Who would you be without your story about breakup?
Bestselling author Byron Katie introduced thousands of people to her simple and profound method of finding happiness through questioning the mind and end the suffering after breakup.
In her groundbreaking book I Need Your Love—Is That True? , Katie helps you question everything you have been taught to do to keep love and approval.
In doing this, you discover how to find genuine love and connection with yourself in the middle of the breakup.
The usual advice offered in self-help books and reinforced by our culture advocates a stressful, all-consuming quest for love and approval. We are advised to learn self-marketing and manipulative skills—how to attract, impress, seduce, and often pretend to be something we aren’t. This approach doesn’t work. It leaves millions of walking wounded—those who, having lost love and blame themselves and conclude that they are unworthy of love.
Through her way of inquiry – 4 questions, you could quickly discover the falseness of the myth that equates love with need. Using the method, you could inquire into painful beliefs that you’ve based your whole life on and lead to your broken heart. Katie shows you how to stop seeking love, approval, and appreciation from others and start finding love inside you instead.
Here is the list of her quotes that can help you heal your broken heart:
Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be caused by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.
Everyone agrees that love is wonderful, except when it’s terrible. People spend their whole lives tantalized by love—seeking it, trying to hold on to it, or trying to get over it. Not far behind love, as major preoccupations, come approval and appreciation. From childhood on, most people spend much of their energy in a relentless pursuit of these things, trying out different methods to be noticed, to please, to impress, and to win other people’s love, thinking that’s just the way life is. This effort can become so constant and unquestioned that we barely notice it anymore.
The Work always leaves you with less of a story about your heartbreak. Who would you be without your story about heartbreak? You never know until you inquire. There is no heartbreak story that is you or that leads to you. Every heartbreak story leads away from you. Turn it around; undo it. You are what exists before all stories about breakup. You are what remains when the story of your heartbreak is understood.
Asking the questions – that’s what changes lives. Every cell in your body is awake with inquiry. And you cannot believe the old thoughts again.
Is it true that you could not live without your ex? Is it true that he took away all your happy memories? Is it true that you are not worthy of love?
All this questions that you start are part of the simple process to end your suffering, piece by piece you heal your heart again.
Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, “Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking in this moment. You’re living in a story that isn’t true for you.” Living a lie is always stressful. And investigating a lie through The Work always leads you back to who you are. Who you are is not an option. You are love. It hurts to believe you’re other than who you are, to live any story less than love.
When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.
Hurt is not something that happened to you. It happened for you to show you that something is missing in your life. You believed that your love story was perfect?
Can you really know that your next relationship will not be something even better?
What we are doing with inquiry is meeting our thoughts with some simple understanding, finally. Pain, anger, and frustration will let us know when it’s time to inquire. We either believe what we think or we question it: there’s no other choice. Questioning our thoughts is the kinder way. Inquiry always leaves us as more loving human beings.”
New possibility, deeper love could came into your life only if you make room for ti. When you questions your thoughts about pain, heartbreak and suffering you make space for new, for deeper love that you could never even imagine.
For me, if somebody tells me to go away, that is an opportunity: for me to give the person a better life, to realize where not to be, and to see what could be even better than being with that person I love.
Sometimes in the middle of heartbreaking pain we miss the moments of noticing that our heart break wide open with reason, to feel even more love.
An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.
When we are hurt we tend to stiffen our body, to close down, to curl up, we don’t dare to ask questions out of the fear that future will bring us even more suffering. But that is ilusion.
As soon as we start to question our mind stories that we will never be loved again, we start to make a room in our life for universe to bring us small gifts of love.
Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.
It’s not your job to like me – it’s mine.
Would you rather be right or free?
Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon, nor too late. You don’t have to like it…it’s just easier if you do.
Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.
Pain is an alarm clock that lets you know you’re attached to something not true for you.
I stopped waiting for the world to give me what I wanted; I started giving it to myself.
Personalities don’t love—they want something.
It’s not the breakup that causes our suffering; it’s our thinking about the breakup.
What happened was the best thing that could happen.
You can only see what you believe—nothing else is possible.
Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon, nor too late. You don’t have to like it…it’s just easier if you do.
Nothing can cost you someone you love. The only thing that can cost you your husband is if you believe a thought. That’s how you move away from him. That’s how the marriage ends.
You are one with your husband until you believe the thought that he should look a certain way, he should give you something, he should be something other than what he is. That’s how you divorce him. Right then and there you have lost your marriage.
All the quotes in this post belong to Byron Katie.
Suggestion for next read: Gentle steps to get over broken heart
