Breaking the Cycle of Self-Blame: Overwhelm Reduction Through Inner Work—Stress Management for HSPs

Client: So thanks. I, I have been really excited about, uh, regaining all of my health. You know, I got to the point where now I’m, I’m doing great. And the other morning about, well, early, um, like three in the morning, I noticed that the windows were open and the fan was on, and some really cold air was blowing on me and my throat was starting to get cold.

And I just said, well, cold air can’t hurt me. And I woke up a couple hours later and, and now I have a cold, a sore throat and a cold.

Todd: So much for that, that idea.

Client: And I just should have known better. I, it was taken, I didn’t really even have to get outta bed to close the windows. I can just reach up and clo, you know, it’s just, I just should have known better [00:05:00] and so. Yeah, I think that’s a good statement to stir with.

Todd: You wanna question that one?

I should have known better. Yeah,

Client: I should have. I should have just done it, or I should have known better or something to that effect, you know?

Todd: Okay. Which one feels closer to you? I should have just done it, or I should have known. I

Client: should have just done it. I should have, should I should have just closed the windows.

Todd: Okay. Yeah.

Client: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Todd: So is that true? You should have just closed the windows.

Client: Well, yeah, I wouldn’t have a cold. I guess that’s the other worksheet, but uh,

Todd: so can you absolutely know it’s true. I should have just closed the windows.

Client: No, because I, I can’t [00:06:00] a hundred percent know that, that the cold came from that. I mean, I can’t a hundred percent know that.

Todd: So how do you react? What happens when you think you should have just closed the windows and you didn’t?

Client: I, I berate myself for not listening to my intuition. Um, then I go and I overanalyze the whole situation. Then I say, oh, I, I must have unconsciously decided I want a cold because I’m believing that, you know, believing that cold air can give me a cold.

Um, I. Think of other times when I had the thought I should or shouldn’t do this, and I didn’t listen to it and, and it didn’t go well. My, my first thought that I should or shouldn’t do that if it’s a gentle voice is usually [00:07:00] right on, and that, and I, and I apparently don’t have any resistance to telling my gentle voice to be quiet.

It’s the noisy voice in my head that I seem to listen to, and that doesn’t always send me in the right direction. So, so, you know, it, it reminds me that, you know, I’m

not listening, you know, to the right voice. And then I think in the past of the times that. You know, I thought, oh, I, I should take this exit or whatever, and I just dismiss it and then boom, I’m in two hours of traffic or

just something that I could do or say and backfires or not do or say and, and then I project out in the future that I’m just gonna, [00:08:00] gonna. Not pay attention, I’m still gonna only listen to the bad girl voice,

you know? And, and then I get frustrated. I treat myself like, geez, Wendy, what are you doing? You know? And, uh, you know better, right? And.

And then I tell myself, well, you know what? You really weren’t gonna get a cold, but you made yourself get a cold to punish you for not listening. I mean, I had all this mind chatter about that I didn’t listen. I should have, you know, should have listened.

Um, I suspect, I don’t know that I treat other people any differently. I don’t know that I’m that easy to get along with to begin with. So if I’ve got a cold, it’s probably good that [00:09:00] I’m not communicating with others. Although for some reason I’m feeling kinder lately. That could have been all the work I’ve done.

Yeah. But I’m not kinder to myself that that’s what’s interesting. I, I break myself like, you had this thought, it was a gentle thought and you could let it go. And then, and then I am, you know, I’ve had a cold before and I just usually ignore it or just take better care of myself for a couple days and it goes away.

But no, I gotta beat myself up because mm-hmm. Now I earned this. I deserve this because I didn’t listen and. You know, not do the things that, that I would probably do if I was taking care of myself instead of punishing myself for not taking care of myself. [00:10:00] And I live in that little circle there. Yep.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Todd: Okay. So. Who would you be without the thought? I should have just closed the window.

Client: Okay. So I’m laying there and this cold wind is coming down on me

and I notice that the window’s open and I don’t close it. I turn over and go back to sleep. Mm-hmm.

