Girlfriend, consider this: If your life is lacking in some way, it means you’re assuming things that aren’t true. It’s sort of like Gary Kadi’s saying: “You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you think you deserve.”

We all make assumptions. We do it all day long. Maybe you’ll be proven right and maybe you’ll be wrong. But, says life coach Eva Gregory, this is how to know for certain:

“Pick two areas of your life that could use improvement. Perhaps it’s your business and your health. It might be your love life and your finances. The areas in which you’re struggling are the areas with the most incorrect assumptions.”

For example, do you run your own business? Are you happy with the people who work for you? Are they the very best you could get? Not? Then why do you put up with the situation?

Or take relationships: In one of her novels Ayn Rand writes that you can clearly see what people think of themselves by looking at their romantic partners. That is your idea of love. If not, then ask yourself why. Is this what you think you deserve? Is this how you assume relationships should be?

One of the hardest things is feeling stuck. When you assume it’s impossible to change a situation, take a look at the story you’re thinking up for yourself.

“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years,” says Byron Katie (she also just goes by Katie).

And she should know. Well into her forties Katie became increasingly depressed and over a ten-year period sank further into agoraphobia, despair, rage and thoughts of suicide. She tells readers how she recovered in books such as ‘Loving What Is’, ‘I Need Your Love – Is That True?’, ‘A Thousand Names For Joy’, and ‘A Mind At Home With Itself’.

Katie says that if you’re stuck in a dark place, you’re just four questions away from freedom. With a four-step process, which she calls The Work, she helps you to see what is troubling you in an entirely different light. It goes like this:

Notice: Think about a specific, stressful situation that involves another person. Isolate a concrete moment in time that you’re upset about.

Write: Write down your stressful thoughts, using short, simple sentences. Once the mind is stopped on paper, thoughts remain stable and inquiry can easily be applied.

Question: Isolate and question one thought – allow authentic answers to arise. A question is an invitation to the mind, an opportunity to be shown what is true, beyond what we think we know.

Ask yourself the following four questions about your initial thought:
1. Is it true? (Yes or no; if no go to question 3)
2. Can you absolutely know it’s true? (Yes or no)
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

Turn it around: Find opposites of the thought. Are they as true as or truer than the original thought? What Katie calls ‘turnarounds’ give consciousness an opportunity to expand, rather than being stuck in a limited reality.

One of the most helpful insights you’ll gain from doing turnarounds is how often your mind automatically assumes that other people are the problem. “As long as you think that the cause of your problem is ‘out there’ – as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering – the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim,” Katie says.

“You have the key to your own happiness. But the last place we look is to ourselves. Whatever we think another person needs to do, we need to do.”

And this is marvellous news because it means we’re also the solution. We don’t have to wait for anything outside of us to change before we can start feeling good about ourselves. We don’t need other people to like, approve or even be able to recognise what we’re doing or who we are.

As Katie says: “It’s not your job to like me – it’s mine.” True? For you?