The Little Yellow Card

I love how people enter The Work in all kinds of ways.

The other day someone who came to a meetup for the first time, knowing absolutely nothing about The Work, left with a delighted look in her eyes.

She had never read anything by Byron Katie, or tried The Work, before our meetup.

She simply trusted that her friend, who invited her, might be onto something interesting.

I love that some people dive in and follow the simple directions.

They write down their stressful thoughts about a person who’s bothering them, or a situation they find disturbing.

They take only one of the thoughts they’ve written, and apply the four questions.

There is no major motive to get somewhere else.

There is no vision about where they should be.

They know they feel pain about the relationship or concern, and they’re willing to try answering a few questions about it, slowing down, considering if what they’re assuming is actually true or not.

Today, if you’re not sure which way to go about something (or perhaps many things) that you find upsetting….

….instead of trying to analyze it further, or resolve it right now, or fix it, or feel better about it…..

….just ask these questions and see what happens, without any expectations whatsoever:

Is what you’re thinking actually true?

Is it absolutely true?

What happens, how do you react, when you’re thinking that thought, in that situation?

Who would you be without your thought, in that very same situation?

Then find turnarounds, or opposites, to your thought.

(Sometimes this is the tricky part, but even that’s OK….you’ll catch on).

Byron Katie suggested during an event once that I attended that if you felt stuck, but noticed you were talking to yourself and telling yourself stressful things in your own mind (things that made you sad, scared, or angry)….

….and you were too freaked out to sit down with a pen and paper and do The Work….

….why you could simply ask a stranger on the street to ask you the four questions (while handing them a card with the questions printed on it).

Katie has these little yellow cards called, well, the Little Yellow Card.

What I love about this idea is how simple it is.

It’s the simplest thing in the world to answer (or ask) four questions, and find turnarounds to what you’re thinking.

You don’t need something special to do The Work.

You can find someone nearby, and see if they’ll ask you the questions about something you find painful.

There’s really no right or wrong.

There’s just doing it.

“The future depends on what you do today.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi