1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Loving What Is
It’s a simple fact that life’s full of problems and challenges that you’d rather not face. If you’re like most people, you probably assume that you’re supposed to feel emotional pain when things don’t go the way you want—and that it’s not possible to feel positive emotions unless your experiences improve.
But what if there’s a way to feel positive no matter what happens in your life? In Loving What Is, best-selling author and spiritual teacher Byron Katie argues that life experiences don’t cause emotional pain. Rather, only resistant thoughts that judge these experiences as somehow wrong or unwanted cause emotional pain. Therefore, the only way to achieve inner peace is to release resistant thoughts and accept each moment that occurs.
(Shortform note: Psychologists and self-help practitioners commonly refer to the types of resistant thoughts Katie explores throughout the book as “negative thoughts.” We’ve chosen to use the term “resistant thoughts” so as to underscore how these thoughts oppose and actively work against the practice of acceptance.)
This guide discusses Katie’s advice for accepting life and achieving inner peace in two parts. In the first part, we’ll explain her argument that all negative emotions...
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Loving What Is Summary Part 1: Inner Peace Comes From Accepting That Life Is Inherently Perfect
Katie argues that you have no real reason to feel emotional pain. She explains that every moment that occurs is inherently good—there is no such thing as a bad experience. Her reasoning for this is as follows: Only things that are meant to happen happen. And, anything that’s meant to happen is good. Therefore, everything that happens is good.
Understanding this concept allows you to accept and feel at peace with every moment that occurs, regardless of what happens.
Humans Turn to Benevolent Higher Powers to Control the Uncontrollable
While Katie doesn’t claim to have a religious background, her claim that everything that happens is good builds from her logic that whatever happens is God’s will, and that God’s will is inherently good. This line of thinking stems from a long history of putting circumstances “in a higher power’s hands” as a way of making sense of and accepting them.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens) explains that [the idea of a benevolent God originally arose from the human need to rationalize uncontrollable events and feel in control of our...
Loving What Is Summary Part 2: A Step-by-Step Process to Release Resistant Thoughts
We’ve just explained Katie’s argument that all negative emotions spring from resistant thoughts about experiences, not from the experiences themselves. It follows then that the only way to accept and feel at peace with your experiences is to release the resistant thoughts you have about those experiences.
(Shortform note: Throughout her book, Katie argues that you need to experience peace internally before you can feel positive about what happens externally. The Happiness Advantage clarifies the science underlying Katie’s argument: According to research in neuroscience and positive psychology, happiness isn’t the result of a positive situation, but the cause of it. When you choose to cultivate the habit of thinking positive, nonresistant thoughts, you train your brain to find opportunities in adversity and overcome challenges and setbacks. This creates positive momentum in your life and fuels further opportunities to feel happy.)
But, how can you release resistant thoughts, especially when there’s a situation in your life that you find difficult to accept or feel good about? Katie suggests that you can...
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Shortform Exercise: Practice Questioning Your Thoughts
Katie suggests that you can release resistant thoughts by writing down your interpretation of a situation that upsets you, asking yourself four specific questions, and then reframing your thoughts until you feel at peace with the situation.
Reflect on something in your life that you’re unhappy about. This could be something that’s happening now, something that happened in the past, or something that might happen in the future. Write short simple sentences to express your thoughts and feelings about the situation.
