Hi sister! Welcome back to another episode of a Taylored Adventure to Happiness. If you are new, welcome! If you’re a regular, I love ya, I love ya, I love ya!
I’m jazzed about today’s topic. I received so much medicine from Don Miguel Ruiz’s cult classic The Four Agreements, and I can’t wait to share it with you. Ruiz is a best-selling Mexican author and spiritual luminary whose teachings are based on Toltec wisdom. Of course, these are not my ideas. I’m presenting you with my take on it, and it’s really worth reading yourself. But if you’re someone who doesn’t have time to read or just doesn’t like to read, I hope you’ll get some golden nuggets of wisdom from me.
It’s funny how the Universe brought his book to me. You know how sometimes a book speaks to you? Actually calls out to you until you pick it up or re-pick it up? Maybe it’s a book you’ve read many times over, but it’s been a few years, and it’s sitting on your shelf saying, “Read me, read me again.” Or you’ve just been hearing this book coming up again and again in conversation.
Well, that was happening to me, and when it appeared in an Airbnb on a recent trip to Sedona, I knew I had to dive into it. Wow, is it juicy! As I give you my take, I recommend writing these down in your journal or notepad. There’s really actionable, tangible advice in here, and I want you to remember it.
Let’s get started!
Be Impeccable with Your Word
When I first heard this, I thought it was about following through, keeping your promises, and practicing what you preach. But now I understand it at a deeper level — your words have power, and they can be creative or destructive.
My take on it? What you say can be a “light spell,” or it can be a “dark spell.” What you say to yourself and others is, in a way, casting a spell.
So when you’re saying, out loud or in your mind, that you don’t have enough time, that life is difficult, that you never get what you want, or that it’s going to be a bad day, what kind of spell is that? How about, I just can’t make more money. I feel so stuck. I wish I had more money? It’s a dark spell, of course!
Now flip that: I have all the time I need for everything important to me, life is always getting better and easier, I am divinely supported. What kind of spell is that? How about: Money is easy to come by. I welcome money from all sources. I am constantly receiving the abundance that is flowing to me.
Your words are vibration. Speaking is tuning into a vibration, which then turns into physical form. If you’ve been with me for a while, you know we call that manifestation. If you speak it, you know it, and you feel it is going to happen. So you can speak empowering words that create what you desire, or you can speak disempowering words that lower your light and bring more of what you don’t want.
When I look at this agreement, I like to think of it as lovingly micromanaging your words. Manage your words so much so that it becomes an automatic habit and you don’t have to think about it.
What would that look like to wake up in the morning and say, “Okay, today I’m committed to micromanaging my words and being intentional with every single word that comes out of my mouth? I’m committed to catching a dark spell and turning it into a white spell before it comes out.”
It’s up to you. Get into the space of committing to this practice, so even if you slip up, you’re thinking about how you can flip it and reverse the spell and shift into an empowering one. This also includes thoughts you have in your head, not just the ones that come out of your mouth.
Are there times that you’re going to forget and have amnesia? Yep, totally. That’s the point of life… to forget and then remember, forget and remember. And let’s take it even deeper when it comes to being impeccable with your word — are you judging yourself or other people? Are you speaking about how you wish you had what someone else has, focusing on your lack of that? Do you project your own insecurities onto other people? This brings me to the second agreement.
Don’t Take Things Personally
This is one of my favorites. It’s so powerful to realize and accept that everyone lives in their own unique, virtual reality.
I loved Ruiz’s metaphor for this. He likens it to everyone in a big movie theater, sitting in their own chairs and watching the movie of their life. When you walk into their movie theater, that’s their perspective of life. And when you sit down, they’re going to see you in a completely different light than you see yourself. They’re going to see themselves in a completely different light than you see them. They’re going to see situations differently.
They might be triggered by a tiger, and you’re not triggered by a tiger. They might micromanage their time, and you might go with the flow more. They might take time to respond to phone calls, and you might not.
When we take things personally, we’re missing a really key piece of information — that we could be reading the entire situation completely wrong. When we embrace this beautiful belief that we shouldn’t take anything personally, we give everyone permission to live their own experience.
We don’t cross wires with other people. Therefore, we honor people’s decisions. We honor how they show up, how they speak, and how they speak to us, knowing they could be projecting their insecurities, their own beliefs, or their past wounds on us. I love how Ruiz describes this:
“Everything you perceive is a reflection of what is real, just like the reflections in a mirror, except for one important difference. Behind the mirror, there is nothing. But behind your eyes is a brain that tries to make sense of everything. Your brain is interpreting everything you perceive, according to the meaning you give to every symbol, according to the structure of your language, according to all the knowledge that was programmed in your mind. Everything you perceive is being filtered through your entire belief system, and the result of interpreting everything you perceive by using everything you believe is your personal dream. This is how you create an entire virtual reality in your mind. Perhaps you can see how easy it is for humans to distort what we perceive.” – Don Miguel Ruiz
Let’s say someone who doesn’t call you back, and you automatically think about a past experience where someone completely ghosted you. You immediately think that this current person doesn’t like you anymore, that they’re leaving you. You believe that when people don’t call you back, they’re ghosting you. So it’s bringing up your unworthiness, your abandonment wounds, everything.