And then I wake up with a sore throat and a cold,

and my first thought is, oh yeah, that’s what happens when I have cold air blowing on my face all night.[00:11:00]

And I would just be, I would just notice it and then I would take some Benadryl and I. Make myself some honey tea and be glad that I have some time off and snuggle with my doggy and have a cold. Mm-hmm. Just have a cold.

Yeah. Hmm.

Wow. There’d be no resistance to it. It’d be like fighting with gravity if these are the laws of nature. Um, and I would, I, I would probably have the thought, oh, yeah, now, now I know for sure that cold [00:12:00] air can give me a cold. I also don’t know if I didn’t already have a cold, and it’s a coincidence. So I would just accept that all those are possible.

Now I have one ta-da. And then treat myself well. Snuggle with my dog. Tell my husband how wonderful he is.

Yeah. And put on my fuzzy slippers and get all comfy.

Well, yeah, pamper myself a little bit. Just let let my body do its healing without berating it.

Yeah, it’d be peaceful.

Todd: So.

Client: Okay.

Todd: Anything more before we go to turnaround?[00:13:00]

Client: Well it, I’m questioning whether my symptoms would have been a lot ’cause my symptoms weren’t like life threatening or anything, but I wonder if my self beration, is that a word? Anyway, um, intensified my experience of the symptoms. Hmm. I analyze too much sometimes.

Well, I

Todd: think you just, you just showed in your question, you answered to question three and then your answer to question four. What a difference thinking your thinking did on your experience, your subjective experience. I don’t know about the physical, but at least the, the, the,

Client: yeah, there’s a difference. I, I’m getting the difference between thinking and noticing.

There’s a difference ’cause thinking or it’s really just [00:14:00] punishment for, for some behavior or thought or something like that. But noticing is very neutral compared to thinking, being, um, sided. There’s a, a side gets taken with thinking.

Todd: Yeah,

Client: yeah, yeah.

Todd: Like the difference between. Noticing that you’re overate and berating yourself for overeating, right?

Like one is, one is just noticing, it’s kind of neutral. The other is it’s stressful ’cause I’m really exaggerating and I’m going

Client: looking for blame.

Todd: Blaming, yeah.

Client: Right?

Todd: Yeah,

Client: yeah, yeah. It’s peaceful and I have a cold.

Todd: Like there’s two ways to have a cold. One is having a cold just simply, or the other is being super stressed about and having a [00:15:00] cold

Client: Right

Todd: All. So how would you turn the thought around? I should have just closed the window.

Client: I shouldn’t have just closed the window for the opposite. ’cause I didn’t, first of all.

Second of all, um, I wouldn’t have done the work on something like this and seeing how much, uh, I could let go of self-judgment and abuse in my mind,

it’s, um.

There’s some validation in DIS that I decided not to, and then just, just respect that. Yeah. Right. Whether it was the right [00:16:00] or wrong one, it was my decision at the time and I just respect that at the time that was a decision I made and I don’t need reasons. Just accept that

Todd: and just then it becomes another data point. Okay. But now I did it this way, this time I did it and, and I learn.

Client: Yeah.

Interesting. Okay.

Todd: So any other examples why you should have closed the window? Why you sh uh, sorry. Why you, uh, shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t have just closed the windows. Like any, any other advantages of not closing the windows, any other ways that it serves you?

Client: I had nice, cool fresh air all night[00:17:00]

and, and it was, um, it was very nice. Because we just had a bunch of hot weather and so feeling that cool air coming down on me was actually a nice experience.

Todd: Yeah. It also brings out how it’s understandable that you didn’t close the windows, right? Because

Client: yeah. There

Todd: is something nice about that cool air and yeah.

I don’t know about you, but I sleep better with Cool. Around me.

Client: I do with cool this, yeah. Yeah,

Todd: so I shouldn’t have just closed the windows.

Client: Um, I shouldn’t have, I, I shouldn’t have closed the windows. I might have just gotten another blanket or pulled the blanket over my head,

right.

