Yesterday morning, I checked out Oprah's '
Super Soul Sunday' and she had author Don Miguel Ruiz on. I have to say that his book
The Four Agreements is one of my favourite and one of the most impactful personal development books that I've read. It's one of those books that I've read at least 5-6 times and have found / learned something new from it each time because there was a part that spoke to my current situation.
The premise of the book is to basically realize that how you feel about your life and the people around you is based on how you observe and interpret the world. I like the message of the book because it empowers its reader to realize that we are in control of our lives - not the person who hurt us, anyone who made us upset, the awful situation that happened. We can flip our interpretation of the events that happen in our lives in order to free ourselves from the emotional struggles that we commonly face.
Ruiz outlines 4 agreements that you should follow:
Be Impeccable With Your Word
I love this one! To be impeccable with your word is to not use your words to spread emotional toxicity - not speak badly about yourself or to not gossip about others. This agreement recognizes the power that words have in creating the world around us. Spreading office gossip will only make your life at the office miserable. Speaking badly about yourself will only make you feel worse and will perpetuate the cycle of people treating you with the same lack of respect. Speak with integrity.
Don't Take Anything Personally
Probably the most important of the agreements is the ability to not personalize every action and word towards you. It's a difficult one but a very important one to achieve. Make yourself immune to the opinion and actions of others. Ruiz says that we take things personally because on some level we believe about ourself what others have to say. Release yourself from personalizing people's words otherwise you can walk around getting hurt by everyone and everything.
Don't Make Assumptions
You can completely transform your life if you learn how not to make assumptions in your relationships or in your interactaction with people. How many of us, before even asking any questions, assume that a person tried to hurt us or had ill intentions towards us? You took something that they said to you personally without asking them what they truly meant by it. We make the assumption then that everyone is judging us, victimizing us, or abusing us. Which is more so a reflection of how we view ourselves.
Always Do Your Best
Plenty of the hurt and disappointment that we feel is based on our own feelings of self-judgment, self-abuse, shame and regret. Release that and instead vow to ourselves that we will always do our best in the current situation that we are in - keeping in mind that your best today may not be your best tomorrow. Learn to have patience with yourself. The hardest thing to do and something that I'm learning each day to do better is to be kind to myself. Tell myself that it's okay if I didn't do all that I set out to accomplish for the day or if I didn't say the right thing to someone - striving for perfection is the quickest road to stress and disappointment.
Did you watch 'Super Soul Sunday' this weekend? Have you read the book? If so, tell me about the lessons that you've learned. Would love to hear it!
