342: How to LOVE Your Life – Exactly As It Is

[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends. It’s Hal Elrod. Welcome to today's podcast. Just so you know, today's day one of a three-day water fast for me so I might be a little hangry. I'm starting to get hungry but it's been a long time since I've done this a few years. But I will not be eating any food, only drinking water, water, and lemon water, maybe a little salt for the next few days to detox my body and reset and refresh. So, with that, and by the way, if you want to do a water fast or wonder why in the heck am I doing that? Just google it. Google it. I'm not going to give you some episode. That's not what we're talking about today. Today, I'm actually going to read a chapter of a book today. It's one of those days and it’s a chapter from the book that I've been talking a lot about lately, which is Loving What Is by Byron Katie, and I'm going to read this but I've done this a few times before. It’s actually a great feedback from you guys and gals, the listeners but it's kind of I’ll read and discuss. 

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: And the reason I'm choosing this topic today, this chapter from this particular book, a few weeks ago, I did an episode called Freedom From Your Emotional Pain. It was episode number 338. If you want to go back and listen to it, you can find it at HalElrod.com/338. And in that episode, it was actually one of the most shared episodes I've had in, I don't know, a long time, maybe ever. Got phenomenal feedback from people, not in terms of feedback like, "Hey, great episode,” but, "Wow, I really needed that,” like, "Wow, that was really eye-opening for me.” And I recorded that podcast after I posted a quote on social media. One, I guess it's a quote. It’s my own thoughts. The quote that I posted on social media was, "Consider that every painful emotion you have ever experienced has been self-created by resisting your reality. It's never the thing we think we're upset about that's actually upsetting us. It is our resistance. When you accept reality exactly as it is, you are at peace.” And then I added to that, "When you accept reality exactly as it is there is no pain, only peace. Instead of resisting reality, accept it unconditionally, giving yourself the gift of inner peace, and from that place of unconditional peace, you can choose to experience any reality that you want.” 

I got, as I mentioned, a lot of great feedback. I also had some people really in pain that were upset about that quote, and even not the podcast episode. I got probably a handful of emails from people saying, "You know, I experienced extreme abuse when I was a child or I was raped,” or some just some very real horrific experiences and they took this as me saying, "It's your fault. It's your fault. If you're in pain, it's your fault that you feel this way or it's a child's fault if they're in pain.” The concept that I was sharing, it's not blaming anyone and saying that you're at fault. It's saying this is what causes pain. It's our resistance to reality that causes the pain. Not that it's your fault that you have the pain or it's your fault that the horrific thing was done to you but all emotional pain, from my perspective, and as I've learned and experienced and worked with others on is a result of our resistance to our reality. And it's usually unconscious, right? We're not consciously going, “I want to be in pain so I'm going to resist reality.” Not at all.

And I wanted to read this chapter today because Byron Katie, in my opinion, explains this way better than I do. She's much more articulate. And when I read this chapter, I actually have a little note, I'm holding the book right now, and this was probably a few months back but I wrote a note to myself. It says, "This whole chapter is in alignment with the Can't Change It philosophy that I teach and it will help me to better teach it.” And by the way, the Can't Change It philosophy is the idea that the solution to resisting reality is when you find yourself resisting, have this three-word mantra, can't change it. And that, for me, is what I've used for 20 years, and I've taught in my speeches. And I've had a lot of people, dozens of people tattoo those words into their wrist after my speech where they go get a tattoo and send me a picture that says, "Can't change it,” and it's a reminder and an acknowledgment to yourself that, "Oh, yeah, I can't change this thing that happened. So, now it's my choice if I want to continue to suffer or if I want to give myself the gift of freedom, inner freedom, inner peace.” 

And those three words for me have been the mantra, that when I'm in traffic and I'm going, “Oh, son of a gun, I'm going to be late,” I go, “Wait a minute. Can't change it. Can't change it. I'm in traffic either way. I might as well enjoy every moment.” And for me, that's a metaphor for life that traffic is, "Hey, this thing happened either way. I might as well enjoy every moment. I might as well enjoy my life even though difficult things happen, bad things happen, scary things happen, painful things happen.” And it goes back to the idea of pain is inevitable. But suffering is optional, right? We experienced pain but we get to choose our response. Am I going to let this pain cause me to suffer or am I going to accept this pain exactly as it is, and find peace within the pain? Greet the pain with acceptance and love and so on and so forth. So again, Byron Katie I feel like does a brilliant job of explaining this concept and will elaborate on anything that I've said on the concept. 

