The Agreements
- Be impeccable with your word.
- Don’t take anything personally.
- Don’t make assumptions.
- Always do your best.
- Be skeptical, but listen.
News to Me
I first heard about the Four Agreements approximately 10 years after its book was published in 2003. Shortly after joining my first goals group, a member shared the agreements as part of our regular touch-points. As he explained the concepts to me from a pragmatic perspective, they broadly resonated to me as ‘true’ right away.
The Book
When I finally got my hands on a copy of the book, I was excited to discover how easy it would be to read. It took three pages for my disappointment to form a taste in my mouth. “What’s with all this ‘dream’ crap?”, I would ask myself each turn of the short pages. I think I got through the preface and some portion of the first Agreement or so before I had to put it down to salvage my fondness for the Agreements from the ridiculous clutches of the forced narrative Don Miguel Ruiz fashioned around it.
Be impeccable with your word
This is easy to understand, difficult to agree with, and even harder to implement.
Don’t take anything personally
Tons of wisdom packed into this short statement.
Don’t make assumptions
Applies to interactions with others as well as personal problem-solving.
Always do your best
Your successes will be sweeter and your failures more informative if you can live by this agreement.
Be skeptical, but listen
The bonus agreement. This showed up in a follow-up book. Some have argued that following the other four will result in this behavior. It goes something like, “If you don’t make assumptions, and do your best in conversation (and listen), then you’ll naturally ‘be skeptical, but listen’.” Perhaps. I, however, appreciate the nod to skepticism and the appeal to listen to people with whom you disagree. People doing their best often focus on doing so within themselves and fail to consider that each of us has an interdependent relationship with our fellow humans being.
