The Simplistic Power of don Miguel Ruiz's Four Agreements
Plus: A new way to think about gratitude on Thanksgiving
Hi friends,
On Thursday afternoon, I was walking on a sidewalk when I came across a custodian who was raking leaves and picking up plastic bottles. We locked eyes. After a pause, she said: “You have beautiful eyes.” Her words stopped me and made me smile. I thanked her, then paused, trying to let her kindness marinate in my soul. Who doesn’t appreciate a genuine compliment from a stranger, whose motive is purely out of the goodness of their heart? It’s not often that strangers — no cell phone in sight — pause to smile and compliment others, so I wanted those words to linger.
Here she was cleaning up other people’s trash, with a smile, emitting kindness to a passerby. She left me feeling good for much of the rest of the day, and I made sure to pay her kind act forward to someone else in the neighborhood.
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, will you pay forward a kind act with me?
Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing - Rumi
Next, I share highlights from don Miguel Ruiz's The Four Agreements, a classic little book that can fit in a coat pocket. Originally published in 2000, by a Mexican healer, it’s a guide to conduct, spiritual freedom, and a life with fewer limitations. I read this book twice, once last year and once this week. Its simplistic power has struck me: four short agreements, simple words that are easy to talk about yet much harder to practice. I struggle to truly live by them, but they are worth striving for each day.
The Four Agreements are: Be Impeccable With Your Word, Don't Take Anything Personally, Don't Make Assumptions, and Always Do Your Best.
1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Miguel Ruiz: “Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”
What does this mean to you? To me, it means saying only what you want to say, writing only what you mean, and avoiding wasteful gossip. This means using the word, one of the greatest human inventions, to love, heal, and move forward with grace. Thanks to the word, we can share with others how we feel, how much we love them, and the future we are working toward.
“Use the word to share your love,” Miguel Ruiz writes.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Miguel Ruiz: “Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.”
Miguel Ruiz notes that we’re often dreaming, creating stories in our heads that aren’t necessarily true. When others talk about you, they are talking about a secondary character who represents you — an image they create for you. When we realize this fact, we are on the road to avoiding many upsets in our lives. When we refuse to take things personally — others’ words or actions are usually a reflection of them, not you — freedom comes our way.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Miguel Ruiz: “Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstanding, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.”
By not taking things personally and by not making assumptions, we can avoid a lot of drama and sadness. Making assumptions leads to fights, difficulty, and misunderstanding. When I have made assumptions, sometimes I have been right, but sometimes I have been wrong, and it has rarely led to good outcomes. Asking questions, being clear (impeccable with our words), and listening well help avoid suffering from making assumptions. “Real love,” he writes, “is accepting other people the way they are, without trying to change them.”
4. Always Do Your Best
Miguel Ruiz: “Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be difficult when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.”
Our “best” is ever-evolving. Miguel Ruiz underscores the idea that the circumstance doesn’t affect the effort we give. Doing our best, he writes, is taking action because you love it, not because you are expecting a reward. Whether our best is what we want or less than that, this agreement lies in the effort, not the outcome.
These four agreements have been at the top of my mind this week, yet I haven’t always applied them. We can’t expect that we will always be impeccable with our word, that we won’t ever take things personally, or that we won’t make any more assumptions. But we can certainly do our best, without feeling guilty if we don’t keep the four agreements at every moment. I have begun a few days this week by jotting down: “Today I will be impeccable with my word, I will not take things personally, I will not make any assumptions, and I am going to do my best.”
Writes Miguel Ruiz: “Today is the beginning of a new dream.”
Something to think about before Thanksgiving, from Waking Up:
Next week, many across America will, once again, participate in the custom of sharing what they’re thankful for. But gratitude, poet and author David Whyte says, is more than saying “thank you” when someone gives us something. It “arises from paying attention—from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without and besides.”
Gratitude, ultimately, stems from recognizing “that we are miraculously part of something rather than nothing.” We need not always seek out things to be grateful for—we can, instead, discover a “deep, a priori” state of thankfulness for “the underlying gift of life and incarnation.”
Recent reads:
Parting question: Think of something you have struggled with this year. If you step back and zoom out, what is one lesson you have learned from the experience? (H/T: The Daily Coach)
Parting thought: "Life can change in an instant. Don’t take anything or anyone for granted today."
Happy reading! Wishing everyone a restful, enjoyable Thanksgiving,
Matthew