So, this is from Byron's book, Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life and this is Chapter 1: 

The work is merely four questions. It's not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It's nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you've got and enhance it. Any religion you have, they'll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy, and they'll burn up anything that isn't true for you. They'll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting. 

Chapter 1: A Few Basic Principles. What I love about the work is that it allows you to go inside and find your own happiness to experience what already exists within you unchanging, immovable, ever-present, ever waiting. No teacher is necessary. You are the teacher you've been waiting for. You are the one who can end your own suffering. I often say, "Don't believe anything I say. I want you to discover what's true for you. Not for me.” Still, many people have found the following principles to be helpful for getting started in the work. Noticing when your thoughts argue with reality. The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want. If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try and, in the end, the cat will look up at you and say, “Meow.” Wanting reality to be different than it is, is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark. And yet, if you pay attention, you'll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day, “People should be kinder. Children should be well-behaved. My neighbors should take better care of their lawn. The line at the grocery store should move faster. My husband or wife should agree with me. I should be thinner or prettier or more successful.” These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you're right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is. 

After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often refer to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hated it. People even moved from there because they couldn't stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind, with reality is that I discovered I didn't have a choice. I realized that it's insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose but only 100% of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It's blowing. People new to the work often say to me, "But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. If I simply accept reality, I’ll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.” I answered them with a question, “Can you really know that that's true? Which is more empowering, ‘I wish I hadn't lost my job,’ or, ‘I lost my job. What can I do now?’” 

The work reveals that what you think shouldn't have happened should have happened. It should have happened because it did and no thinking in the world can change it. This doesn't mean that you condone it or approve it. It just means that you can see things without resistance, and without the confusion of your inner struggle. No one wants their children to get sick. No one wants to be in a car accident. But when these things happen, how can it be helpful to mentally argue with them? We know better than to do that yet we do it because we don't know how to stop. I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is because when we argue with it, we experienced tension and frustration. We don't feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless. 

Staying in your own business. I can find only three kinds of business in the universe, mine, yours, and God's. For me, the word God means reality. Reality is God because it rules. Anything that's out of my control, your control, and everyone else's control, and by the way, everyone, there's a lot of that in the world right now, things that are out of our control. I call that God's business. Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think you need to get a job, I want you to be happy. You should be on time. You need to take better care of yourself. I am in your business. When I'm worried about earthquakes, floods, war or when I will die, I am in God's business. If I am mentally in your business or in God's business, the effect is separation. I noticed this early in 1986 when I mentally went into my mother's business, for example, with a thought like, "My mother should understand me,” I immediately experienced a feeling of loneliness and I realized that every time in my life that I had felt hurt or lonely, I had been in someone else's business. If you are living your life, and I am mentally living your life, who is here living mine? We're both over there. 

Being mentally in your business keeps me from being present in my own. I am separate from myself, wondering why my life doesn't work. To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve your problems for you. If you understand the three kinds of business enough to stay in your own business, it could free your life in a way that you can't even imagine. The next time you're feeling stress or discomfort, ask yourself whose business you're in mentally, and you may burst out laughing, that question to bring you back to yourself. And you may come to see that you've never really been present, that you've been mentally living in other people's business all your life. Just to notice that you're in someone else's business can bring you back to your own wonderful self. And if you practice it for a while, you may come to see that you don't have any business either and that your life runs perfectly well on its own. 

Meeting your thoughts with understanding. A thought is harmless unless we believe it.

By the way, let me pause, you guys. Listen to this. This is so empowering to realize that all our emotional pain, not only does it come from resisting our reality but it comes from our own thoughts. What I'm about to read really opens you up to realize that. We might know that intellectually, but for me, this helped me to understand that, wow, all of my stress, all of my emotional pain, it's all the result of my uninvestigated thoughts, the thoughts that I'm allowing to run crazy through my mind. So, here you go. 

Meeting your thoughts with understanding. A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It's not our thoughts but the attachment to our thoughts that cause suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it's true without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we've been attaching to often for years. Most people think that they are what their thoughts tell them they are. One day I noticed that I wasn't breathing. I was being breathed. Then I also noticed, to my amazement, that I wasn't thinking. I was actually being thought and that thinking isn't personal. Do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I think I won't think today?” It's too late. You're already thinking. Thoughts just appear. They come out of nowhere and go back to nothing like clouds moving across the empty sky. They come to pass not to stay. There is no harm in them until we attach to them as if they were true. No one has ever been able to control his thinking although people may tell the story of how they have. I don't let go of my thoughts. I meet them with understanding, then they let go of me. Thoughts are like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. They appear like that. And through inquiry, we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops aren't personal and neither are thoughts. Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears, you may find it interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The next time you may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is. 

