Apologies for the deafening silence. I’m still reading a lot but I don’t feel inspired to write about what I’m reading. I have been sharing other sources of happiness and inspiration with the people around me. I figured I can share some of them with you. The inspiration might come from a book, but it can also be a podcast, a YouTube video, music, or a combination of these things.
I’m kicking this off with a podcast. The series is called “A Bit of Optimism” and it’s Simon Sinek’s podcast. I listened to several episodes that seemed interesting from the title and they were all worth saving.
The guests are writers or speakers or business leaders, or people who are a combination of these things. There’s also an episode with his sister that deserves a strong trigger warning and that is both heartbreaking and mesmerizing.
The episode I want to highlight is the one with Brené Brown. Brené is best known for her books “Daring Greatly” and “Braving the Wilderness”, as well as for her TED talks about vulnerability. In the podcast, Brené and Simon talk about their books, vulnerability, the infinite game, and more. The topics they discuss are interesting and worth exploring. But the best thing about the podcast is how they go about discussing their differences of opinion.
Both are respectful towards the other person and their ideas. They genuinely listen when the other person is talking. They also clearly enjoy challenging each other and being challenged by the other person. I listened to the whole thing three times and it made me smile every time.
I didn’t know what to expect when I started reading The Four Agreements but I could not have chosen a better time to read this book. I had had a work-related conversation the week before that had thrown me off balance. I generally don’t have high highs or low lows and I like it that way. I’m not a fan of drama. In any form. I like symmetry and stability. You might call me boring and that’s ok.
The Four Agreements is based on the tradition of the Toltec, a people who were called “men and women of knowledge”. There is quite a bit of talk about god and the spiritual or the divine in the book but in my humble opinion, the main concepts of The Four Agreements don’t need any spirituality. They are powerful concepts in and of themselves. I felt peaceful and happy while reading this book. I wish I could hold on to that feeling but I’ve read enough great books to know that the high from a book doesn’t last. Just like any high really, which is why people get addicted while striving to hold on to that fleeting feeling. Luckily books are a relatively harmless addiction. I generally don’t read books multiple times but I might read this one just once more (spoken like a true addict).
Let’s move on to the book’s contents. As little kids, we were uninhibited. Growing up we learned how we should behave to fit into our society and our styles got cramped. We learned to care about what other people think about us and to be afraid of other people’s judgment. Every judgment expressed to us got engrained deep within our brains. Especially the ones made by the people we love most. A friend of mine made a not very positive comment about me trying to learn to play the piano. It took him about 10 seconds to comment. But it impacted my confidence and enjoyment for more than 2 weeks.
We don’t just suffer judgment and comments. We also judge and comment ourselves. We might feel that a comment is benign. We might mean well. Or perhaps we are angry and we are trying to be mean and hurtful. We don’t realize that our comments can impact the life of our target for years or even decades.
The way we treat and judge ourselves is even worse. We feel guilty, stupid, and unworthy of love and acceptance from ourselves, let alone from others. The lower your self-esteem, the more you will accept that others treat you badly. After all, you’re not worth the kindness of others now are you? We want to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. We have created an image in our minds of what it means to be perfect and we reject ourselves because we can’t live up to that ideal. What we think about ourselves is important. Henry Ford expressed it very well when he said “whether you think you can or you can’t, either way, you’re right.
The four agreements can help us to reclaim some of our freedom and feel less self-conscious. The agreements are:
Be impeccable with your word
Don’t take anything personal
Don’t make assumptions
Do the best you can
Being impeccable with your word means not using words against yourself or others. If you say nice things to someone they will feel good and they will likely say nice things to you and to the next person they interact with. If you say bad things to someone they are likely going to say unfriendly things to you. Both positivity and negativity spread like anthrax. Or coronavirus. Use this understanding to spread kindness and positivity. After all, your opinion about someone is just that, your opinion. There are very few people who are objectively good or bad.
Whatever someone says about you (whether in your face or behind your back) is a reflection of how they are feeling. People saying how great you are or how stupid you are says something about how they are looking at the world and themselves. It has nothing to do with you. Don’t take it personal. This is very hard as our own life revolves around us and we assume other people’s lives also revolve around us. Because of this projection, we are constantly on an emotional rollercoaster that gets set off by what people say to us. To not take things personally you need to constantly moderate your reaction.
The third agreement is “don’t make assumptions” and also requires you to moderate your knee-jerk reactions. No one said this would be easy! We tend to make assumptions about everything. The most famous statement about assumptions is “assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups” and there is a lot of truth in this. We make assumptions about what other people are doing or thinking or understanding. Then we assume (again) that our assumptions are the truth. How often do you feel someone is judging you? Let me tell you a secret: most people are way too busy with themselves to be thinking about judging you. Often they don’t even notice you. Assumptions also cause a lot of problems in business situations. We assume that we know what the client wants or needs. Instead of asking questions, we draw our own conclusions. Often to find out at the end of a project that our assumptions weren’t aligned with the expectations of the client. Don’t make assumptions. Have an open mind and ask questions.
The first three agreements are all challenging to put into practice. That makes the fourth agreement very important. Just do your best. Don’t judge yourself when you slip up. You’re not a robot and you don’t want to be. You can’t do more than your best. There’s also another side to this agreement. If you are doing something because you have to, it immediately feels like hard work. Whereas if you try to do something as well as you can do it then it becomes more fun. If you force yourself to exercise because you have to and you’re counting down the minutes until you can stop you will dread the exercise. If you just do your best and perhaps try to do a little bit more than you did yesterday you might even (gasp) start to enjoy the challenge.
If you are even a teeny tiny bit inspired by the way I have described the agreements in this post I highly encourage you to read The Four Agreements yourself. I promise that Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills explain them in a way that is a lot (really a lot) more inspiring and moving. I might join you and read it again.
Kalliope's Journey 