Question Your Thinking, Change The World Quotes

“all the advice you ever gave your partner is for you to hear”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change The World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“You’re just suffering from the belief that there’s something missing from your life. In reality, you always have what you need.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“If my child has died, that’s the way of it. Any argument with that brings on internal hell. “She died too soon.” “I didn’t get to see her grow up.” “I could have done something to save her.” “I was a bad mother.” “God is unjust.” But her death is reality. No argument in the world can make the slightest dent in what has already happened. Prayer can’t change it, begging and pleading can’t change it, punishing yourself can’t change it, and your will has no power at all. You do have the power, though, to question your thought, turn it around, and find three genuine reasons why the death of your child is equal to her not dying, or even better in the long run, both for her and for you. This takes a radically open mind, and nothing less than an open mind is creative enough to free you from the pain of arguing with what is. An open mind is the only way to peace. As long as you think that you know what should and shouldn’t happen, you’re trying to manipulate God. This is a recipe for unhappiness.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“We’re all five-year-olds. We don’t know how to do this thing called life. We’re just learning how.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a story that I get hurt.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“Forgiveness is discovering that what you thought happened, didn’t—that there was never anything to forgive”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“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.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie

“My love is my business; it has nothing to do with you. You love me, and that isn’t personal. You tell the story that I am this, or I am that, and you fall in love with your story. What do I have to do with it? I am here for your perception, as if I had a choice. I am your story, no more and no less. You have never met me. No one has ever met anyone.”
― Byron Katie, Question Your Thinking, Change the World: Quotations from Byron Katie