Becoming aware of your stories. I often use the word story to talk about thoughts or sequences of thoughts that we convince ourselves are real. A story may be about the past, the present, or the future. It may be about what things should be and what they could be or why they are. Stories appear in our minds hundreds of times a day, when someone gets up without a word and walks out of the room, when someone doesn't smile or doesn't return a phone call, or when a stranger does smile before you open an important letter or after you feel an unfamiliar sensation in your chest, when your boss invites you to come into his or her office or when your partner talks to you in a certain tone of voice. Stories are the untested, uninvestigated theories that tell us what all these things mean. We don't even realize that they're just theories. Once, as I walked into the ladies room at a restaurant near my home, a woman came out of a single stall. We smiled at each other. And as I closed the door, she began to sing and wash her hands. “What a lovely voice,” I thought. Then as I heard her leave, I noticed that the toilet seat was dripping wet. “How could anyone be so rude?” I thought, "And how did she manage to pee all over the seat? Was she standing on it?” 

Then it came to me that she was a man, a transvestite, singing falsetto in the women's restroom. It crossed my mind to go after her/him and let him know what a mess he'd made. As I cleaned the toilet seat, I thought about everything I'd say to him. Then I flushed the toilet. The water shot up out of the bowl and flooded the seat. And I just stood there laughing. In this case, the natural course of events was kind enough to expose my story before it went any further. Usually, it doesn't. Before I found inquiry, I had no way to stop this kind of thinking. Small stories bred bigger ones. Bigger stories bred major theories about my life, how terrible it was, and how the world was a dangerous place. I ended up feeling too frightened and depressed to leave my bedroom. When you're operating on uninvestigated theories of what's going on and you aren't even aware of it, you're in what I call the dream. Often the dream becomes troubling. Sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing the work on them. The work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You'll never know until you inquire.

Looking for the thought behind the suffering. I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn't caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there is a thought that isn't true for us. The wind shouldn't be blowing. My husband should agree with me. We have a thought that argues with reality, then we have a stressful feeling and then we act on that feeling, creating more stress for ourselves. Rather than understand the original cause, a thought, we try to change our stressful feelings by looking outside of ourselves. We try to change someone else or we reach for sex, food, alcohol, drugs, or money in order to find temporary comfort and the illusion of control. It is easy to be swept away by someone by some overwhelming feeling. So, it's helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, “You're caught in the dream.” Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, "Sweetheart, take a look at what you're thinking right now. You're living in a story that isn't true for you.” 

Caught in the dream, we try to alter and manipulate the stressful feeling by reaching outside of ourselves. We're usually aware of the feeling before the thought. That's why I say the feeling is an alarm clock that lets you know there's a thought that you may want to do the work on and investigating an untrue thought will always lead you back to who you really are. It hurts to believe you're other than who you are to live in any sort of any story other than unhappiness. If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No. When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don't have to direct it. The hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand through inquiry that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it. Before the thought, you weren't suffering. With the thought, you're suffering. When you recognize that the thought isn't true, again, now there's no suffering. That is how the work functions. How do I react when I think that thought? 

Hand in the fire. Who would I be without it? Out of the flames. We look at the thought, we feel our hand in the fire, and we naturally move back to the original position. We don't have to be told. And the next time the thought arises, the mind automatically moves from the fire. The work invites us into the awareness of internal cause and effect. Once we recognize this, all of our suffering begins to unravel on its own. 

Inquiry. I use the word inquiry as synonymous with the work. To inquire or to investigate is to put a thought or a story up against the four questions, and the turnarounds explained to the next chapter. Inquiry is a way to end confusion and to experience internal peace, even in a world of apparent chaos. Above all else, inquiry is about realizing that all the answers we ever need are always available inside of us. inquiry is more than a technique. It brings to life from deep within us, an innate aspect of our being. When practiced for a while, inquiry takes on its own life within you. It appears whenever thoughts appear as their balance and mate. This internal partnership leaves you free to live as a kind, fluid, fearless amused listener, a student of yourself, and a friend who can be trusted not to resent, criticize, or hold a grudge. Eventually, realization is experienced automatically as a way of life. Peace and joy naturally, inevitably, and irreversibly make their way into every corner of your mind into every relationship and experience. The process is so subtle that you may not even have any conscious awareness of it. You may only know that you used to hurt and now you don't.