But what if you just think: You know what? They’re living in their own virtual reality, making their own decisions. I’m not gonna take it personally, knowing that they might just be going through something. And I don’t have to make it about me, because in the end, it never is about me. When other people are going through something and projecting, not showing up, ghosting, it’s always their own thing that they’re doing. You just happen to be a bystander.
So think about how much lighter you’d feel if you didn’t take anything personally. How much more would you show up, maybe on social media, if you are an entrepreneur? This is also a mirror for fear of judgment. If you struggle with fear of judgment, can you follow this rule of not taking things personally?
Where have you taken things personally? Maybe you’ve held resentment towards a person, not having a clue what they’re going through or how they perceive things.
This is a really beautiful tool of interaction from human to human. And it’s a massive golden ticket to personal freedom because you no longer have to rule your life according to other people’s opinions. The only person who needs to be concerned about the story of you is you, right?
Don’t Make Assumptions
Ruiz has given a really striking example of how destructive assumptions can be in his story of a superstition about a chair. So let’s say you come across a chair:
“What do we know about a chair? We can say that a chair is made of wood, or metal, or cloth, but we’re just using words or symbols to express a point of view. The truth is that we don’t really know what the object is. But we can use the word with all of our authority to deliver a message to ourselves and to everyone around us: ‘This chair is ugly. I hate this chair.’ The message is already distorted, but this is just the beginning. We can say, ‘It’s a stupid chair’, and ‘I think that whoever sits in the chair might become stupid also. I think we have to destroy the chair because if someone sits in the chair and it falls apart, that person will fall and break a hip. Oh yes, the chair is evil! Let’s create a law against the chair so that everybody knows that it’s a danger to society.’” – Don Miguel Ruiz
When was the last time you made an assumption about someone and you found out that you were completely wrong? Think about all the energy-zapping drama you created for no reason.
Say you’re an entrepreneur and you have a clarity call with a new prospect. You sense their hesitation, you assume they’re not going to sign up, and you ruminate for days. You’re thinking: Oh my gosh, they’re not interested. They’re not going to invest in me and my skills. And therefore, they’re not gonna transform. I’m never going to get any more clients, and then my business is gonna fail. Then I’m going to look like an idiot. And then three days go by, and the client signs up.
What if we stopped assuming and instead focused on our desired outcome, showed up, and trusted that everything would play out? If not taking anything personally gives you immunity in the interaction you have with other people, then not making assumptions gives you immunity to the interaction that you have with yourself. With the voice of knowledge or what we call “thinking,” right?
Making assumptions is all about thinking. We think too much, and thinking leads to assumptions. Just thinking “what if” can create a huge drama in our lives.
Ruiz describes how we have this need to explain and justify everything. We have a need for knowledge. We also have a need to make assumptions that fulfill our need to know. We don’t care whether the assumptions or knowledge is true or not. We just need to know.
But if we don’t make assumptions, we can focus our attention on the truth — truth being love. Truth being how are you vibrating? How are you showing up right now?
Always Do Your Best
This really is something everyone can do, and in a way, they already are.
We always intend to do our best — it’s just that our best will depend on how we are and who we are in each moment. You’re changing from day to day, from instance to instance.
Your best will depend on factors such as your level of physical energy, your emotional state, and where your head’s at. When you think that you’re not doing your best, that’s a lie because your best is just you showing up at each moment, thinking:
I’m just going to try my best to show up as my higher self. I’m going to try my best to be impeccable with my word and speak only white spells.
It’s not about being perfect, but as you form the habit of practicing these four agreements, your best is going to get better.
Be Skeptical, But Try to Listen
I love how this agreement ties them all together.
We know by now that everyone is living in their virtual reality, that objective truth doesn’t exist, and that we assign meaning to everything based on our own experience. We know the power that our words have in our lives, and we know that making assumptions based on our virtual reality leads to drama and misunderstandings.
That’s why it’s important to be skeptical — so we don’t take on everyone’s ideas as truth when it’s really just their truth.
At the same time, we need to listen to understand the reality of that other person — to grasp the symbols they’re using so that communication improves and you get clarity instead of confusion.
Whenever you hear a message — from an artist, human, book — simply ask if it’s truth or a virtual reality. Be skeptical of everything, including your own thoughts and beliefs. You’ll see really quickly that you probably are telling yourself a lot of lies. It’s time to tell yourself a different story.
Take on These Five Agreements Today!
I hope that this recap — expressed through my virtual reality — served you. Don Miguel Ruiz is a true lightworker who is helping to heal the collective. We’re all in this ascension process together, shifting our vibrations and expanding out of the matrix. Let’s support each other to create a new world on earth, living and expressing our heart truths.
If you’re committed to taking on these five agreements, screenshot this post, post it in Instagram stories, and tag me with the words “I’m in!” @iamtaylorsimpson.
Thank you for reading. As always, I’m so grateful to spend time with you. And remember — Always choose happiness because, well, why the fuck not?
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
- Your words carry vibrations
- Casting spells with your words
- Micromanaging your words and thoughts
- How to stop taking everything personally
- The ticket to personal freedom
- Releasing expectations and disappointments
- Taking back your energy
- Living your life in true alignment
- Start giving and doing your best every day
- The magic in learning to listen with skeptical ears