Todd: Right. [00:18:00]

Client: Or even adjusted the, you know, there’s, but I shouldn’t have closed. I shouldn’t have not closed the window.

Todd: Shouldn’t have closed the window. I

Client: shouldn’t have closed the window. Uh oh. You should be in here. Sometimes it’s, it, yeah. There’s a window opening my head. I

Todd: get it. Yeah. Uh, how about like, another way to play with should or shouldn’t for me is.

Like, how is it understandable that you in the middle of the night would not close the windows?

Client: Oh, I like that. And it, and I’d have an immediate, um, thought if I got up to close the windows and it was the middle of the night, my chances of falling back to sleep were pretty slim. And so, you know, at one o’clock in the morning, I, you know.

Um, that would not have been enough sleep for me. And so part of the unconscious [00:19:00] decision was I don’t wanna do anything that makes me wake up too much. Yeah. So there was a protective intention there of getting enough sleep. Cool. And believing that, that both I will probably get a cold or. If I get enough sleep, it won’t be a bad cold or won’t, or maybe I won’t, you know?

Todd: Mm-hmm. There are two factors, right? There’s the sleep factor and then there’s the cold air factor, and you went with the sleep factor as being more important. Totally understandable.

Client: I did have the thought. Okay. I can get up and close the windows. Is my bladder full? And if my bladder had been full, I probably would’ve gotten up and closed the windows and gone to the bathroom and then, you know, just worked it falling back to sleep.

But yeah. Yeah. So there was a benefit [00:20:00] to just staying in the bed and not losing sleep. Makes sense. And in that moment I weighed it and just because later I weigh it a different way, the way that I weighed that option at that time was the right thing. I.

Todd: It was intelligent. It was, yeah. It was, it made sense.

And, um, so that’s, that’s beautiful because it’s your, it’s you finding understanding for you at that time when you made that decision as opposed to you berating yourself for making that decision.

Client: So I don’t, I don’t, I don’t make decisions to punish myself. It’s, I don’t. You know, I’m not, I don’t self-flagellate or anything on purpose.

Right? [00:21:00] Yeah. So, so if that wa it was exactly, you know, from a standpoint of it not being a mistake, I made a choice. And I got, I got good sleep. So, you know, there’s a possibility that this cold would’ve been worse if I had not gotten good sleep or something, you know, maybe I had the cold anyway, again, you know, not, it wasn’t the cold air, maybe the, you know, I don’t know.

I’m just making stuff up about it. Mm-hmm. And then berating myself there, you know.

Hmm.

Todd: So the cool thing is that the, what you did is done right. It’s now out of your control. It’s now just a part of reality as it as it happened, and [00:22:00] so this turnaround just helps to adjust. To that reality, get in, become okay with it because it happened. There’s no going back to change it.

Client: We get so shaded on the perspective.

Yeah. And just, you know, the, where you have me in that moment,

even if I say no to the thought I should or shouldn’t do it in that moment. That’s how I feel. Yep. Yeah.

Todd: And that’s where the noticing can come back in, like, okay, next time I’m, there’s more things that I’m aware of and I might make the decision differently based on my experience from this one. But no mistake, this was, this was.

[00:23:00] Where I was at that point, and it made sense, and maybe it’ll make sense. I’ll do the same thing again. Right. Or maybe I’ll try a different way. But there’s nothing wrong you’re, it’s like you’re just exploring.

Client: Right? And, and I can have fresh air in my room without it, you know? I could. Check the windows before I go to bed.

Exactly. I mean, there’s just, you know, there’s just so many ways of looking at it and then just accepting, oh yeah, I did that right, and I got a cold, so that’s true. I can’t a hundred percent tell you that I got the cold from the cold air, and so I shouldn’t have.

I shouldn’t have done anything different than what I did, and once I’ve done it, that’s wasting time, isn’t it? Wow. Okay, let’s try another [00:24:00] turnaround.

Todd: Okay, so I should have just closed the windows. Is there another turnaround?

Client: I should have just closed my mind.

Todd: Okay.

Client: Turned it off. I should have stopped.

