DTD 172
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[00:00:00] This is the Drive Time Debrief, episode 172.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Amanda. I'm Laura. And I'm Kendra. And in previous podcast episodes, we have touched on Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is. We've already had two podcasts, one about minding your business, which is the key to [00:01:00] serenity, and then also meeting your thoughts with understanding, just knowing kind of what's happening
whenever you have intrusive thoughts or self-criticism, that sort of thing. Today we are going to talk about one of her other main principles, which is called Noticing When Your Thoughts Argue with Reality. And boy, that is painful when that's happening. So we're literally gonna read you passages from this section and then discuss and see what you think.
Okay, so the first passage goes a little something like this.
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 right now is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat [00:02:00] to bark. Yet if you pay attention, you'll notice that you believe thoughts like this, dozens of times a day. People should be kinder. Children should be well behaved. Neighbors should take better care of their lawn.
I'm hearing a lot of shoulds, and I think we've touched on that before. The line at the grocery store should move faster. My husband or wife or partner should agree with me. These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is right now. If you think this sounds depressing, you're right.
All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is. Yes. I find this with medicine when the stress and painful times come from "it shouldn't have turned out this way. They should have lived. I should have done a better job during this code. Maybe if they had had another doctor, that doctor would've come up with some better solution."
There is so much arguing against reality and it really is very painful.
Yeah. We have [00:03:00] little control over how adults show up or over how they're gonna answer the phone or call us back.
Like to think we can kind of reach through that phone and shake them or be like "I'm a real person here and I'm not accepting this behavior" or whatever. Mm-hmm. It seems like you have zero control of that.
You get to let them behave that way. But then you also have autonomy or ownership over like, "Hey, you sound a little stressed, or are you okay? How about you call me back? Or is this a good time? How about you call me back when it's a better time?" Or whatever.
While we can accept them for how they are, we also can create change in ourselves by having better boundaries and allowing
certain levels of treatment of ourselves. Like it's not okay for a consultant or any other doctor if you're a surgical trainee. It's not okay for your attending to scream at you and it's not okay for your department chair to scream at [00:04:00] you. I had a client a few days ago. She's a surgeon and has a situation where one of her supervisors is fully toxic and that's not okay.
We don't need to just accept that. We can accept that we're not in charge of them. We also can set boundaries and withdraw ourselves or decide what we're gonna do in response to these behaviors because it's not okay to accept someone's maltreatment of us. For me, it looks like someone is rude to me and unprofessional, "Hey, are you okay?
Because you're not behaving in a professional way and I'm not gonna be talked to this way." And guess what? They don't do it again 'cause they don't wanna have their competence come into question. So that's just my 2 cents on that. Yeah. Well, I think you've segued perfectly into the next passage because it kind of addresses these sorts of concerns.
But before you [00:05:00] read this, Laura, the listener will have to know that Byron Katie herself had refractory depression terribly until 1986, when all of a sudden she describes it as waking up from the dream that she was in of depression and these sorts of ideas started developing. Okay, she says, "After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred 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 hates it. People even move away from here because they can't stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind with reality is that I discovered that 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 often say to me, 'But it would be disempowering to stop my argument with reality. [00:06:00] If I simply accept reality, I'll become passive. I may even lose the desire to act.' I answer them with a question, 'Can you really know that's true?' Which is more empowering: 'I wish I hadn't lost my job' or 'I lost my job.
What intelligent solutions can I find right now?'"
So, yeah, I like that. What intelligent solutions can I find right now? So it's more like, don't argue with mother nature. Don't argue with the past, with the things that really aren't changeable right now in the moment. Unless there's something you really can do.
There are oftentimes things that we can do and things that are reasonable for us to do. It's probably not reasonable. Like I'll argue against reality about the way women are treated in Afghanistan right now. Like that's horrible. I can't think about it too much 'cause it will depress me and am I in a position to [00:07:00] go over there and fight it?
No. Like, it would not be safe for me to go there and do that. But there are lots of things that are in my sphere of influence, and I think we've talked about that in the past that we have a sphere of control and that's really just ourselves. And it's important for us to take ownership of that and control what we can control, which is our own choices and our own behavior, and even a lot of times our own thoughts.
And then we have a sphere of influence where we can influence others or circumstances or situations, hopefully for the better. But we have to let go of the outcome. So if I don't like the way I'm being treated by a family member, I have to set a boundary and let go of whether they're going to [00:08:00] respect my boundary or not, just know what I'm going to do in response to it. And that's really the heart of [00:08:00] what Dr. David Schnarch, who I really have come to really appreciate his work of late, is differentiation where our happiness is not hinging on what other people do. We're
differentiated and realize where we have control, where our own agency is and where we can influence others. Yeah. I think the brain for whatever reason argues that if you accept reality and you stop resisting what is, that you are somehow condoning what's going on or that you somehow agree with it, and those are two separate things.
