Some Lessons That we must follow in our lifespan

“You need a very strong will in order to adopt the Four Agreements—but if you can begin to live your life with these agreements, the transformation in your life will be amazing. You will see the drama of hell disappear right before your very eyes. Instead of living in a dream of hell, you will be creating a new dream—your personal dream of heaven.”

-Don Miguel Ruiz from

The Four Agreements. Love ‘em: 

• The First Agreement: Be Impeccable with Your Word
• The Second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally 
• The Third Agreement: Don’t Make Assumptions 
• The Fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best

Be Impeccable with Your Word

The first agreement is the most important one and also the most difficult one to honor. It is so important that with just this first agreement you will be able to transcend to the level of existence I call heaven on earth. The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. It sounds very simple, but it is very, very powerful.

Being impeccable with our word. This is big. First, let’s look at how Ruiz defines the word impeccability: “Impeccability means ‘without sin.’ Impeccable comes from the Latin pecatus, which means ‘sin.’ The im in impeccable means ‘without,’ so impeccable means ‘without sin.’ Religions talk about sin and sinners, but let’s understand what it really means to sin. A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself.

Don’t Take Anything Personally 

Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… if I see you on the street and say, ‘Hey, you are so stupid,’ without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, ‘How does he know? Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?

This is another theme that all the great teachers come back to again and again and again (and again :).

          Ruiz says: “Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.” 

Don’t Make Assumptions 

We have the tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth. We could swear they are real. We make assumptions about what others are doing or thinking—we take it personally—then we blame them and react by sending emotional poison with our word. That is why when we make assumptions, we’re asking for problems. We make an assumption, we misunderstand, we take it personally, and we end up creating a whole big drama for nothing.” Well, there ya go! The third agreement: Don’t make assumptions. Are you making any assumptions about what someone’s thinking or doing? Can you see how the drama factor can go down *dramatically* (pun intended) if we just have the courage to ask what’s up? As Ruiz says: “The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Make sure the communication is clear. If you don’t understand, ask. Have the courage to ask questions until you are as clear as you can be.” So… Let’s identify where we’re making some assumptions and have the courage to ask ‘em what’s up and get out of the drama of assumption-ville, shall we?!? 

Always Do Your Best

“There is just one more agreement, but it’s the one that allows the other three to become deeply ingrained habits. The fourth agreement is about the action of the first three: Always do your best.”       Ruiz continues: “Under any circumstance, always do your best, no more and no less. But keep in mind that your best is never going to be the same from one moment to the next. Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good.” Sweet. We need to always do our best if we want to bring the other three agreements alive. And, of course, sometimes we’ll be *totally* on and our best will be rock star rockin’ and other times we might be a little tired and our best won’t be quite as stellar. It’s all good. Let’s take a look at some other Big Ideas related to doing our best—from the Greek ideal of Areté (pronounced “are-uh-tay”) to Tony Robbins’ “CANI!” to the Japanese concept of Kaizen. We’ll start with Areté. It’s one of my favorite words and ideals. In fact, the site I had before PhilosophersNotes (and Zaadz) was called “thinkArete.” :) As I’ve mentioned in other Notes, in classic Greece, peeps like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle said that if we want to live with happiness we need to live with Areté—a word that translates as “excellence” or “virtue” but has a deeper meaning, something closer to “striving to do your best moment to moment to moment.” Think about it. When what you’re doing is less than what you’re capable of doing—and I’m not talking about what you “should” be doing here, but what your Highest Self *knows* you’re capable of—there’s a gap. And, in that gap is where depression and anxiety and disillusionment hang out. When we close that gap by doing our best, there’s no room for the angst/negative schtuff/etc. and we feel REALLY good. Yah? Again, our best will vary but let’s thinkArete! :) Tony Robbins has an awesome concept he calls “CANI!”—Constant and Never Ending Improvement. When we show up committed to doing our best and practice CANI!, we’re on an incredible upward trend where our best keeps on getting better. (And last time I checked, that’s a good thing. :