"The Work always leaves you with less of a story.
Who would you be without your story?
You never know until you inquire.
There is no story that is you or that leads to you.
Every story leads away from you.
Turn it around; undo it.
You are what exists before all stories. -
You are what remains when the story is understood."
Byron Katie, founder of The Work, as she puts it on her website, has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering. She calls her powerful process of inquiry 'The Work'. In this process, people find that their stressful beliefs—about life, other people, or themselves— radically shift and their lives are changed forever.
The Work is based on Byron Katie's direct experience of how suffering is created and ended: she became severely depressed in her early thirties when she was a businesswoman and mother who lived in a small town in the high desert of southern California. As she says, for almost a decade she spiraled down into depression, rage, self-loathing, and constant thoughts of suicide; for the last two years she was often unable to leave her bedroom.
