"Is The Work just about making ourselves accept things?"

This is a very common and understandable misinterpretation of The Work. Katie remarks, "To say that we should accept things just adds another story, another philosophy or religion that has never worked. The Work doesn't say what anyone should or shouldn't do. We simply ask, 'How do you react when you argue with reality? How does it feel?' The Work explores the cause and effect of attaching to painful thoughts, and in that investigation we find our freedom."

An example may be helpful. If my father is judgmental of my life and I tell myself that I should just accept it, it's unlikely that I will feel any lasting relief. The problem remains as an external circumstance that I resent, distract myself from, or avoid.

With The Work, something different takes place. First, I write down the problem on paper:

I'm angry at my father because he's so judgmental.

Then I question it.

He shouldn't be so judgmental—is it true?

Yes, he shouldn't be so judgmental. It drives me nuts.

Can you absolutely know that it's true that he shouldn't be so judgmental? (Can you know his path, and how judgmental he should or shouldn't be at this point in time?)
Well, I can't absolutely know that he should be different than he is. I mean, that's how he is, so I guess that's his path.

This is the first insight generated from doing The Work--we see that what we had believed to be absolutely true may not be. The whole world might agree with it ("Fathers should not be judgmental"), but that doesn't make it true in reality. In reality, fathers are judgmental sometimes. They always have been. That's what true.

"Yes," people new to The Work might say. "They are judgmental, but they shouldn't be."

This is where the third question can be so revealing.

How do you react when you think the thought, "My father shouldn't be so judgmental?"
I get angry. I resent his criticisms, his advice, his belief that he knows best. I scowl. I avoid him. I complain to my friends. I don't listen to what he has to say about anything, and when I'm with him I'm silent or sometimes rude.

How does that feel?
Pretty lousy.

When we believe that fathers shouldn't be judgmental, the effect of that belief is anger, resentment, and separation. These are not effects of his judgments—another person might hear his judgments as good advice, or simply as one man's opinion. Someone else might find them amusing. But when we attach to the belief that he shouldn't be acting the way he does, we are at war with reality, and we lose ("but only 100% of the time," says Katie). It's like saying the sky shouldn't be blue. Look at the blue sky and tell yourself it should be green, and you'll feel the absurdity of it. (This is an interesting exercise for people new to The Work.) As absurd as it may seem when applied to the sky, it's what we do every day with our surroundings. It's violent, and we feel the effect of that inside us as stress.]

The Work doesn't tell us to accept things as they are. We don't have to accept that the sky is blue or that our fathers judge us. We can argue with that. We can try to change the world to match our beliefs about how it should be. This is what people have done forever. Has it worked?

Through inquiry we see that when we believe something should be different than it is, we experience stress and we call it that thing's fault. In reality, it's our thinking that is causing the discomfort. The fourth question helps us see this more clearly:

Who would you be without the thought "My father shouldn't be judgmental?" (It often helps to close your eyes and vividly picture your father judging you.) Who would you be if you didn't believe he shouldn't do that?
If he were judging me and I didn't believe he shouldn't be, I would just be watching him the way I watch a wave crash or a dog bark. It would be okay. It's kind of funny, actually. I could just see him giving me his opinions the only way he knows how. I could even see it as his way of caring about me.]

Then comes the turnaround, an opportunity to stretch the mind to explore perspectives and possibilities that we were blind to when we attached to a limiting belief.

"My father shouldn't be judgmental"—turn it around.

My father should be judgmental. Yeah, I see that now. He should be judgmental because that's who he is, and my arguing against that just stresses me out.

Can you see another turnaround?

"I shouldn't be judgmental." I never thought about that. When I go on and on about how judgmental he is, I'm being really judgmental about him. I've been judging that he shouldn't judge me. No wonder we keep pushing each other's buttons. I'm just doing what I was angry at him for.

The result of investigation is often a deeper appreciation of the people in our lives, and a realization that it was not their words or actions that really harmed us, but our uninvestigated thoughts about their words or actions. By judging the situation and sincerely applying the inquiry process, one can transform even the most traumatic relationships and experiences. We see this regularly in The School for The Work, where people have found freedom from every condition imaginable, including rape and incest. But we don't have to wait for a major crisis to find freedom. We can judge our bosses or our partners or our bodies or our bank accounts and be free of the stress in our lives now. "Confusion is the only suffering," says Katie. "Put your confusion on paper, investigate it, and set yourself free."

As doing The Work becomes more familiar, people do begin to accept things as they are, not because they have told themselves to "just accept it," but because they have seen that arguing with reality is painful and hopeless. When this is truly realized, we don't have to stop these arguments--they stop themselves. The result is peace beyond what we had hoped to find through our endless arguing.

If you feel it would serve you, welcome to The Work.