Thinking about it, weighing it.

If I felt that I needed sleep, go back to sleep.

Todd: Sounds like that’s what you did.

Client: Yeah. And then when I woke up in the morning and realized I had a cold, I. I would not, by closing my mind to the circumstance, I would not be looking for the cause of my cold in a way that I could berate myself.

Todd: Yeah. That’s where it really applies when you woke up.

Client: Yeah. That’s

Todd: when the when to close the windows of your thinking a little bit. [00:25:00]

Client: Exactly. So just close your mind and shut it down and just have a cold.

Todd: You opened the, the mental window and the cold mental air got in. You got a mental cold on top of a physical cold.

Client: I think it’s the mailman. Oh yeah. Still person. I don’t know.

Todd: Okay. So can you hear the barking? I can hear it, but that’s fine.

Client: Okay.

Todd: Um, thanks, pop. Okay. Any other turnarounds? I’m not sure if there are, but, um, I should have just closed the windows.

Client: Let’s see. I should, I shouldn’t have closed my mind

and there’s not really an other, but, um.[00:26:00]

I am looking for a living turnaround or an unusual turnaround.

I’m, I am gonna go into a weird place with this, but it’s where it, the thoughts taking me is twofold, number one.

And, and this sounds weird, but, um,

I’ve been worried about getting a cold before that happened. Hmm. So I had cold on getting a cold on my mind already. It wasn’t just because the windows were open or ’cause [00:27:00] cold air was coming in.

Yeah, yeah. And so living turnaround would be, um, or an unusual turnaround would be that if I have the thought I.

That I would, I would respect that at the time that I’m having it and not let it play out so that I can, you know, because my thought first was, uh, Philip, I feel like I might be coming down with a cold,

and then I did not do anything to, to. Prevent that. Mm-hmm. You know, I could have taken some vitamin C, closed the windows. I could, there were a lot of things I could have done, but I just brushed off. [00:28:00]

Todd: Interesting.

Client: So next, the windows

Todd: become a smaller part of the, of the thing. It’s like,

Client: right.

Todd: What could you do to prevent a cold once you start it coming on, when you see it coming on, what are the other things you could do in addition to windows that.

Could help. Right? That’s, that’s, that’s a different way of looking at it now. It’s suddenly not just, oh, I should have closed the windows. It’s okay. I noticed this. There might be ways for me to avoid that cold.

Client: Exactly

the matter of trusting the quieter part of my mind.

Thank you. Yeah, that’s worked. That worked.

Todd: Thank you. Very easy to relate to and very, yeah. Relevant. Thank you.[00:29:00]

Cool. So, um, we just have a few minutes left. I don’t know if anyone has any question or any comment or anything you’d like to. Spring up before we close the session.

Oh, I can’t hear you. You’re, um, muted.

Nope. Might be your microphone.

Client: Is it plugged in?

Todd: Always question number one.[00:30:00]

Client: Type it.

Todd: That’s a good idea. Yeah.

Client: Yeah, send it in the chat

Todd: then. Is there a chat here? There? The chat isn’t there?

Client: Mm-hmm.

Todd: Okay. How do you go back and report what happened? I. Without the thought,

I feel like I’m jumping to conclusions without being there. Okay, so this is a great question. Um, I’m gonna just type this in and the question is [00:31:00] how to go back and report what happened without the thought, which is question four. And. I feel like I’m jumping to conclusions without being there. So the key for answering question four and for doing the work in general is to, uh, to focus on experience.

The experience of it. This is an experiential process. Process, that’s why it’s a meditative process. Uh, if the, what the mind likes to do, what the intellect likes to do is to jump ahead and jump to conclusions and under try to try to understand, uh, what it would be like. But what the real question is answering.

Who would you be without a thought, without this thought is it’s an invitation to go imagine yourself back in the scene and. Actually see what it feels like, what it’s [00:32:00] like, um, to move around in that scene. And so what helps in this regard is to first of all, have a specific situation. If you don’t have a specific situation, it’s much harder to do this.

