Doing Our Best

Some of our household has read The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz. We have found that each agreement applies to all parts of our lives, including work, personal, and our transgender journey.
 
The Four Agreements are:
1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

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, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

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.

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.
 
As we remember these four agreements, we remember to be easy on ourselves and forgive ourselves—because the first three agreements will only work if we do our best. We can’t expect that we will always be able to be impeccable with our words, for example. Our routine habits are too strong and firmly rooted in our mind. But we can always do our best. We can’t expect that we will never take anything personally; we just do our best. And we can’t expect that we will never make another assumption, but we can certainly do our best.

This is a great book for personal growth and insights to improve relationships, especially within your family.

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