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How to do The Work When Nothing Is Bothering You

There’s a statistic about home that can help when doing The Work.

Sometimes it Happens that Nothing Is Bothering You

This is a common issue that clients bring up. They often say, “I’m not sure what to do The Work on. Nothing is bothering me right now.”

This can actually be a trick of mind. A way out, that all of us use from time to time, to avoid sitting down and looking at ourselves.

But if you’re really interested in doing your work, you can learn a lot from a little insurance statistic: most automobile accidents happen around home.

The Statistics

Why do most automobile accidents happen near home? There’s a simple reason. We spend more time driving within a few miles of home than anywhere else. Here are what the statistics look like.

Accident statistics

And This Basic Idea Applies to Stressful Situations Too

If you spend most of your time at home, chances are that most of your stressful situations will occur at or around home as well.

That’s why looking around home is one of the first places I go when scanning for a situation to write a worksheet.

I work at home. I cook and eat at home. I sleep at home. In fact, I’ve been known to pass 24 hours without leaving my home. Even when I work outside of home, I still usually spend 2/3 of my 24 hours at home.

So When I Don’t Know what to Work, I Look for Worksheets Around Home

This is The Work of Byron Katie: identify a stressful situation, write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet, and question all the stressful thoughts you wrote using the four questions and the turnarounds of The Work..

When I want to do The Work, I look around my life for situations that have triggered me. I am looking for a specific time when I had a stress reaction.

I then write a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet from the stuck place where I was coming from at that time.

I Invite You to Try it Too

If you’re having trouble finding a situation, look for one that happened recently in the kitchen, or in the living room, in the bedroom, or even in the bathroom. If the statistics are correct, you’ll probably find 20-30% of your stressful situations happened at or around home.

Each situation that you question is an opportunity to learn about yourself. And to find new options where you saw none before.

Have a great week,
Todd

“If you don’t know what to write about, wait. Life will give you a topic.” — Byron Katie, Loving What Is, p. 15.

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Todd Smith has been doing The Work of Byron Katie on an almost daily basis since 2007. He is just as excited about this simple process of self-inquiry today as he was when he first came across it. He also enjoys writing about The Work, and training others in the subtleties of this meditative process. Join Todd for The Work 101 online course, private sessions, virtual retreats, and his ongoing Inquiry Circle group.