But if you have a specific moment in time, you remember where you were sitting, where the other person was sitting, you remember what was going on. You can go back there mentally and actually, um, be there, be yourself there again. But just imagine the only difference is imagine who you would be without that thought in that moment.

Then once you’re there, you know where you’re sitting, you know where the other person’s sitting. You start looking around and you see what the scene looks like. You start looking at the other person and you notice what, uh, what, what you’re becoming aware of with the other person that maybe you didn’t notice before.

And so it’s experiential. Even though it’s hypothetical, it’s still experiential. And that gives your, your. [00:33:00] Internal experience, experiential part, a new experience, like a new, uh, possibility. And so it gets to experience the difference of having the thought in that situation versus not having the thought in that situation.

And it’s, it’s like two real things that it’s comparing, it’s not intellectual, it’s hypothetical, but it’s actually, I. Seeing. Okay. I walked in and I remember experiencing it with the thought and I was frustrated and angry. Now I’m walking back in and I’m imagining what it would be like without this thought.

And wow, it’s more peaceful. I’m more open. I see, um, I feel more connected to the other person. I see different options and you can feel the difference. So that’s the key. Feeling it versus thinking about it. Um, I. But like I said, the intellect will try to [00:34:00] jump to conclusions. Oh, who would I be without the thought?

Oh, I would be, I would be peaceful, right? That’s the, it becomes a cliche sometimes. Oh, I’d be peaceful. I would be really, uh, happy. Um, and yes, those words. Are often what come when I go through and experience it, but the words are no substitute for actually going through and experiencing it then. Then you may find happy.

You may find peace. You may find these words that the intellect grabbed onto, but you’re. You’re finding them from a place of connection within yourself within that, uh, that situation. And it makes all the difference. The other cool thing about that is later if you come across another situation that’s similar, uh, in real life, having gone through this experience of who would you be without the thought and you really experienced it.

That’s now like a new memory [00:35:00] inside of you. You don’t have to memorize it. You’ve experienced it. You remember your experiences. So now when you come to a similar situation, you often remember the different options that you had there, and you often can experience it differently the second time. Um, of course, turnarounds help a lot in that regard as well.

But the key, the key point, and I think it’s just. Right at the heart of what the work is all about is that this is an experiential process, and so you have to allow yourself to get into a specific situation and to go through that experience again, um, directly so that, so that the heart gets it not just the intellect.

Client: Mm-hmm.

Cool. That’s, that’s great. I, I think it. I think it reprograms your brain too to, to actually think it through without the [00:36:00] thought later. Sometimes I can remember it as if it were without the thought, better than with the thought, because I gave it more attention.

Todd: And also the mind remembers what works, right?

And so if I’ve been. Going the long way to the supermarket and I’m, you know, it takes a lot of time and money to go the long way, and then I find a shortcut, then I’m just gonna keep going the shortcut way because it’s just easier and it’s more efficient. There’s all the reasons I just forget about the other way, and I’m always going that way.

And so that’s the beauty of the work is we’re exploring, uh, all. Possibilities. And, uh, when you explore, you often find things that really work. And then why would you keep doing it the old way, in the stressful way if you have the option?

If you would like to participate in open sessions [00:37:00] like the one you heard just now, then go to the work as meditation.com and then go to the open sessions page and there you can see our schedule. You can find out how it works, and you can join us along with the maximum of seven people each week to sit together and do the work and, um, bring up questions and share experiences with this process.

And while you’re at the work as meditation.com, I also encourage you to check out the virtual retreat page. This is something I do every quarter. So in the fall, in the winter, the spring, the summer, there’s always a virtual retreat, which happens over a weekend. And it’s a way for, uh, a group of us to come together on Zoom to do the work.

Uh. Quite a lot. We’ll do two hour sessions and one hour break, and another two hour session and an hour break. And it will go for 48 hours straight. So that means that you can jump in whenever you want to. You can come to as many or as few [00:38:00] sessions as you like, but it’s a great chance to spend a weekend going deeper into this practice.

