I was listening to a Byron Katie podcast the other day while I ran, and one of her statements really stayed with me:
“The only thing anyone is ever guilty of is believing their thoughts.”
She said this after her caller described how a teacher had mocked him and verbally abused him.
If this teacher hadn’t believed her thoughts about who and what this student was (and should be), she would never have treated him that way.
It made me think of something a psychiatrist I worked with when I was a medical student often said: “Behavior always makes sense.” He meant the behavior always made sense to the person doing the behavior—not to the people around that person.
That statement helped me be able to work with severely mentally ill patients because it prompted me to try to figure out why they were behaving as they were—and there was always a reason.
Now that statement, along with Byron Katie’s, prompts me to think about why people act the way they do—not necessarily for their benefit, but for mine.
If someone cuts me off in traffic (something that happens to all of us fairly frequently, I imagine,) I wonder what the driver was thinking that made him drive so dangerously.
- Maybe the driver was thinking he was going to be late for work and possibly lose his job.
- Maybe the driver was thinking he had to get to the school to pick up his child so his child didn’t think he was abandoned.
- Maybe the driver was thinking, “I’m more important than these other people and they should just get out of my way!”
People behave the way they do because they believe the thoughts they are thinking.
Always.
Knowing this helps me avoid taking things personally and it helps me question my thoughts rather than automatically believe them.
The result has been freedom—freedom from suffering.
Byron Katie says suffering is optional. I didn’t believe her twelve years ago when I first read those words in Loving What Is, but I’m starting to see it’s true.
When I believe my painful thoughts, I suffer. When I question my painful thoughts and see that they are not true, the suffering ends.
When a driver cuts me off in traffic, I know they either didn’t see me or they are thinking painful thoughts that are causing them to suffer and to behave the way they are behaving.
Either way, it has nothing to do with me. And that thought in not painful. Therefore, my suffering ends (or doesn’t begin, even better!) and my ability to be compassionate toward that driver is increased.
Next time someone does something to you, stop and ask yourself, for your own benefit, what must they be thinking to behave that way?