That is chapter one of loving what is and the inquiry, the work that she speaks of are these four questions that can change your life and the four questions, I think I might have mentioned these before. But the first question when you have a painful thought is you ask yourself, “Is it true? Is that true? Is it true or is that true?” So, for example, let's say you think your spouse, they're angry at me. They yell at me. They're angry at me.” Well, Byron Katie would ask you, "Is that true that they're angry?” And your first response might be, “Yeah. They yelled at me. They're angry.” And then the second question, if you answer no to the first is can you absolutely know that that's true? And in the context of this example of my spouse is angry at me or this person is angry at me because they yelled at me, if you really investigate, can you absolutely know that’s true? And the answer is no. They might actually be hurt. And maybe they're expressing anger but they're not actually angry. They are hurting. They are sad. They are scared. I find these four questions have allowed me in my life to really develop really critical thinking and really think about the thought behind the thought or the cause behind the action, the feeling, the emotion behind what is said or what is done. It's allowed me to really take any painful thought and start to turn it around. 

The third question is, who are you? What do you experience when you believe that thought? And so, that's a really easy investigation into yourself. You go, I become angry myself or I become judgmental or I feel anger or resentment toward that person or that situation, right? So, you investigate kind of what is this experience for you when you're believing that thought? And then you ask yourself, who would you be without the thought? And usually, the answer for me is something like, “Well, yeah, if I didn't have that thought, I would be at peace. If I didn't believe that thought, I would not feel resentment toward that person. I would feel love.” So, these four questions, these are the four basic questions of the work and I think you can kind of see how that they work. So, I would go, in that example, my spouse is angry and then I go, "She really angry.” No. And then I investigate and I kind of think through and go, “Well, you know what, she's probably actually hurt because I wasn't there for her when she needed me and she's expressing it in the form of anger but it's actually hurt.” And now I can actually go and interact with my spouse in a way that is dealing with the real root cause of whatever is causing both of us pain or emotional turmoil. And then asking who you'd be, of course, allows you to get clear or who you are, how you experience it. 

And then there's another question that Byron Katie will often ask after the third question. She'll say, “Can you think of one stress-free reason to keep that thought to keep believing that thought? Can you think of one stress-free reason to keep the thought?” And if the thought is causing you stress or pain, then there really is rarely, if ever, a stress-free reason to keep that thought. And then Byron Katie in the book goes into something that she calls the turnarounds, which is essentially where you examine the opposite of that thought at least three times, in at least three different ways. So, you would ask yourself, so a turnaround of my spouse is angry. It might be, “I am angry.” And then you ask yourself, "Is that as true or truer than the first thought that I had, that my spouse is angry?” And often if I go, “Yeah. Well, I'm angry.” If I'm thinking about things like, well, I'll give you an example. This morning I woke up and I thought about someone that lives here in Austin, Texas who's a friend of mine, who we did not put in the Miracle Morning Movie. And I don't know why, I woke up on my mind and we're too late. But the movie, it's done and I just started thinking through how great it would have been to have this person in the movie. 

And now they were perfect and then I started to think that their feelings might be hurt because they're not in the movie and we're friends and they live in Austin and they'd be perfect to be in the movie. And I went down this rabbit hole and I was really stressed and I got up and thankfully, within a few minutes, I didn't even have to get the book out because like I just read to you. The work starts to become kind of automatic. And I started to go through the questions and I went, "Is it true that they should be in the movie?” And it's kind of subjective. So, I'm like, “Yes, no, maybe I don't really remember that. I guess it's definitely not true.” The second question, can you absolutely know that it's true? Definitely not. And then the third question was enough for me to drop the thought. The third question, “Who are you? How do you feel? What do you experience when you believe that thought?” And I go, “I'm stressed about it. I feel bad that I let that person down possibly when they're probably not even thinking about it. It probably didn't enter their consciousness. And then I go, "What if the opposite were true?” Did some of the turnarounds and I go, "They shouldn't have been in that movie.” 

And I go, "Could that be as true or truer?” And I go, “Yeah.” I go, "The movie is perfect as it is. Maybe putting them in, maybe the scenes that we filmed wouldn't have actually been good and it would have caused conflict.” So, I went down the opposite. And what this is, is it's really a method for empathy, empathy for yourself, and empathy for others. It's a method for critical thinking that allows you to not just take that first thought or that first feeling at face value and just accept that as that's it, that is fact because it's not a fact. As Byron Katie talked about in the book, these are stories. We create stories. We create narratives and we believe them. And then we create emotional. We construct emotions unconsciously around our stories about how the world should be. And all of the things, how my spouse should be, how other people should be, what I should have done. We live in regret, we have resentment, we condemn other people, like you think about all of our emotional pain is being self-created, not only by the resistance to our reality but by the thoughts that we attach to, the thoughts that we believe. And what this book has done for me is given me or I should say really given me another tool to be able to experience emotional freedom, freedom from emotional pain. 