And, uh, you’ll find that at the work as meditation.com under virtual retreats. Next, I’m going to read one of my newsletter articles called Demystifying the Inner World.

Because we’re not used to exploring it, the inner world seems to be shrouded in mystery. Each of us has an inner, an inner world, and the landscape in that inner world is different for each of us. That’s why you can’t read a book and know your inner world. Your particular inner world may be similar to what you read about from others, but it’s also unique to you and only you can explore it.

And I mean this in terms of actually experiencing it. You can intellectually understand your inner world. But what I’m talking about here is actually [00:39:00] experiencing your inner world, and that’s what we’re getting into here. So exploration means going into the unknown. When the first European explorers crossed the oceans, their idea w of what the world looked like was very different than it is today.

For example, they thought America was India, and when you look at the maps that were drawn of the world at that time, they were grossly inaccurate compared to what we know today day. But this process of exploring or stepping into the unknown. Had to happen in order to come to the more reliable knowledge of the world that we have today.

Sailors literally had to set off into uncharted territory and do their best to map it out. It’s like they were blind, they didn’t know where they were going, and then whenever they found some land, they found the coordinates and put it on a map, and they started piecing it together. And this meant that their first attempts would be inaccurate.[00:40:00]

Um, but they had to start somewhere. And with more and more exploration, they found more and more data. They got more points on the map, and with time, they found consistency in the shapes of the continents. So the process of internal exploration is exactly the same. We use the same process when doing the work.

What I love about the work of Byron Katie is that it consistently sets me in the direction of the unknown. It points me away from what I’m familiar with whi, which is what I believe, and it points me towards the opposite of what I think is true. I. And that’s uncharted territory. These are our blind spots.

These are the places that we don’t know what’s there. Uh, we only know what we know. We know the few little data points, right? It’s like these explorers, they knew Europe, but they didn’t know America. They didn’t know South America and North America, all the different islands and continents [00:41:00] around the world.

So it takes moving in the opposite direction of what you know to start to discover what you don’t know. This uncharted territory is the part of the mind that lies unexplored in each of our lives. To begin to explore this uncharted territory can open the mind very much, and it can solve many mysteries, but no one can do it for us.

It’s not enough to read about it or to hear wise people talk about it because their minds are different from ours and even in the ways that they are similar. Just hearing about it keeps it completely intellectual. It’s like what? Looking at a map of the world versus actually going there and traveling and experiencing the world.

If we follow someone else’s experience, we are actually still pointing outwards towards that other person to a them out there, and we never point inwards towards ourself, which is where the real uncharted territory [00:42:00] lies. That is why spiritual talk remains unsatisfying. It’s intellectual only To change the way I live, I must step into the unknown in me and explore with the courage of a sailor.

Sailors get wet, they get frozen, they get blown overboard. They have all kinds of things happen to ’em. That’s what having an adventure is, and that’s what many sailors sign up for. It’s the same thing when going inward. It’s not gonna be just a perfect book. So what I’ve seen with my own eyes, the new truths within me, then I naturally start to live them.

Then I have stories to tell, then I have adventures to talk about. Then I have experiences, new experiences with myself, and that’s alive. That’s very different from simply understanding the mind.

Descriptions are [00:43:00] mysterious. Direct experience is not. We all love to play it safe. We all want to have someone go ahead of us to lead the way to de demystify the inner world for us, but no one can do that for us. When we want others to show us how it is in our inner world, we stay camping on the shores of the ocean of ourselves.

There is no substitute for diving in directly and finding out ourselves, but the learning will necessarily be different than book learning. There is no orderly display of knowledge from the outset. There are no tables and maps. There’s no curriculum. Instead, there is only trial and error. The path of direct experience in your particular inner world is a path that has never been walked before.

You must walk it yourself. That means you’re blind. You really do have to feel your way and you’re going to, uh, quote unquote make [00:44:00] mistakes as you explore. But as you think about it, making mistakes doesn’t make sense in the context of exploration. You have to go and find out where what’s there, and you have to find out lots of different things, um, by trial and error.