The fact that something is happening doesn't mean that you like it. It doesn't mean that you condone or are totally fine with it. It just stops the whole energy sucking argument that this is what's happening on this earth. Now, what do I want to do about it? Do I want to contribute financially to some sort of organization that's doing something about it?
It turns out I don't actually want to do a whole lot, but [00:09:00] I'm just being very self-righteous in my brain about this, and it's like, literally nothing's happening other than me just getting upset about it, It forces you to stop having this argument and start putting focus on. Great. What do you want to do about it?
Period. Stop arguing with this fake voice in your brain and let's get going. Yeah. We're wasting time. Yeah. Okay. So I just realized that there is something I can do for the girls in Afghanistan. I can donate to the Malala Fund. Yeah. So that's what I'm gonna do. So when we find ourselves in those situations, just look for something that can be done and do that thing.
Right. But see how, until you stop arguing with what's happening mm-hmm. You can't focus on what it is that you could actually, it's true, influence. You're so miserable. Yes. And who is benefiting from that? All of the women in Afghanistan, it's not helping them at all for you to be [00:10:00] miserable and not engaged and doing what you can.
Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Yeah. So here's the last passage. But yeah, this is what I think happens to us too, that have this really loud inner critic is we think if we let her take a break and, you know, take a vacation and start speaking kindly to ourselves that somehow we are going to just be fine with botching patient care and being lazy and that's when she asks, "Can you really know that's true?" Is that even possible for you to just be like somebody who just shows up and is like, "Yeah, I don't care, you know, whatever?" It's two separate things. But your brain is convincing you that if you accept reality, if you don't argue against reality, if you don't be the biggest critic of yourself, that somehow you're gonna turn into this person. That's not even possible for you. So, I don't know, I think it's not exactly the same [00:11:00] sort of thing, but it's kind of in the same line of thinking. Mm-hmm. So the last passage from this is this: "What you think shouldn't have happened
should have happened. It should have happened because it did happen. And no thinking in the world can change it." I would say at this point, mm-hmm, this doesn't mean that you condone or approve it, it just means that you see things without resistance and without the confusion of your inner struggle. "No one wants their children to be 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 could know that reality is good just as it is because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind and fearless. I think that's just the whole point of it is when we stop opposing reality, [00:12:00] we get out of our head and then see what's possible and what we can have agency over, and that is so much more empowering than this whole internal struggle that accomplishes nothing.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. I would say too, like, because I see so much at work that I'm like, I am never going to accept like the way these kids are treated. And that's where I would say I can accept that I have to experience this with them and I'm willing to walk and I am willing to walk in their pain with them.
I don't like whatever started this whole cascade of badness that led to this situation. I can't change that, but I can change how I show up for this child today. Yes. I think it is a semantics thing then, because what I'm hearing you say is, I would never condone this. That's how I would say it.
Well, because that word "should," like, it's mm-hmm. The "should" sounds like it was the preferable thing to happen. And so [00:13:00] that's where I'm like, I don't, I feel like there must be, you know, like, and of course it's natural for us to say it should never happen because we think a different way would've been preferable.
Yes. A different way would have been preferable and it didn't happen. And so I'm not gonna argue with that part. I can decide how I want to be and that's what I have control over. If that, if that, yeah, yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I got you. Yeah, it is, it's really hard when she does say it should have happened that way.
I get it. Like, 'cause I also have the same sort of reactance, but I guess she's just saying, whoever's in control of the universe, this is how it was allowed. This is how it happened. Right. It's not like God chose for these children to be abused or the universe. It was, you know, people have choices and these are the choices that happened and this is how it has been since the beginning of time.
Also like that [00:14:00] seems to be one that I see a lot with like mom groups and stuff too. Like "the world is such a terrible place now. It's all going to pot." Point me to the time that it was perfect because, yeah, no, it was better for some people, it was a lot worse for other people. Like that's coming from a place where you're not taking in the whole picture.
Right. It's always, yeah. There's always been, I think, a lot of badness.
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think from someone who is spiritual, one of the things that I have learned is, you know, the accepting of, okay, this is the situation or the circumstance. Then being, the thing that empowers me the most is that I can pray about it and then I get realization or knowledge or a word or a truth that I'm like, okay, so out of this situation, God's gonna use this for whatever.
