The recent CDC guideline of not having to wear a mask has only added to what some might consider a stress-filled existence. The pandemic brought with it family concerns and has created a new kind of worry for some people. That worry can be compounded when there is no outlet or apparent solution in place.
The book The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom might be the perfect solution for those seeking an alternative to worrying and anxiety. The book offers four simple principles to live by to reduce stress and simplify your lifestyle. For those who find it too literal, it is recommended you use what you can from the book and consider the best advice.
For those who need to reset their focus and regain some direction for personal growth, this book can be a guide for doing just that. The Four Agreements offer lessons on life, patience, and persistence. The book offers readers a chance to create boundaries for how they live and interact with the world. These new boundaries will reshape the mind and refocus the heart.
If there is any downside to the book, it’s that some people might take the book’s directions too literally. That could lead to extreme behavior and make one’s decision-making worse. If you determine that what the book recommends is in alignment with your own beliefs, you should find the book helpful.
Here are the Four Agreements and how to interpret them.
Agreement 1: Be Impeccable with Your Word
What this means: Agreement 1 highlights avoiding gossip, empty promises, lies, and the ways we cause harm with our own words. The first agreement expresses a goal of only saying what we mean and to understand the damage we cause others when we are not careful with what we say. The goal is to leave people in a better position than when we found them.
Sometimes we do not realize the power we have with just words. From 2016 to 2020 the political climate was based on people speaking carelessly, without compassion, and aggressively. This made some people’s anxiety level skyrocket and it made others self-isolate. This book can help return a sense of balance and connection.
Agreement 2: Do Not Take Anything Personally
What This Means: Living in a world filled with cancel culture and to not take what someone says personally can be tough. Agreement 2 deals with the understanding that other people’s actions are a reflection of them only. We cannot let another’s opinion be the reason we feel bad about ourselves.
The book goes on the explain that everyone has bias because no opinion is truly objective. Our experiences shape our beliefs and therefore our opinions. Agreement 2 wants us to be aware that all advice is not good advice, and any advice must be tempered with the understanding that how people view themselves is how they will view the world. Take their advice with a grain of salt.
Agreement 2 also suggests that we should not take ourselves so seriously. We need to learn to become less reactive, reduce our defensiveness, not be as retaliatory and to work to maintain a healthy balance in our lives. Developing these patterns will reduce negativity in our lives and help us create a more positive outcome.
Agreement 3: Do Not Make Assumptions
What This Means: A lot of stress can be created when we assume we know what other people are thinking without checking in with them. Understanding that other people might have different motivations for their actions, even drastically varying worldviews from ours, and remembering to really try to understand others and discuss these motivations before jumping to conclusions about their behavior, can go a long way toward preventing interpersonal conflict.
Taking this advice to an extreme may cause us to ignore our intuition about people or common sense about someone’s behavior that is personally damaging to us. It can also open us up to manipulation if we train ourselves to believe someone’s explanation of negative behavior rather than judging the behavior on its own. For instance, an example of this in action could be not believing we are being cheated on if our partner is exhibiting erratic behavior and showing classic signs of infidelity, but he or she vehemently denies wrongdoing.
Agreement 4: Always Do Your Best
What This Means: Ruiz wants readers to know that doing their best is what is expected after they finish reading this book. Doing and giving our best effort is the real goal. There are some days that we are going to do better than others. But the effort is what is expected of us. If we put our all into everything, we will be able to sleep better at night and will know that we did everything we could. There should be nothing to be ashamed of or regret.
Doing our best also means making good decisions. It takes so long to recover from a bad decision. So, we need to take our time and make sure we make good decisions. That policy will allow us to put forth the correct amount of effort because we made a good decision.
The Agreements should not be overthought. Take the information you can use and realize that we are all different. Focusing on all four Agreements can make a huge difference in your life. If followed, these suggestions can help you with stress, anxiety, and the potential overall feeling that the pandemic has reduced your life to anxiety, stress, and worry. There is an answer, in fact many answers. The Four Agreements are four deeply integrous solutions that will take you far in life while bringing you a renewed sense of balance, peace, and wellbeing.●
