Byron Katie Quotes

There is no such thing as stress; only people thinking stressful thoughts.

All mental hygiene is based on the core practice of doing nothing. Most of us are good at wasting time, staring at the wall while telling ourselves we should be working. We call this doing nothing, but our brains are furiously active. We think constantly, and our thinking is often rife with distress.

Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.

Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.

You might think that shifting your thoughts is as easy as setting your mind to it. But stressful thoughts aren't held in place through choice or will power. They're held in place through perceived truth value.

It's not the situation that's causing your stress, it's your thoughts, and you can change that right here and now. You can choose to be peaceful right here and now. Peace is a choice, and it has nothing to do with what other people do or think.

I think I think too much. That's why I drink!

I might find that I have a habit of being jealous and comparing myself with other people and riveting my attention on how much somebody else is accomplishing or doing, or how much better they are at such and such. First, I might recognize the story - the mental images and internal dialogue - and say, "Okay, comparing mind." Then, rather than staying caught in the content, I'll bring my attention into my body and open to the immediate feelings that are there.

There is no stress in the world, only people thinking stressful thoughts.

The truth is that stress doesn't come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances.

It's time we learned the truth about stress. It's time we identified the thoughts that actually create our stress and learned to dismantle them one by one.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

What's taking place during stress is actually much simpler than a transaction between stressful life events and you. There aren't two parties involved in stress. There is only one - your own mind.

Stress is a byproduct of subconscious beliefs you have about the world. You can't choose not to believe something. You believe it because you think it's true. To eliminate stress, you must learn to challenge these beliefs so that you see them differently.

So your emotional state really has a lot to do with what you're thinking about and what you're paying attention to.

I try to live my life one day at a time, and if I look too far in advance, I get really stressed.

Remember that stress doesn't come from what's going on in your life. It comes from your thoughts about what's going on in your life.

At the end of the day, I can end up just totally wacky, because I've made mountains out of molehills. With meditation, I can keep them as molehills.

Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Without meditation, I'd probably be dead.

There have been many occasions when I found it helpful to talk out loud to my own thoughts, ordering the unwholesome ones to go off somewhere and jump into the river.

I'm just not in a place in my life where I worry about something unnecessarily.

I think that whenever you feel reactive or are being reactive as opposed to proactive, that inherently - consciously or subconsciously - creates a lot of stress.

Something I had learned from 30 years as a psychotherapist turned Fortune 500 executive coach when helping people to calm down is that it is much less important what you tell others than what you enable them to tell you and, in the process, tell themselves that results in them calming themselves down.

Basically, I have to stop overthinking.