So what is the role of the work in this? We could always look internally. What does the work do? The work provides a compass in that darkness of unknowingness. There’s always direction like a compass. The mind can sense when it’s moving towards pain or towards peace. The idea of this inner exploration is to move away from pain and towards peace.

This is the path of increasing understanding and decreasing confusion. The work of Byron Katie points out this direction. At every step, at every step, you can find the thoughts that cause stress and pain and confusion. [00:45:00] And through the work, you can turn these thoughts around and begin to walk in the opposite direction, in the direction of increasing peace and clarity.

And the work is nothing but questions. So it’s just gonna ask you, okay, is that more peaceful? Is that more stressful? Is this way, how make more sense? Have you considered looking over here? Those kind of questions will keep you looking and finding your way in the dark. That’s how it works. It’s so simple.

The work simply asks me to notice my own experience and to follow my experience away from what hurts me and toward a more peaceful view of things. This is a process of learning by direct experience. There’s no faith involved. It is literally just following your own direct experience, out of suffering, one step at a time.

And where your work takes you may be very different than where someone else’s work, someone else’s work takes them. We are each in different [00:46:00] worlds and at different stages of exploration, so I can’t follow someone else’s work. I can’t just, um, use their turn turnarounds and adopt them for myself. I have to discover mine, the ones that will be the best fit for me.

And just like the European explorers, you may start out feeling your way in one direction and later find out there is even a better direction for you. So it’s a constant process of adjusting and adjusting and adjusting, but always based on direct experience. That’s what demystifies the inner world.

Direct exploration means doing it wrong is as important as doing it right. Don’t expect to step into this process of exploration and see everything in shining lights after the first step. Instead, revel in each step of progress that leads not intellectually, but experientially away from suffering and towards peace.

And if you take a step towards [00:47:00] greater suffering, you’ll feel it. And that’s useful information too. You can always backtrack, say, okay, well I tried that. That doesn’t really work for me. Keep looking, keep looking, keep looking. I. Exploration is never done. The joy of exploring is that there are always new corners of the inner world to discover.

There’s always the possibility to gain new knowledge and understanding when you keep exploring as well as a possibility for greater and greater inner freedom, as long as you keep feeling your way forward. The work is a wonderful tool for this inner exploration. I would not travel the seas without a compass, and I would not travel the world without the work.

And I love this analogy. It’s just compass tells you where north is. That’s all it does. Where’s North? Where’s south? So the work, all it does is just ask you, okay, is that bringing you more peace or is that bringing you less peace? Is this truer? Is this not truer for you? How’s that [00:48:00] working for you? And.

Could the opposite be true? And so as you look at darkness and you turn it around, you will start to move naturally in the direction of more light or more peace. So if you wanna begin a systematic practice of the work, I invite you to join my nine month course called the Work 1 0 1. It’s a course in stress stress management through this process of self-exploration.

And you get to experience it not just once, not just for an hour, but through a ongoing course of nine, uh, nine weeks, not nine months, uh, that will allow you to begin to really experience this in a more profound way. So I end with a quote from Byron Katie, the founder of the Work, and she says in her book, question Your Thinking, change the World.

I’m here to take the mystery out of everything. It’s simple because there really isn’t anything. [00:49:00] There’s only the story happening now, and not even that. So thank you for being here. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being, uh, a part of this experience. And I invite you to subscribe to the podcast, share it with a friend, post it on social media if you feel moved to or leave a review wherever you happen to listen to this podcast.

And also stop by the work as meditation.com to get my newsletter to participate in open sessions like the one you heard here today. And you’ll also find hundreds of articles there. On the work of Byron Katie, as well as the work one-on-one course, the Work 1 0 2 Course, virtual Retreats, inquiry Circle my, uh, community for doing the work and uh, private sessions where you can work one-on-one with me and you’ll also find some do it yourself courses.

The book, finding The Door to [00:50:00] Inquiry and other programs that I’m continuing to develop. So thanks again for being here. I appreciate you and I look forward to being with you in another session. Till then, have a great week.