How to Read This Book

 

 

 

 

The purpose of this book is your happiness. The Work has worked for thousands of people, and Loving What Is will show you exactly how to use it in your own life.

You begin with the problems that irritate or depress you. The book will show you how to write them down in a form that is easy to investigate. Then it will introduce the four questions and show you how to apply them to your problems. At this point, you’ll be able to see how The Work can reveal solutions that are simple, radical, and life-changing.

There are exercises that will teach you how to use The Work with increasing depth and precision and show you how it can function in every situation. After doing The Work on the people in your life, you’ll learn how to do it on the issues that cause you the most pain—money, for example, illness, injustice, self-hatred, or the fear of death. You’ll also learn how to recognize the underlying beliefs that hide reality from your eyes and how to work with the self-judgments that upset you.

Throughout the book, there will be many examples of people just like you doing The Work—people who believe that their problems are unsolvable, who are sure that they have to suffer for the rest of their lives because a beloved child died or because they live with someone they no longer love. You will meet a mother distraught over a crying baby, a woman living in fear about the stock market, people terrorized by their thoughts about childhood trauma or just trying to get along with a difficult co-worker. You’ll see how they came to find a way out of their suffering; and perhaps through them and the practical insights on the pages ahead, you’ll find a way out of your own.

Everyone learns The Work in their own way. Some learn the process primarily by watching how the dialogues unfold. (I encourage you to read them actively—looking inside yourself for your own answers as you read.) Others learn The Work strictly by doing it: inquiring into whatever is troubling them at the time, pen and paper in hand. I suggest that you read chapter 2, and possibly chapter 5 as well, in order to absorb the basic instructions. You might then read each dialogue in sequence—but only if this feels helpful. If you feel like skipping around and going to the dialogues whose topics particularly interest you, that’s fine. Or you might prefer to follow the thread of instructions as they continue throughout the book and dip into a dialogue only now and then. I trust that you’ll do whatever works best for you.