And I love we've had Sasha cut on this podcast and she went through a terrible tragedy. She lost her house to a gigantic tornado, [00:15:00] and while she didn't want that or didn't wish it on anyone. I've read a couple of her posts on the other side of that now that they've, you know, rented the house and they're moved back in and she just listed like four or five things that she is so glad that have come out of that, like, realizing what's essential in life, what's important.
You know, cutting back on stuff and being about making memories with, you know, her family 'cause when the storm comes and takes all the stuff away, what you have is those memories that you've made, those times with your family, you know, that she has that she'll treasure. I mean, just like being a good steward of like, okay, reality has dealt this and now you know, what is that choice?
Moving forward? Can you be open to like the possibility, it seems bad, it seems negative, it seems like it has been allowed, but what on the other side could you [00:16:00] choose to receive? What lesson, what you know, anything like that. And I think that right there is the hope.
When you get stuck, that is stuck in arguing with reality. You lose your vision of hope. And I think that's kind of how some of us physicians get when we start that spiral into the vortex. Right? We totally lose sight of hope and just a little shift in that I think can restore that vision of hope and keep you moving forward so that you're not sucked in.
I would even say you don't even have to look for a silver lining, because that sometimes feels like toxic positivity, gaslighting when things are so bad. Mm-hmm. It's just, mm-hmm. I mean that, that's always best case scenario when there is a silver lining, but it's just like it happened period. We don't have to go back and mm-hmm.
We don't have to think about all the different scenarios where it didn't happen, it just did happen. Let's move on. Or it just did happen and this is what I want to use it for in the future, or this is what I can do [00:17:00] to make sure that this never happens to another person. Or maybe even just influence that it doesn't happen to a single other person.
That's the sort of thing that like then you are kind of using it for good in a way. But I feel like sometimes whenever something absolutely awful has just happened to somebody and then you're like, "Well, there may be a silver lining." That's when you're at risk for getting throat punched. Um mm-hmm. But in this lifetime, there wasn't any sort of scenario where it could have been anything other than this. Mm-hmm. And so, let's go forward. What do you want to do with the future? What do you wanna make of this? What do you want to leave in the past and change your future with? Like, that is kind of how, how I take it.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but I heard you say, let's go on, let's move forward. Yes, yes. If you don't decide, if you don't choose to say, okay, what is this teaching me or what, I'm not talking necessarily about a silver lining because it may be a self-awareness. It may be that I've [00:18:00] been self-centered and this is actually helping me to look outside myself or whatever it is, but in order to not stay stuck, you have to choose to say, okay, what is this teaching me?
There is a lesson to be learned in accepting that situation. And, you know, you're right, it's not always the silver lining, it's just choosing. What am I gonna take from this? How am I gonna move forward? What is it gonna take? Right. You know, how do I support this child that's just been through the worst traumatic thing and help them?
How do I come alongside them? How do I help them move forward? Or whatever it looks like. You know, Sasha, you know, she chose to use some things that she has learned coming out of this terrible devastation of a tornado, taking her house out and saying, "But you know, what I've learned is this, this, and this."
And if that is the principle of hope, of seeing what, taking something that really could put, you know, cement blocks on your glasses and keep you stuck and [00:19:00] choosing to say like, "I'm not gonna allow that because I need to press forward. I need to move on. I need to go."
I think the difference there is we can find the silver linings for ourselves and we just have to be really careful when we're trying to find them for other people. That's not our business. Then we've ventured into somebody else's business.
Right, right, right. Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. Who knows why things happen sometimes. Mm-hmm. But they just did. So arguing with it only keeps you stuck. Yeah. It only keeps you from moving on and making something of it when you keep wishing that it hadn't happened or whatever.
So I think that's the whole point of it, is like the wind blows in Barstow. You can either be pissed off about it. Or you can move or you can make friends with the wind. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Well, we hope this has helped you. If it has, don't forget, we always love for you to leave us a review. Give us five stars, help us to [00:20:00] move up in the list.
If you have any experience with this or any comments on Byron Katie's book, email us at [email protected]. And don't forget, we would love for you to follow us on the socials where we have awesome, awesome content weekly. We want to tell you about our next free webinar coming up on June 26th at 7:00 PM Central Time.
It's called The Five Steps to Freedom from Burnout. In honor of our July 4th holiday and some of the best memes we've ever found. Scroll down in the show notes for the link to register today. So until next time, you are whole. You are a gift to medicine and the work you do matters.
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