Focus On Facilitation: Using "Is the Universe Friendly?" with a Hard-to-Find Story

Einstein purportedly said that there was only one important question to ask: "Is the universe friendly?" I've noticed that the more I do The Work, the more open I am to the possibility that I do live in a friendly universe, even though "bad" things happen. If an issue feels unresolved after inquiry, there is usually an underlying belief that I haven't found or that hasn't yet been examined.

If an issue is particularly sticky for your client, even after turning it around, this exercise can help the client uncover and work with underlying beliefs that haven't come out in the course of inquiry.

Let's say my client is doing The Work on the thought "There's nothing good about my job." I as the facilitator don't dispute this as the client holds his belief up against the four-questions of inquiry, and sees how believing it affects his life and work.

The client turns the thought around: "There's plenty that's good about my job," and provides examples (he gets a paycheck, he gets benefits, he likes to have lunch with some of his co-workers). He examines the turnaround, "There's nothing good about my thinking (about my job)," and he finds where that could be as true or truer He says he can't find any more turnarounds.

I suggest the turnaround, "There's nothing bad about my job." The client still thinks there is something bad about it and doesn't want to go there.

"Okay," I say, "Tell me about that. What specifically is bad about your job?" He makes a list of his "proof," including:

He doesn't have enough to do.
Data entry is boring.'
Our data entry system is cumbersome and outdated.
The commute to and from the office is grueling.
There is no room for advancement.

Next, we get to see if any of these "proofs" truly means there is something bad about the job.

We start at the top: "I don't have enough to do."

I ask the client, "If the universe is friendly, why is this a good thing?"

He discovers three examples:

1. It gives him time and space to find ways to improve upon the task he has been assigned; in doing so, he actually becomes a more efficient employee, more valuable to the company.
2. It gives him time to job-hunt; so many other people who would like to change jobs are so overworked they can't find a way to keep their position while they researching other possibilities.
3. Sometimes he has time during the workday to do The Work on the things he doesn't like about his job! (Not that we're suggesting using work time as Work time; but this was his reality!)

There are stories behind every story. When the client looked for proof that his story was true, he excavated those deeper stories. Investigated, some of what the client thought was terrible about his job could be seen as positive aspects. Some of those "benefits" made the job more tolerable in the meantime, while others showed him a clear path to his next career move.

In a friendly universe—the parallel universe of peace—a boring, dead end job can be a bonus, a teacher, the perfect bend in the path. We need only look more closely in order to find the gifts.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Focus on Facilitation: Facilitating with a Motive (a.k.a. When Facilitators Attack!)

You'd think that trained facilitators would always do The Work straight-up, just four questions and a turnaround, no maneuvering and manipulating the client, no cross-talk, no inventive or invasive questions...just as you'd think that doctors would never lose a patient, mothers would always do the right thing by their kids, and politicians would always keep their campaign promises.

As we know, this is hopeless. Human beings doing their best can still be clueless sometimes.

That's why we Certified Facilitators of The Work, early in our training, are shown right away how to evaluate ourselves, and it's expected that this be an ongoing process. Hopefully we are always available to hear feedback from our clients and colleagues as well, and that we see ourselves as life-long learners. I observe this "student" quality among all of the exceptional and most experienced facilitators of my acquaintance, including my mentor, Byron Katie, founder of the process, who has of course been doing this longer than anyone. Continued self-evaluation, and receiving the observations of my clients and peers, have all been enormously helpful to me, as sitting with the reasons I may veer off course keeps me honest and in service as it "gentles" me.

Nevertheless, motive has a way of creeping into the work of even the best facilitators, particularly when we experience a client as resistant. We want our clients to "get it." We want them to see us in a certain way. We think we have something to teach. (I was guilty of that last one during a recent tele-seminar, noticing even as the words flew out of my mouth that I was over-explaining what I was doing "for the audience's sake," and in those moments, abandoning my client, the host of the call, rationalizing that he'd be okay with it. Whether he was or not, I acted out of motive, and that's good to see so that I can do a better job next time for my sake.)

Here's a sampling of what can happen when facilitating The Work with a motive:

1. The Mack truck thing; see illustration. Should our clients be "easy" or "get it" for our sakes? Aren't we supposed to be in service here?!!

