F*cking Four Agreements.

Have you ever read The Four Agreements Series by Don Miguel Ruiz? Well if you haven't you might want to start there before reading this article. But if you have, you'll know what I'm talking about. I first became aware of this series when I read a little book called Eat Pray #FML by Gabrielle Stone. Since then I've both read her books 40 times each and really tried to implment the Four Agreements in my life. Here they are:

Agreement one: Be impeccable with your word. Basically it's telling you not to say anything that goes against who you are as a person. Easier said then done in my experience. We've all said/done things that have gone against who we are as people. We're not perfect. I guess in this situation all we can do is try. Try to live with intention and try to live with love. That's all we can do in this thing called life.

Agreement two: Don't take anything personally. This one is not easy for me at all. I will admit that. We have to understand that the things people say/do are because of them not us. All the things that people say is a projection of their reality not yours. While this may in fact be difficult, it's important to understand that if someone criticizes you for example; the person doing the criticizing is seeing things from their eyes. Their opinion might not necessarily be true of you. I think in this situation we have to just understand that everyone has opinions and however right or wrong they are. We can't invalidate someones personal thoughts and views. We have to respect each other. When things are taken personally we instantly feel offended and start to overthink everything, we create needless suffering for ourselves.

Agreement three: Don't make assumptions. If I had a dollar for everytime, I made an assumption I'd be rich. When we make assumptions about what people are doing/thinking we end up hurting ourselves. Say you text someone and they don't text you back right away; if you were assume they hated you, didn't want to talk to you or don't like you. You'd be hurting yourself in the long run. When in reality people get busy and don't always look at phones. And sometimes people forget to reply. It's human nature. We all forget things and we all have lives. We can't spend every waking moment glued to our phones. If we did, we'd miss out on life in front of us. I know this can be difficult and believe me I struggle with this everyday.

Agreement Four: Always do your best. We all work very hard everyday to achieve our goals and dreams. Some of us work from home and others work from offices. Both of which are fine! We all have things we need to get done everyday. We all have deadlines and due dates. We all have things that require attention. As long as we try, we will suceed. The only way we fail is if we don't try right? Now of course if you have anxiety like me you might constantly think you didn't try or work hard enough at anything. Which isn't the case. As long as we try our best and accomplish things in due time we'll be okay. Sometimes all we can do is breathe and that's okay too! We can get to things when we feel better. But as long as we acknowledge that and try to make ourselves feel better we're doing well. And as long as we try to make these agreements work we're golden.