Pearls from Don Miguel Ruiz "The Four Agreements"

Imagine yourself living a new life - where you don’t need to justify your existence. Where you are free to be who you really are. You have permission to be happy and to really enjoy your life. You are free of internal conflict and conflict with others … What do you notice? What do you feel? What do you see? What might be different?

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A Just finished reading Don Miguel Ruiz's book "The Four Agreements". There are some great pearls in this book for coachee and coach - as it deals with mostly self awareness around belief systems. So I would say that it is prescribed reading for all involved in personal transformation. In it (albeit with a rather religious bent to it) he walks the reader through the Four Agreements:

• Be impeccable with your word
• Don’t take anything personally
• Don’t make assumptions
• Always do your best 

The biggest pearls that I took away from this book are not only the statement on personal freedom above, but also the following:

The "Awareness > Transformation > Intention" spectrum
Although not explicitly stated this way - I took away from one of the final chapters that clients will exist in one of these phases of their coaching journey. Even coaching sessions can be structured around first generating awareness, then understanding what it will take to change and lastly creating intentions and purposeful actions. Pure gold!

The First Agreement - Be impeccable with your word:
Ruiz describes how we acquire beliefs and an inner critic that enables endless self flagellation and people-pleasing behaviour. Ruiz also contends that ALL humans seek truth, justice and beauty. 

• Important for clients to practise the first agreement - avoiding negative self-talk and instead creating patterns of self-love.
• Important for coaches to understand that we all mostly want the same thing
• Crucial for coaches to generate awareness around beliefs

The Second Agreement - Don't take anything personally.
Ruiz shows how our beliefs create a perception about the world we live in that doesn't reflect the truth. We all essentially live in a perceived reality that we have created for ourselves. Our perceptions become facts. This sets us up for emotional reactions when other's ideas conflict with ours.

• Important to challenge clients on the perceptions that they create for themselves and subsequent emotional reactions
• Important for them to also see that they cannot take their own negative self-talk personally

The Third Agreement - Don't make assumptions:
Ruiz illustrates how  an in-born need to explain and understand things and a fear of questioning things sets us up to make assumptions. These assumptions usually conform to our belief systems so as to mitigate the inner conflict that has arisen. 

• Understanding how not everyone will see the world the way the client does  and that's okay
• Perhaps needs challenging on their assumptions around others
• Challenge the client around assumptions that they have about themselves
• Encourage dialogue

The Fourth Agreement - Always do your best:
Ruiz shows that our "best" is dependent on many things and will actually vary from moment to moment and context to context. The act of simply doing one's best enables self-acceptance.

• Encourage clients to just do their best and accept that ”their best" will vary from moment to moment - and that’s okay

A Powerful question:
Although not explicitly state as a pq, this jumped out at me so I thought that I'd share it (and feel that he really should have started the book off with this) :

I want you to imagine yourself living a new life - where you don’t need to justify your existence. You are free to be who you really are. You have permission to be happy and to really enjoy your life. You are free of internal conflict and conflict with others … What do you notice? What do you feel? What do you see?  

I hope that you've found this post helpful. Comments welcome as always.