2. Spinning. Example: "How do you react when you believe the thought, 'I need to make more money'?" "I get nervous and I worry about the future. I see myself as homeless." "Ah, that's the heart of the matter. You'll be homeless, is that true?" What happened to the client's original statement? Not good enough? Who knows what gold lies in them thar hills? How would the facilitator know what's at the heart of the matter, when the client has barely said anything? This hypothetical facilitator, so intent on bringing about a result, is not allowing the client to find their own answers, even though s/he appears to ask questions.

3. Negative self-talk: "Oh gosh, this isn't working. I'm doing it wrong. The client will think I'm incompetent. I'm not helping them." Believing thoughts like these, we may be more liable to pulling out all the stops, including excessive nodding and making encouraging sounds, or making superfluous bordering on arrogant remarks like "Good job!"...asking lots and lots of sub-questions, quickly, so the client can see how masterful we are at moving them towards a "big bang"...leading the client by peppering them with our own clever examples so that they can have the epiphany we think they need in order for us to look good.

Facilitating with a motive always means that we've made the facilitation all about us, even while we're in the client's business mentally. Whose session is it anyway? It's mine for sure, every time—I've never witnessed or facilitated anyone's work that wasn't also my own—and that's perfectly fine, as long as we don't make it ours at the expense of the client.

(Thanks to my friend D. over at the Institute for The Work community board for the lively discussion and wonderful subtitle that inspired this article.)


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Focus on Facilitation: Deep Listening Leads to Client Clarity

Fair to say that we've all held the belief "There's something wrong with me"? And that those who facilitate inquiry have at one time or another worked with someone on this belief?

Check out this wonderful video clip, recently added to TheWork.com.



Watch how Katie homes in on the client's subtle dodge. Did you catch the client justifying in that moment? (I didn't.) And in pointing it out, the client goes ever-so-deeply into the heart of the matter.

I notice in watching this how I, as a CLIENT, move from inquiry when I want to explain my answer beyond simply stating exactly how I react.

Another thought I had about this facilitation is how easy it is for a piece on this thought to become fluffy and affirmative in the turnarounds, and how Katie's close attention as facilitator holds the space for the client's clarity to emerge instead.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this piece.


©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Back to the School

I wrote this article some years ago, and for several years it was available at TheWork.com. It stands the test of tme with a few tweaks, so I'm rerunning it here to convey the School for The Work experience without giving away the store.

The Work, and the life-changing experience of the School (which I attended twice as a participant; I'm a tough case), are why I am who I am and do what I do today.

**********

Extreme Internal Makeover: Nine Days to a Kinder Mind
by Carol L. Skolnick

"Is it true that you're too fat?' the silver-haired woman pointedly asks a thirtyish man who is quite large by the world's standards; it is difficult for him to walk upstairs or even to breathe, and he has never had a relationship with a woman. He has just revealed his despair and self-disgust to a gathering of about 300 strangers.

'Sweetheart,' the woman continues, 'Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you treat yourself when you believe this lie, this mythology?' The man enumerates the sad details of a life of self-hatred. The woman, Byron Katie, understands—she's been there—but more importantly, the man gets it...that he's been beating himself based on erroneous beliefs about what constitutes self-worth. He comes to see, after answering a few more of Katie's questions, that the point is not to neglect one's body and health, but to be happy in the meantime. What hurts less, Katie asks: to be at war with reality or a lover of 'what is?' One way brings peace, the other stress. We can be overweight (or out of love with our spouse, or living with cancer) and be in hell, or we can question our thoughts and be in heaven...and it doesn't mean we won't diet (or get divorced, or get chemo). It's almost too simple.

"If I think I'm not beautiful," Katie tells the audience, "I'm confused. If I see someone's less than perfect, I'm insane."

Byron Katie specializes in extreme makeovers of the internal kind; she comes equipped with a surgical team of four self-inquiry questions designed with the purpose of helping people deconstruct their painful stories.

"Confusion is the only suffering," Katie tells rapt audiences all over the world, and she ought to know. She was one confused, suffering lady. "But," she says, "only for 43 years."

You'd never guess that this charmng, sixty-something Eileen Fisher-sporting grandmother—whose popularity in part lies in her unique ability to make a public program attended by hundreds feel as intimate as a coffee date—was once an obese, suicidal, pill-popping depressive who slept with a loaded gun under her pillow, unable to care for her family, afraid to venture outside. Prior to that she had been one of those suburban American Dream types: a gorgeous blonde with an adoring husband, three healthy kids, the finest home on her Barstow, California block...and a Midas touch with real estate.