And before, I had a limited set of tools. My only tool, essentially, I had to positive thinking, focusing on the positive, focusing what I’m grateful for. That was a tool but the main tool I use is the one that I talked about in that other podcast episode, which is acceptance. It's the idea that I will not resist my reality. I will accept my life exactly as it is no matter what. When I had cancer, I accept that I've cancer. I will feel no pain. I won't wish I didn't have cancer. I'm completely at peace with it. But where I found that that did not work for me is that is in more often than not in my relationships. It was one thing to accept a circumstance. It was I could accept traffic. I could accept cancer. I could accept a speech canceling like I could accept COVID-19 happening. I could accept circumstances. But where I didn't have the tool and the tools still works, I think. Acceptance still works for sure but I wouldn't do it as often in my relationships. But if you think about it, if all of our emotional pain is self-created by our resistance to reality, that's also true in relationships. Because if you feel pain over something someone says or something did, it's that you're resisting the reality. They shouldn't have said that. They shouldn't have done that. 

So, we were resisting the reality that causes all of our pain also in our relationships. So, while I was aware of that, I found that the tool of acceptance for me at least it wasn't as easy to apply to my relationships. I would find myself resisting my reality in my relationships. And what this concept that Byron Katie calls the work, her book, Loving What Is, what this did is these four questions, I apply them to all areas of my life but they became really effective in my relationships, in my marriage, with my kids. Going through these four questions whenever I was feeling emotional pain over something that somebody else in my life did or didn't do, said, or didn't say. So, that's the work. Those are the four questions. Is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? Who am I? What do I experience when I believe that thought? 

And then the fourth, who would I be without that thought? And then within that, the turnarounds. Think of the opposite of the thought or the belief that you are holding on to and how it makes you feel. And then ask yourself if you need to, is there a stress-free reason for me to keep this thought? And once you go through that process, it's this eye-opening elevation of your awareness about what you're attaching to that's causing your pain. Whether it's in your relationships or in your circumstances, you become aware of this thought is causing my pain. Without the thought, I wouldn't have the pain. And then you work through, "Well, what's the opposite of this? And could that also be just as true if not even truer?” And by the end of this process and for me, this is starting to be done almost automatically, sometimes I really need to do it consciously. This morning I did it consciously but it's become this automated process that I run my thoughts through. And within a matter of minutes, sometimes even seconds, I go from feeling stressed or anxious or fearful or angry or some other form of feeling upset, scared to being completely at peace. 

A lot of the things that we're afraid of, for example, could the opposite also be true? And that's almost always true. We can't predict the future. It's like yeah, that that may never happen but we live in fear and I posted a quote of the day, I just said that, I forgot exactly what I said but it was something like, "Our challenges, our pain is only meant to be experienced one time while we're experiencing it. Yet when we live in fear, we experience the pain of a perceived future over and over and over and over again.” Well, that's silly. We don't need to live in fear. And so, for me, I don't want to get too off track here and go down the fear topic but the point is these four questions, Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is in the work has been a game-changer for me. My wife and I just listened to it. We listened to chapter one the other day as well or the introduction in chapter one in the car. And so, now she's starting to apply it and it's been powerful for both of us and then now we're looking at teaching to the kids. Just another really powerful tool in our toolbelt to experience life as I believe it is meant to be experienced, which is from a place of love and a place of joy and a place of gratitude and a place of compassion and a place of connection. And not a place of inner turmoil, and all of those painful emotions that not only cause us pain but we tend to project that pain onto other people, and then now the whole world is in pain because we don't live with compassion and love and empathy and all of those qualities. 

[CLOSING]

Hal Elrod: So, I hope this has been helpful for you. I definitely encourage you to get the book. I don't know if we reached out to Byron Katie to be on the podcast yet or not. I know that's on our list of to-dos but I'd love to interview her and bring her voice directly to you. And by the way, if you do want to follow Byron, she's got a ton of work online. She does free live streams every week and I'm assuming her website is ByronKatie.com, I'm not sure. But if you google Byron Katie, I'm sure you'll find her. All right. Friends, family, members of the Miracle Morning community, goal achievers, I love you so much. I appreciate you. Thanks for listening. And let's keep elevating the consciousness of humanity one person and one morning at a time because the world needs you more than ever before. I'll talk to you all next week.

[END]