The Four Agreements

When looking to change your existing habits of develop new habits, you can start by looking at the agreements that you make and have made with yourself and others. A great book (and website) to consider these agreements has been developed by Don Miguel Ruiz.

Don Miguel asserts that when we are born, we do not have any agreements with the world, but as we grow, we begin to make agreements with others to gain approval and to stay clear of trouble. By adulthood, we have made thousands of agreements that cloud our thinking and impair our judgment for action. He suggests letting them go and adopting a few agreements only will allow us to regain the joy and freedom of our childhood. He has condensed the range of useful agreements to a memorable and workable number: four.

Below is a quick summary of the agreements from his website with each followed some additional thoughts from my practice over the past few years.

1) Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using your word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word only in the direction of truth and love.

What distinguishes us from all of the other animals is our ability to speak, to use language to create the world and to communicate with others.

As leaders, lovers and friends, we use language to coordinate actions with others that we share concerns with (like at work or in our families) and to cooperate with them where we don’t. Language not only makes the world go around, but we create the world that we find ourselves in AND the world we want to create together.

Just imagine how things would be if we all could just follow this first agreement. Gossip newsmagazines and much of talk radio might disappear, but that would not be all bad now, would it?


2) Don’t Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality (created by their language), their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

This is a bit harder to adopt than the first agreement, but a little explanation and practice will go a long way here…

Think about the first supporting statement: “Nothing others do is because of you.” Now think about your own actions. You don’t go around trying to make others’ lives miserable or successful; even if we are supportive of others achievements, they usually shine on our own in some way. We simply don’t have enough time working to get what we want accomplished in life, let alone to focus too much on others.

That all said, we and others are just going along trying to get what we want in life. Most times it looks like someone is out to get us, they just happen to want for themselves the same things that we do.

3) Don’t Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

This has been and still is the hardest one for me to follow, but believe me, if I can make progress here, so can you.

This business of assumptions is related to our going around judging everything. Even if we say that we are not judgmental, we most certainly are. We are assessment machines and we roam around making decisions about whether we agree or not, whether this is helpful or not, will this help or hurt us and what we care about. And this process is going on (mostly automatically) all of the time. Similarly, we make assumptions about what people are saying to and doing with us, which leads to misunderstandings (and hard feelings when we take the conversation personally; see agreement number two). This problem is accentuated when we are stressed or under time pressures.

Others are also assuming, judging and/or taking things personally just like we are. We need to be very clear in the requests, promises, and offers of help that we make and other conversations that we participate in. We need to share these agreements with others while also teaching by our own good example.

Next time you observe this happening on either side, stop, take a breath and ask one more clarifying question or offer more information to your colleague.

4) Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different 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.

This agreement is the glue that holds it all together; without it, the others would just be a recipe for failure and disappointment. We are all human and will always make mistakes. The first three agreements are ideals, very high standards of action for us to live inside of. While we can aspire to uphold them all, we need to have compassion for ourselves and empathy for others when we fail to do so.

When we always do our best, we inspire others to do so also. I would assert that doing our best is the place to start and one agreement that we can always operate under without fail as long as we are aware and remember.

I hope that Don Miguel’s thoughts and ideas about how to de-clutter your emotional and psychological life are as useful for you as they are for me. I have used these agreements as a basis for designing new actions; we can now use the values portion of our ambition development process. Our values form a basis to design new actions for taking care of the concerns that we declared important to us (our ambition) to build a meaningful life.

Perhaps "eBay's Community Values" can become "Global Community Values"

I learned about eBay’s community values from Alex Benn, who is a Senior Director of Corporate Development there. He was speaking on a CICC panel about corporate M&A at Pillsbury Winthrop late in 2004. After some hunting on the eBay website, I was about to find them and include them below. I am surprised that they are not a more prominent story in the marketplace and that eBay does not do more to promote and reinforce these internally or as part of their image.

eBay’s Community Values
1) We believe people are basically good.
2) We believe everyone has something to contribute.
3) We believe that an honest, open environment can bring out the best in people.
4) We recognize and respect everyone as a unique individual.
5) We encourage you to treat others the way that you want to be treated.

I can really appreciate and respect what eBay is trying to create in their buyer/seller community (even though their corporate culture may not match here). Why not take these values into your office and your home? Let’s explore briefly each of their basic tenets and see where we might want to adjust or add a few thoughts…

First, people are basically good. Not only are people basically good, they also want to help others when they are given the chance. By creating a healthy and supportive environment where you find yourself, you can have these base desires blossom and take root. Such an environment leads to the second pillar of the eBay value system: everyone has something to contribute.

The search for what to contribute to the world is sometimes a lifelong pursuit and for others it seems to have been known from birth. When we support others in finding what their gift(s) to the world might be, we also can find and develop our own. Just imagine what we might be able to create had we been supported and nurtured to find our contributions by others who had found or are finding theirs.

The third premise of an honest, open environment bringing out the best in people does not need explanation or embellishment, but how many or our workplaces and homes are really that way. When people have to hide or defend who they are, there is a stifling of energy that has everyone be less than they are.

The last value on the eBay list is a riff on the New Testament’s “Golden Rule.” It is a wonder that over 2000 years have passed and we can seem to remember what Jesus was trying to tell us. Here, however, I’d like to add Dr. Tony Alessandra’s "Platinum Rule:” Treat others the way they want to be treated. When we do this, we accommodate the needs and feelings of others. We move from being self-centered what we want and need to being focused on the desires of others; I have found that when someone else is the center of my attention, my neuroses seem to melt away and my needs somehow get met in the process.