But for Byron Kathleen Reid (everyone calls her Katie)—who began, perhaps, as a garden variety middle-class neurotic but became seriously unhinged over a period of ten years—nothing was ever enough, and no one understood her, least of all Katie herself.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself," she often jokes. "I always had. I hated me, I hated you."

One day in 1986, at the age of 43, Katie rose from the ashes like a suburban phoenix, as she lay on the floor (because she felt unworthy to sleep in the bed provided to her) of a Los Angeles-area halfway house for women with eating disorders. Only weeks earlier she had been diagnosed by professionals as mentally fragmented, a hopeless case. Suddenly, Katie realized she'd had it all backwards...that a thought creates a feeling, and a feeling based on believing a thought to be true creates a life...that when she attached to a self-defeating thought or a judgment about another, she suffered, and when she questioned the validity of the belief, she experienced a deep and abiding joy. Katie calls that life-changing instant her "moment of clarity," and she has been on the road cluing in others ever since.

Katie can't tell you exactly what happened to create such a sea-change, but she has devised a written technique, called The Work, so that anyone can experience, and maintain, the radical shifts in perception that she had. The method—consisting of four targeted self-inquiry questions, related subquestions, and a thought-reversal technique called a turnaround—is deceptively simple, surprisingly deep, free for the asking (see www.thework.com), explained in greater detail in Katie's book, LOVING WHAT IS: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (Harmony Books, 2002), and expounded upon further in I NEED YOUR LOVE—IS THAT TRUE? How to Stop Seeking Love, Approval, and Appreciation and Start Finding Them Instead (Harmony Books, 2005), and in A THOUSAND NAMES FOR JOY: Living in Harmony with The Way Things Are (Harmony books, 2007).

The Work bears some resemblance to cognitive therapies, to Socratic dialog, even to Zen Buddhism, although Katie had no knowledge of psychology, philosophy or spirituality prior to her metanoia. Her Work is based only on her direct experience of how suffering is created in the mind, and how we can end it—not by dropping thoughts, but by investigating them.

For those hearty souls ready for gut renovation, Katie offers weekend intensives and a nine-day School for The Work, a total immersion program with a demanding, interactive curriculum designed to directly impart her own experience of "waking up to reality." The School is attended in large numbers by all manner of truth-seekers as well as business people, educators, therapists, coaches, and anyone interested in meeting the mind (and the people and situations of their lives) with clear understanding.

Why should anyone go into lockdown for more than a week with some lady from the Mojave desert, just to explore why it hurts to believe that your partner should get a job, your mother didn't love you or that the government is corrupt? Graduates' claims of addictions falling away, relationships saved, and increased efficiency in their work lives are interesting...and the testimonies of trauma victims coming to terms with everything from incest to terrorism have drawn more than 100,000 people seeking their own relief to Katie's program worldwide.

Glenn Koshar, who used to counsel inmates at a Northhampton, Massachusetts state prison, initially wanted to bring the process into his profession...and discovered an even greater benefit of attending The School for The Work for his personal life:

"In my passion to be right, I often missed the bigger picture, the whole truth, even in situations I had gone over a thousand times before," says Koshar, a married father of two. "I was able to resolve issues with my father that had plagued me for more than a decade. I found forgiveness for his choices and forgiveness for my own blind rage and self-righteousness.

"I still have plenty to inquire about," Koshar readily admits, "but I have also found a deeper peace. While therapy, talking to friends and family was sometimes helpful, I never got the resolution I needed to let go and move on. The School allowed me to find forgiveness and gratitude, where previously there was only bitterness and self-pity."

Basking in Byron Katie's loving attention, and absorbing a week's worth of her considerable wit and wisdom, are bonus attractions of the School for The Work. Katie facilitates all sessions herself, assisted by a small core staff and a larger cadre of volunteer graduates. Being around someone with her degree of clarity can be very inspiring; Time magazine, in a profile of Katie, gushingly called her "a visionary for the new millennium." As for Katie, she makes no such claims, "I don't know anything about that," she says. "I only know the difference between what hurts and what doesn't."

