What Is.” You can visit her website thework.com to find her book, her podcast, and upcoming events.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

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