"Reality is always kinder than the story we tell about it," says Katie. So perhaps the single most compelling reason to attend the School for The Work is the opportunity to learn how to fall in love with everyday life as it shows up. Once examined under the microscope of inquiry, annoyances major and minor cease to be a problem, people need not change to make us happy, obstacles become opportunities for self-realization ("Stress is a compassionate alarm clock, letting us know we're in the nightmare," Katie says) and a trip to the grocery store can be as exciting as a world tour.

As Paula Brittain from Colorado—a School for The Work graduate who now works with Katie's organization—puts it, "The School sends people out into the world, the real school, with tools to just watch life get better and better."

_____

For more information about the School for The Work, visit TheWork.com.



©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Focus on Facilitation: Being Deleted

What my clients bring to sessions of The Work of Byron Katie is as much for me as it is for them, if not more so. If I experience clients or their issues as challenging in any way, I can get very confused and tired if I'm not actively working on my thoughts about them...or if I'm not tuning into where their work is my work.

As a facilitator, it is not my job to impose my beliefs and values onto my clients; I'm here to ask questions, and hold the space for them to find their own answers. It is also my job to take my thoughts about the client to inquiry after our session. For example, if I think my client is a liar, how do I treat him, and where do I lie (in my life, or to him)? If I believe he is a womanizer, how am I a "manizer?" If the client is a "tough case," am I being a tough case with her? Where am I not seeing that I am just like the one in front of me? Where do I not want to let her be as she is?

Years ago at an event with Byron Katie, a wonderful couple who were new to The Work and reluctant to air their laundry in public asked Katie to hook them up with a facilitator who would work with them privately, out of the main hall. For reasons I couldn't fathom at the time, and which I now see as perfect, Katie directed them to little ol' me.

This was my first time working with a couple. Their story was...well, for the sake of total confidentiality, let's say they were living in a way that was counter to my sense, at the time, of "normal."

The session was intense. I found myself inwardly siding with one of the spouses, especially since the other one did not seem terribly interested in inquiry; s/he was there for the sake of the other partner, s/he said. It wasn't easy for me to muzzle myself, or to stick to the questions...but I did.

We proceeded in the classic way of mediation or partner work: each client writes and then reads their Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet to the other. The one being read to takes in what the partner is saying, and whether or not they agree with what they're hearing, they respond with "thank you." The facilitator then takes each client through their worksheet in turn, while the other listens.

We were together for at least two hours, and for most of that time, there was a lot of strong emotion in the room. Admittedly, my attention was more on my judgments about the couple than it was on the process, and I worked hard to quell my urges to lead them, agree, or disagree.

They didn't seem to notice, thank goodness; no thanks to me, The Work worked! The more recalcitrant partner really got into the process after all. Each spouse had wonderful realizations. As a couple, they were hearing and communicating with each other about their issues in ways they had been unable to before, when each believed s/he was right. Both were grateful to tap back into their love for each other, and they were very enthusiastic about continuing with The Work when they got home.

As for me, I was exhausted.

The next day, Katie, with what I projected to be a knowing twinkle in her eye, asked me, "How did it go with that amazing couple?"

"Oh my God!" I exclaimed. "How do you do this day in and day out, and not get depleted?"

"I don't get depleted," Katie answered, "because I'm deleted."

Sometimes as facilitators, we may experience clients who live or think in ways that are diametrically opposed to our own ways. They may not share our values (she doesn't believe in toilet training or weaning her children before the age of five; he works for Internal Revenue, the CIA, Amway; they practice polyamory, or celibacy, or they believe in marriage, or they don't believe in marriage; he belongs to a sect you don't like or understand, or the same church as your parents, or no church at all), or they do or have done something that goes against our personal integrity (for example, a woman with three lovers, none of whom know about the others; a man who, at age 40, doesn't work and lives off his parents; someone who feels she is underpaid and therefore justified in stealing supplies from the office or sneaking out of work early). If you work in prisons or treatment centers, you will certainly encounter differences (and similarities) with those who have broken the laws of the land; and if you don't work with these populations, you will certainly encounter differences and similiarities with people who do not live according to your personal laws of "people should..."

Our clients are here before us for our sake, for our freedom, and so that we can become better facilitators. Any judgment we hold about them—any separation we experience between them and us—is going to be uncomfortable, and the discomfort means there's attachment to an uninvestigated story. This is wonderful to notice, and a great opportunity to cleanly and clearly delete any "I" thoughts that are not true...stressful thoughts that, when we are in session, get in the way of our ability to be be present, open, available, in service, and always a student in the presence of the master.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.